Entrapping Christian and Muslim Arabs in racial cartoons in Australia : the other anti-semitism

Racial Cartoons are a powerful force disguised as entertainment operating to shape public opinion. During the 1980s, 1990s and after 9/11 in 2001, cartoons in the Australian press were particularly directed against Muslim and Christian Arabs without remorse or fear of redress or accountability. The offensive of such cartoons has essentially been directed on three fronts&mdash;oil, politics and religion. The drawback resulting from socio-cultural, historical and other differences are no doubt visible; but equally obvious is that anti-Semitism, which was directed against the Jews in the 1930s and 1940s, is today mostly directed against the public relations deprived, opinion silenced and undemocratically governed, ethnically diverse Arabs. It is argued in this paper that several forces were behind such distorted visual strategies adopted by the Australian press. Pre-judgement stemming from an inbuilt bias of the cartoonist, or highlighting characteristics which conform to the national interest are likely factors. The debate in Australia as to whether public images and attitudes of a minority &ldquo;cause&rdquo; or &ldquo;determine&rdquo; policy or whether policy itself changes attitudes is still resting with the jury.<br /

Assess Irony Communication of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono through Political Cartoon

Irony is a figure of speech that states the meaning as opposed to the true meaning, and presented a mismatch between the atmosphere and the underlying reality. Irony communication is often done by our politicians. It seems to reveal the communication activities related to politics by presenting actual and potential consequences that set humans under conditions of conflict. The actual consequences means that activities actually performed by political actors, political communication or activity that is clearly located within the realm of political communication, such as campaign, presidential speeches, political advertising, and so on. Irony communication is that not only the language of political compromise merely rhetoric but also paralinguistic signs such as gestures and political action. Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono (SBY) as a political figure who had occupied the position as the number one in Indonesia during the two periods of leadership in the reform era, has a communication style of irony that interesting to study. Using Discourse Analysis approach, this study examines this issue through political cartoons, meanwhile political cartoons as a form of visual communication and journalism then the message is in the cartoon can also be used to understand the texts produced in discourse. Keywords: Irony Communication, Political Cartoon, Visual Discourse

Hate Speech and Double Standards

Many European states ban the public expression of hateful speech directed at racial and religious minorities, and an increasing number do so for anti-gay speech as well. These laws have been subjected to a wide range of legal, philosophical, and empirical investigation, but this paper explores one potential cost that has not received much attention in the literature. Statutory bans on hate speech leave democratic societies with a Hobson’s choice. If those societies ban incitements of hatred against some vulnerable groups, they will inevitably face parallel demands for protection of other such groups. If they accede to those demands, they will impose an ever-tightening vice on incontrovertible free expression values; if they do not, they will send clear signals of unequal citizenship to those groups excluded from the laws’ protection. This paper elaborates this dilemma via exploration of a range of contemporary European legal responses to homophobic and Islamophobic speech

‘Bold liberals who fought for the cause of freedom’: the German Reception of the Graphic Satires of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson at the Fin de Siècle (1895-1908)

This article explores the reception of the work of James Gillray and Thomas Rowlandson in Germany in the long nineteenth century. Special attention is given to the impact upon this phenomenon of the evolution of art historical studies and the effect of nationalist cultural policies during the period. The German-language art historical writings of critics (two from Germany (Richard Muther and Hans Wolfgang Singer) and two from the Low Countries (Charles Polydore de Mont and Jan Veth)) during the fin de siècle are analysed in order to explain how their advocacy of these British graphic satirists contributed to liberal agendas of protest and internationalism in opposition to the narrow nationalism of the Prussian-led Kaiserreich

Homeland Crisis and Local Ethnicity: The Toronto Irish and the Cartoons of the Evening Telegram 1910–1914

