Not Just Charlie Hebdo

Let’s talk about Ali Ferzat.

Ali Ferzat is a Syrian political cartoonist. A scathing one. He gets right to the point in his drawings and isn’t known to shy away from what he sees as dirty politics. This was no exception when Bashar al-Assad came into power in Syria. In August 2011, Ferzat was seized by a militia group loyal to Assad and beaten—his assailants made extra sure to break the bones in his hands. While Ferzat survived the attack, he is now living in exile in Kuwait.

ali-ferzat-cartoon

Political comics reign supreme in the Middle East, a place where politics and religion are The (capital T) biggest games in town. Humor is a universal tool, after all, and humor always makes such heavy topics easier to digest. The same can be said of political comics in the United States, but, I’m sorry, in the Middle East? It’s an old-fashioned throwdown. Their humor is scathing and raw and it sometimes causes revolutions. The people in charge know this. The press—including the comics printed in the papers—is tightly regulated, and cartooning is a heavy form of activism. I want to talk about the Arabs in the Middle East whose tools of dissent are also pens and brushes, who are in the line of fire—not just from terrorist groups, but sometimes their own governments. And, guess what, they’ve also had some opinions about the Charlie Hebdo attack.

Charlie-Hebdo-Salute-6

Translation: This is how we get revenge on the cartoonists’ killer. By Lebanon’s An Nahar.

 

The first comics I ever had access to were the comics of Naji al-Ali. Though political comics existed in the Middle East before he started creating work, this guy worked his mojo. I think it’s safe to say that he’s still the most famous Arab cartoonist to date. His iconic character, Handala, is still referenced in comics drawn today. He was a Palestinian refugee, and his work very much reflects this. He felt for the Palestinian everyman and was scathing toward the ineffectiveness of Arab countries, the ambivalence of the West, and the cruelty of Israel. No one was safe in his comics, and he made so many enemies that he was exiled from most Middle-Eastern country and settled in London, where he was murdered in 1987. They never caught the perp.

I remember seeing his comics for the first time and thinking how terrifying they were.

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I won’t even address the blatant racists/religionophobes who claim Muslims/Arabs are the source of all evil, because I don’t talk with those people and they aren’t worth the kilobytes. I’m talking about microaggressions. I’m talking about absolute silence and the feeling of speaking to walls. Unless Whites end up being the ones in the crosshairs. (An officer was also killed at Charlie Hebdo, but—let’s be real—most of those outside of the Muslim/Arab community are not paying much attention to Ahmed.) (And then there were the four Jewish hostages killed—targets only because of their freedom. I unfortunately can’t say that I heard much noise made about them, either. Is there something about exercising one’s rights passively, instead of aggressively, that’s less newsworthy? Is it the same turning wheel that blocks out Ahmed? My gut tells me it’s both of these things.)

Suddenly the cartoonist’s ideal is under attack and our free speech is thwarted—except it always has been, in plain sight. Just read the top BBC News stories every morning. There’s no shortage of misery. We never talk about those lives since they aren’t “here,” even though to the American psyche (and I can only speak of the American psyche), France is a part of “here,” while half of the world is not. The problem is that we’re all connected, whether we like it or not. We inhabit the same universe. I just read about Boko Haram terrorizing Nigeria. These are people who are slaughtered—who are fleeing in droves—because they are moderates being overtaken by radicals. How do we care so much about some types of terror, but not others?

I’m going to talk about myself, because I want to explain that sick feeling I’ve had in the pit of my stomach for the past few days.

I call The Hookah Girl my “heartbreak book.” The comic is about Palestinians being human. No publisher would touch it, though one had the grace to tell me they feared being firebombed (they didn’t specify by whom—hipsters wanting their money back?). A Jewish man who told me I should be ashamed of myself for the comic brought me to tears on the Javits Center floor. I co-created a comic strip that was actually picked up by a certain syndication company. The comic was also about Arabs being human. The marketing team didn’t sell the strip to a single paper. Did they try? No idea. I just know that I learned a lot about the media from that experience. I wrote a scholarly paper about women in Middle-Eastern comics that highlighted the portrayal of women in these comics as well as the flesh-and-blood female cartoonists who are actually creating them. Palestinian society and politics are something I keep a close eye on because, well, I’m half Palestinian, I’m sort of interested in that kind of thing. I talk about it. I’ve had people take me aside and tell me I’m doing something positive but they themselves could never “publicly” say such things. I’ve lost friends because of it, too. I had to jump through some extra-special hoops to get my passport and one time the FBI came into our apartment while we weren’t there to search it (I hope they enjoyed the pile of dirty dishes in our sink).

This has been the loneliest, most Sisyphean road. And I’m tired. I’m really tired.

