Behind the Lines: Cartoons as Historical Sources

In recent years the political cartoon has defied reports of its death or decline as a journalistic force, to return with a vengeance. Several examples of this satirical art form have exerted a powerful influence on public opinion, extending across borders, continents and cultures. Who can forget the September 2005 furore among Muslims worldwide, caused by Danish newspaper Jyllands Posten's depictions of the Prophet Mohammed? More recently Sean Delonas, the New York Post's chief cartoonist, was pilloried for the racist overtones of a cartoon supposedly equating President Obama with an escaped pet chimpanzee. Closer to home, the controversy over an Indian cartoon depicting a Victoria Police officer in Ku Klux Klan garb, alleging deep-seated racism against Indian nationals in Australia, has only reaffirmed the power and importance of this very special art form. In past epochs the key political cartoons of the day were imagined to be among the 'great sources' for historians. In contemporary academic history writing, these important documents are often employed only as 'illustrations', or visual aids to 'more serious' texts. There is a gap here between theory and practice at the secondary and tertiary levels of history teaching, with VCE- and HSC-level students analysing cartoons as an integral part of their historical studies, while university students are generally led to assume that cartoons speak for themselves. As noted by W.A. Coupe, the great historian of German satirical art, such an assumption is 'at best simplistic, at worst, totally erroneous'.