This article examines a critique of the “diasporic nationalism” affecting the Irish in Canada through the lens of Toronto, a key destination for Irish immigrants in the nineteenth century. Situated in the period of the third home rule bill and the articulation of opinion about it in Toronto (1910–1914), the article concentrates on the city’s media and particularly the visual content of cartoons published in the strongly pro-empire Evening Telegram. The author demonstrates how a familiar repertoire of Irish symbols and myths was grafted onto the bodies of Toronto’s “Irish” and/or “Ulster” personalities, connecting them with events on the other side of the Atlantic. These satirical representations also informed readings of Irishness in Toronto. They suggest that while a nationalist “green” identity had acquired a respectable and largely middle-class character among Catholics of Irish birth and ancestry in the early twentieth century, there were still forces at work that resisted placement of the latter group on a footing equal to the city’s Protestant majority.Cet article examine une critique du « nationalisme diasporique » affectant les Irlandais du Canada à travers le prisme de Toronto, destination importante pour les immigrants irlandais protestants au XIXe siècle. Situé à l’ère de la troisième home rule bill et de l’articulation de l’opinion à son égard à Toronto (1910–1914), l’article porte les médias torontois et notamment sur le contenu visuel de caricatures publiées dans le résolument pro-empire Evening Telegram. L’auteur démontre comment un répertoire familier de mythes irlandais a été greffé sur le corps de diverses personnalités « irlandaises » ou « ulstériennes » de Toronto, les reliant avec des événements de l’autre côté de l’Atlantique. Ces représentations satiriques ont également informé la lecture de la nationalité irlandaise à Toronto. Elles suggèrent que, tandis qu’une identité nationaliste « verte » avait acquise au début du XXe siècle un caractère respectable et en grande partie de classe moyenne chez les catholiques de naissance et d’ascendance irlandaise, il y avait encore des forces à l’oeuvre qui s’opposaient à ce que ces derniers soient mis sur un pied d’égalité avec la majorité protestante de Toronto

Animating perception: British cartoons from music hall to cinema, 1880 - 1928

This thesis examines the history of animated cartoons in Britain between 1880 and 1928, identifying a body of work that has been largely ignored by film and animation historians, covering the production, distribution, and exhibition of these films. Throughout this history, graphic arts - especially print cartooning and illustration - and the music-hall lightning cartoon act are found to have played a formative role in British animated cartoons. The artists who made the first British animated cartoons were almost exclusively drawn from one of those two fields and thus this work may be considered to form a parallel history of ‘artists’ film’. They brought with them to film a range of concerns from those prior forms that would shape British animated cartoons. Examining that context provides an understanding of the ways British animated cartoons developed in technologic, economic, and aesthetic terms. This work includes the first in-depth history of the music-hall lightning cartoon act, which finds that it anticipates cinematic animation, featuring qualities such as transformation, the movement of line drawings, and the desire to bring drawings to life. Building on this history, a new critical framework for examining these films aesthetically is provided, emphasising the role of the spectator and their perceptual processes. This framework draws upon the work of E.H. Gombrich and Sergei Eisenstein, and extends it to include recent findings from neuroscientific fields. The result is an original aesthetic reading of this body of work, which finds the films to have a deep engagement with the basic perceptual processes involved in viewing moving line drawings

Master Narratives and the Pictorial Construction of Otherness: Anti-Semitic Images in the Third Reich and Beyond

Collective identities of the Self (or Ego) vs. the Other are not only conveyed in and between cultures through verbal discourse but also through pictures. Such cultural constructions are often established and consolidated by storytelling, where, briefly put, events or situations are temporally ordered. Pictures and visual artworks may be powerful narrative resources for establishing and consolidating cultural stances and framing actions. In this paper, I shall focus upon demarcation efforts of Jews as the Other from the Middle Ages onwards, in the Third Reich’s iconography, and in modern, radicalized forms of anti-Semitic picturing in Arab media. Within overarching master stories staging a pseudo-historical struggle between various protagonists and Jewish antagonists, considerable efforts have been made to produce pictorial narratives or gists in order to demarcate the Ego from the Other. A number of concrete pictorial examples will be presented from a narratological and cultural semiotic perspective

Spectacular Tentacular: Transmedial Tentacles and Their Hegemonic Struggles in Cthulhu and Godzilla

Tentacular cephalopods appear regularly in film. Inspired by Hugo and Hokusai, stories of ferocious octopus attacking primates were invented. This fantasy of the Kraken was incorporated into monster movies in the 1950s with the cult of Cthulhu. Lovecraft describes a vision of the resurrection of prehistoric cephalopod monsters and reinterprets fragments from worldwide mythology. With the film King Kong (1933) as their distant origin, Godzilla (1954) and It Came from Beneath the Sea (1955) describe returns of monsters as recorded in ancient times. The Japanese film King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) is interesting to consider in this context. Here, in a scenario possibly inspired by Japanese folklore, a huge octopus attacks King Kong, in a struggle that can be interpreted as a battle for initiative in the world of Cthulhu. Cthulhan pseudo-mythology is widely appropriated in later monster movies, although the racism is a stumbling block. In the movie Kong: Skull Island (2017), the monkey god returns like Cthulhu, but bites off the attacking cephalopod's tentacles. This evokes impressive scenes from both King Kong vs. Godzilla and Oldboy (2003). Here, Kong, seeming to extract Cthulhan racism, incorporates the powers of Cthulhu's intense tentacles and pseudo-mythological method