At any rate, this New York Observer interview with him about the cartoonists' murders is amazing, a must read.
So why wouldn’t you just not do it? Why would you go ahead and submit a cartoon like that? Isn’t that really scary and risky?
Well–they asked me to. Liberation called me and said, “Crumb, can you do a cartoon for us? About what you think about this, you know, you are a major cartoonist, and you live in France.” So I thought about it. I spent a lot of time thinking about it. I’m doing the dishes, or whatever, I was thinking, “What should I do for that cartoon…” I had a lot of ideas. Other people come up with these, you know, clever cartoons that comment on it, like…This one guy did a cartoon showing a bloody dead body laying there, and a radical Muslim standing over him with a Kalashnikov, saying, “He drew first!” Stuff like that. That’s good, that’s clever, you know, I like that. But, me? I gotta like, you know, when I do something, it has to be more personal. I said, first: “I don’t have the courage to make an insulting cartoon of Muhammed.”
Then I thought, “OK, I’m the Cowardly Cartoonist…As a Cowardly Cartoonist, I can’t make some glib comment like that, you know? I have to, like, make fun of myself.To find out what he drew, read the article.
2 comments:
Another artist who crosses boundaries by remaking important texts, notably the Bible, using legos is Brendan Powell Smith. He recently posted similar comments after the Paris attacks by saying he is cowed by the threat of retaliation in not taking on some subjects. In his post, he could not claim "je suis Charlie," and added something important to the dialogue that is going on today.
What a world. I read that there are only 25 political cartoonists employed by US newspapers, who incidentally, have a readership of 44,000,000 readers. So we aren't that brave... also, too, the leaders of countries who imprison journalists, but appeared for the photo op.. well, all food for thought.... although not that nourishing.
Post a Comment