I understand the need to do something constructive with the outrage. I would never take that from anyone. But take this opportunity to remember that the world is in a fight against radicalism and all its members need solidarity. Think of the activists who are still alive—you don’t have to be dead to be a hero.

Je ne suis pas Charlie; je suis tout le monde.
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For all HU posts on Satire and Charlie Hebdo click here.

My NYT Nightmare

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Just under a year ago, I started a new gig that I was cautiously excited about: creating editorial comics for the Week in Review section of The New York Times. David Rees was going to write them and I was going to draw them. This seemed like an ideal partnership; David (creator of the satiric comic Get Your War On) has a great skill for walking the fine line between irony and sincerity, and is extremely funny as well. We both wanted to try to do new things with the political strip format, and bring metahumor to the Times.

Already, though, things were not as we’d been promised. The Times had approached David and then myself in April of 2013. After approving us, they told us their master plan: Brian McFadden, the resident comic artist, would be replaced by myself and David alternating with Lisa Hanawalt. This would be a part of the exciting revitalization of the Week in Review section. To that end, they told us to wait while their redesign proceeded.

By September, the redesign seemed to be finished; but the editor in charge decided that something as exciting as this new comic rotation couldn’t be unveiled in a dull month like September. Better to wait until… January! when it could be announced to the world with the appropriate fanfare and excitement.

So we waited seven months in all. And on January 20th, David & I created our first strip for the Times… which was printed with no fanfare or announcement or anything; we were simply dumped into an alternating slot with McFadden, because by then Lisa was simply too busy (drawing Bojack Horseman). The brilliant strategy of waiting all that time had backfired, because in fact it was pointlessly stupid.

Then there was the money. The New York Times– get this- refused to come up from the fee for one artist, which we were to split. We finally got them to come up a little, but only a little. These strips are done in a very short time period- basically between Wednesday night and Friday morning, and I stayed up all night for a couple fo them. We were going to be making very little money, but still, it was an opportunity to do good work, maybe make some statements on serious issues and have them be seen by people. And the Times still stands for something in peoples’s minds, some kind of editorial quality.

Of course, it didn’t work out at all; their nitpicking, antiquated style of editing got more oppressive until they were killing entire strips. And it’s quite clear they were refusing to print them because they didn’t understand them. It was like being edited by hobbits.

The first few went through fairly smoothly; David pays close attention to the news, and the art director mentioned approvingly that she was glad he was tackling issues that the paper wasn’t covering otherwise. The one thing that bothered me was: we would present the script, the editors would make corrections, I’d create a finish. Then, after I’d handed it in, I’d get back a complete different set of corrections, mostly concerned with their antiquated style guide. The Times puts periods in “IRS,” for instance, even though the IRS themselves do not. They also changed the wording of Donald Rumsfeld’s letter to the IRS when we quoted it directly; that seemed wrong to me. And that they couldn’t do all the corrections at once, before I’d done the work, felt to me like laziness and a lack of coordination which ended with me doing unnecessary work at the last minute.

They did start reading the script more closely, though, after our fifth strip. The script mentioned the cartoon character Garfield and tribesmen in native costume in Botswana, so I was less than sympathetic when they were surprised when the art was turned in. “We have to check with our lawyers if we can use Garfield,” the AD said, and “the tribesmen in Botswana are making people uncomfortable.” Soon came the word that the lawyer had said Garfield was okay (luckily they had asked one who understood the first amendment). I hope they would also drop the tribesmen issue, but no. They insisted I make it a different country, and have them fully clothed. I thought about it for maybe five seconds, and then I said something I’d learned to say after a lot of bad experiences with illustrations and comics that turned out mediocre because of meddling editors who thought they were smarter at what I do then I am. I said “I’m not comfortable with that.” And they… backed down. Okay, we’ll print it the way it is.
 
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I thought we’d won a small, but important victory. Of course, I was kidding myself. Two strips went by and then it was Easter; David wrote a script parodying floral bouquet ads. It showed several extravagant bouquets before showing a basket with twigs in it, suggesting that maybe the real spirit of Jesus would be served by saving the money spent on bouquets and giving it to a homeless shelter. It was David at his best: sharp, moral, funny & brilliant. (I’ve done a rough of it to show you here).

They hated it. “The editor is asking why are we making fun of religion” came the reply. I couldn’t believe this, and still can’t; it’s the response of someone who can’t read. David was doing the opposite of making fun of religion; he was in fact underlining one of its central tenets, the concept of charity. He felt really strongly about it, and even managed to talk with one fo the editors to make his case. But no amount of arguing would dissuade them. We had to come up with another strip in a hurry.
 
Easter

A sketched-out version of the unpublished strip.

