Red Lines
Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship
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- $24.99
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- $24.99
Publisher Description
A lively graphic narrative reports on censorship of political cartoons around the world, featuring interviews with censored cartoonists from Pittsburgh to Beijing.
Why do the powerful feel so threatened by political cartoons? Cartoons don't tell secrets or move markets. Yet, as Cherian George and Sonny Liew show us in Red Lines, cartoonists have been harassed, trolled, sued, fired, jailed, attacked, and assassinated for their insolence. The robustness of political cartooning--one of the most elemental forms of political speech--says something about the health of democracy. In a lively graphic narrative--illustrated by Liew, himself a prize-winning cartoonist--Red Lines crisscrosses the globe to feel the pulse of a vocation under attack.
A Syrian cartoonist insults the president and has his hands broken by goons. An Indian cartoonist stands up to misogyny and receives rape threats. An Israeli artist finds his antiracist works censored by social media algorithms. And the New York Times, caught in the crossfire of the culture wars, decides to stop publishing editorial cartoons completely. Red Lines studies thin-skinned tyrants, the invisible hand of market censorship, and demands in the name of social justice to rein in the right to offend. It includes interviews with more than sixty cartoonists and insights from art historians, legal scholars, and political scientists--all presented in graphic form. This engaging account makes it clear that cartoon censorship doesn't just matter to cartoonists and their fans. When the red lines are misapplied, all citizens are potential victims.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This ambitious but awkward scholarly survey of censorship of political cartoons by George, a media studies professor at Hong Kong Baptist University, and artist Liew (The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye) compiles interviews with 50 cartoonists from around the world about how their pointed humor has sparked government repression. "Political cartoons are part of a conversation citizens have a right to access," asserts George, and the thesis is argued via a hodgepodge of comics, digital collage, photos, and text-only pages. The jumbled look recalls a 1990s cut-and-paste zine, hopscotching between eras and continents, and organized by different ideological themes. The strongest moments come from personal stories and passionate political sentiments. "You knew what not to draw," says Gustavo Rodriguez, who fled Cuba. "It was not something I was proud of. I did it to stay under the radar and avoid trouble." Palestinian cartoonist Mohammad Sabaaneh, who was a political prisoner in Israel, recounts how he scans all his sketches when he travels abroad and destroys the originals before returning home. He observes that the censorship actions of the government in Israel serve to "dehumanize all Palestinians, not just cartoonists." But while the nonchronological structure allows for a multitude of voices on each page, it makes the history hard to follow. While offering valuable preservation of the source material, the presentation overwhelms readers with its sheer density.