 
The next strip went through with no difficulty, and then David wrote a strip about male bullying online. That week, the hashtag #yesallwomen had taken over Twitter, following a misogynist’s killing spree in California. The reaction to this was a torrent of abuse from men and boys towards women- and this was before Gamergate, which really took it to another level. As always, David’s strip on the subject was right on. His script had a pair of baby-men (wearing diapers) talking about trolling and threatening women online. I was excited, because I knew this was one that would attract attention, and make a point that deserved to be made. Incredibly, the Times wouldn’t touch it. “So I floated this by the editors, and they all feel that this news story is just too sensitive to be prodded at in a humorous way,” was the way the substitute AD put it.

This was when I had had enough. Too sensitive to be prodded at in a humorous way? Why had they hired us? What did they think we were supposed to be doing? David was busy at that point doing his TV series for National Geographic, so I told the AD that I was not happy with the Times‘s behavior, that we would not be giving them a substitute strip for that week, and then I created a rough version of the strip from David’s script and put it online, with a full explanation of how the Times wouldn’t print it. It got more attention than anything else we’d done for them.
 
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A sketched-out version of the unpublished strip.

 

We did one more strip after that and then, big surprise, they fired us. But once the Times had made it clear that we were not allowed to offend anyone, or handle any but the safest material, it was all over for us anyway. For me, as a cartoonist, it was another depressing reminder of how bad things have gotten in the print world for people who do what I do. David had a TV show. Lisa had a TV show. I was working in print and I felt like a real loser for it.

I couldn’t help but think of all this again this week as the images from Paris appeared online. Cartoonists had given their lives for the freedom of speech their work represented. It still means something over there.
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Shhhhhh (for the Love of Comics)

Comics asks that you join it in observing a moment of silence.

Comics is staunchly anti-censorship. We shall discuss this in due time, after the moment of silence.

No, not yet. Hush, now. For freedom. For Comics!

Comics isn’t sure about the kids these days, to be honest.

Comics worries the next generation might not read the right things. Sometimes Comics can’t sleep at night, for all the worrying.

Comics wonders if you plan to wear a sweater. It’s supposed to get chilly, you know.

Also pack some extra socks. It’s good for Comics.

Comics has put together a big book of newspaper clippings for posterity. Comics someday hopes to print and collate corresponding threads from the most essential message boards.

What’s a Tumblr, Comics wonders. It sounds stupid.

Comics respects women. Obviously.

Why? Because Comics says so, that’s why.

Psssh. Comics is not racist. Because satire.

Comics says maybe YOU’RE the racist. Did you ever think of that?

Comics will try to speak more slowly so you can understand.

Actually…Comics.

Merica. Krazy Kat. Comics.

Comics says this is not the time or the place.

Comics says watch your tone.

Comics says that you just want attention.

Comics can’t hear you. LA-LA-LA

You are not the boss of Comics.

Comics has made a list of 500 things we can all do to improve Comics. 1. Always listen to Comics.

Comics. Comics!! COMICSSSSS

Comics had a black friend in middle school.

Homophobic? Comics has two words for you: Alison Bechdel.

Transphobic? Listen, Comics doesn’t even care about that stuff!

No, seriously. Comics doesn’t give a fuuuuuuck.

You know what Comics does care about? Art. Unlike some certain people.

You just don’t understand Art. Or history. Not like Comics does.

Comics only wants what’s best for you. Someday you’ll understand.

Anyway, this isn’t about you. It’s about me. I mean, Comics.
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For all HU posts on Posted in Blog, Satire and Charlie Hebdo Roundtable, Top Featured | Tagged , ,

In the Wake of Charlie Hebdo, Free Speech Does Not Mean Freedom From Criticism

On Wednesday morning, the French satirical paper Charlie Hebdo was attacked by three masked gunmen, armed with kalashnikovs, who stormed the building and killed ten of its staff and two police officers. The gunmen are currently understood to be Muslim extremists. This attack came minutes after the paper tweeted this drawing of ISIS leader Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi.

 

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(“Best wishes, by the way.” Baghdadi: “And especially good health!”)

An armed attack on a newspaper is shocking, but it is not even the first time Hebdo has been the subject of terrorist attacks. Gawker has a good summary of past controversies and attacks involving Hebdo. Most famously, the magazine’s offices were firebombed in 2011, after they printed an issue depicting the Prophet Muhammad on the cover.

In the face of such an obvious attack on free speech, voicing anything except grief-stricken support is seen by many as disrespectful. Tom Spurgeon at The Comics Reporter, one of the first American comics sources to thoroughly cover the attack, quickly tweeted this:

spurgeon

When faced with a terrorist attack against a satirical newspaper, the appropriate response seems obvious. Don’t let the victims be silenced. Spread their work as far as it can possibly go. Laugh in the face of those savage murderers who don’t understand satire.

In this case, it is the wrong response.

Here’s what’s difficult to parse in the face of tragedy: yes, Charlie Hebdo is a French satirical newspaper. Its staff is white. (Update:Charlie Hebdo’s staff it not all white. See note below.) Its cartoons often represent a certain, virulently racist brand of French xenophobia. While they generously claim to ‘attack everyone equally,’ the cartoons they publish are intentionally anti-Islam, and frequently sexist and homophobic.

Here, for context, are some of the cartoons they recently published.

kissing

 intouchables

 muhammad

muhammadagain

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welfare

(Yes, that last one depicts Boko Haram sex slaves as welfare queens.)

These are, by even the most generous assessment, incredibly racist cartoons. Hebdo’s goal is to provoke, and these cartoons make it very clear who the white editorial staff was interested in provoking: France’s incredibly marginalized, often attacked, Muslim immigrant community.

Even in a fresh-off-the-press, glowing BBC profile of Charb, Hebdo’s murdered editor, he comes across as a racist asshole.

Charb had strongly defended Charlie Hebdo’s cartoons featuring the Prophet Muhammad.

“Muhammad isn’t sacred to me,” he told the Associated Press in 2012, after the magazine’s offices had been fire-bombed.

“I don’t blame Muslims for not laughing at our drawings. I live under French law. I don’t live under Koranic law.”

Now, I understand that calling someone a ‘racist asshole’ after their murder is a callous thing to do, and I don’t do it lightly. This isn’t ambiguous, though: the editorial staff of Hebdo consistently aimed to provoke Muslims. They ascribe to the same edgy-white-guy mentality that many American cartoonists do: nothing is sacred, sacred targets are funnier, lighten up, criticism is censorship. And just like American cartoonists, they and their supporters are wrong. White men punching down is not a recipe for good satire, and needs to be called out. People getting upset does not prove that the satire was good. And, this is the hardest part, the murder of the satirists in question does not prove that their satire was good. Their satire was bad, and remains bad. Their satire was racist, and remains racist.

The response to the attacks by hack cartoonists the world over has been swift. While many are able to keep pretty benign:

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Several of the cartoons sweeping Twitter stooped to drawing hook-nosed Muslim caricatures, reminiscent of Hebdo’s  house style.

 Beeler

Bertrams

Perhaps most offensively, this Shaw cartoon (incorrectly attributed to Robert Mankoff) from a few years back swept Twitter, paired with the hashtag #CharlieHebdo:

Shaw

Political correctness did not kill twelve people at the Charlie Hebdo offices. To talk about the attack as an attack by “political correctness” is the most disgusting, self-serving martyr bullshit I can imagine. To invoke this (bad) Shaw cartoon in relation to the Hebdo murders is to assert that cartoons should never be criticized. To invoke this garbage cartoon is to assert that white, male cartoonists should never have to hear any complaints when they gleefully attack marginalized groups.

Changing your twitter avatar to a drawing of the Prophet Muhammad is a racist thing to do, even in the face of a terrorist attack. The attitude that Muslims need to be ‘punished’ is xenophobic and distressing. The statement, “JE SUIS CHARLIE” works to erase and ignore the magazine’s history of xenophobia, racism, and homophobia. For us to truly honor the victims of a terrorist attack on free speech, we must not spread hateful racism blithely, and we should not take pride in extreme attacks on oppressed and marginalized peoples.

A call “TO ARMS”

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is gross and inappropriate. To simplify the attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices as “Good, Valiant Westerners vs. Evil, Savage Muslims” is not only racist, it’s dangerously overstated. Cartoonists (especially political cartoonists) generally reinforce the status quo, and they tend to be white men. Calling fellow cartoonists TO ARMS is calling other white men to arms against already marginalized people. The inevitable backlash against Muslims has begun in earnest.

oppenheimer

This is the worst.

The fact that twelve people are dead over cartoons is hateful, and I can only pray that their attackers are brought to justice. Free speech is an important part of our society, but, it should always go without saying, free speech does not mean freedom from criticism. Criticism IS speech – to honor “free speech martyrs” by shouting down any criticism of their work is both ironic and depressing.

In summary:

Nobody should have been killed over those cartoons.

Fuck those cartoons.
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Update by Noah: Jacob initially stated that Charlie Hebdo’s “staff is white”. In fact, CH did have non-white staffers, including copy editor Mustapha Orrad, who was murdered by the terrorists, and journalist Zineb El Rhazoui. Jacob said that his point was that Charlie Hebdo’s chief editor was white, and that “The controversial cartoonists being mourned as free-speech martyrs are all white men.”
For all HU posts on Satire and Charlie Hebdo click here.