Typing with one hand is not uncommon at The Mineshaft.
I'm not sure why, but for some reason I think it's the cartoons that prevent me from reading the New Yorker regularly.
I really liked one from a while ago by the guy who draws everyone with cute noses in which an attorney says to a defendant (who is for some reason on the witness stand), "What is it about you that makes the state want to prosecute you to the fullest extent of the law?".
What, is there some sort of philosopher chic (CONTRADICTION IN TERMS ALERT!CONTRADICTION IN TERMS ALERT!) about New Yorker cartoons? Knowing you lot, the answer is: Probably. But the funny thing about New Yorker cartoons is that they're generally pretty funny, though maybe not to you pointy-heads who think it's a sad day when the New Yorker runs a feature shorter than 60,000 words.
Yeah, actually, I'm not one of those given to deriding NYer cartoons in general.
w-lfs-n, have I judged you too harshly all along? Or is that sore wrist interfering with your activities at the Mineshaft?
Ah, now I see it'seb who's trying to enforce the America-hating, irrational Bush hatred line of not liking New Yorker cartoons. Just needed to know at whom I should point my secret police. I think I'll call in the NKVD on this one. After all the Lubiyanka is all but empty.
And here I thought it was someone else, and not Snees, who occasionally posted under the name of an infamous dictator.
is there an eb here?if so, please enter through door number three
I love the New Yorker cartoons. It's the fiction I can't stand. Although it's so long since I tried to read a NY short story, they might have changed their editorial proclivities completely and I wouldn't know.
Get ahold of James Thurber's "Collecting Himself" and read the essay on how New Yorker cartoons are (OK, were) created and selected. In fact, read the whole thing. Also, his "Lanterns and Lances". Go now.
James Thurber's Letters was one of the most fascinating things I have ever read.
Missed an equal sign. James Thurber's Letters.
I'm the same way about the fiction. I did read the three selections for the "new writers" issue, and I was really disappointed in all three.
The poetry seemed to be okay, though.
You guys are all wrong about the fiction. Alice Munro, for one, should be getting a Nobel one of theses days.
I was at one point thinking about writing something about how the new cartoon caption contests are a bold experiment in subverting the concept of authorial intention, but I don't think it would've turned out funny.
The cartoon caption contests are bold experiments demonstrating that women are funnier than men. (Assuming that most of the finalists with traditionally female names are, in fact, women.) Also that NYer cartoonists are unduly fond of miniature people.
Which reminds me, the NYer desperately needs more female cartoonists, and some nonwhite ones as well. Maybe they could bring in Keith Knight for something? To address the second one, I mean.
I wish that I had Comedy Central, because they will be starting a Boondock's cartoon on Adult Swim.
They've got Chast, Victoria Roberts, Carolita Johnson, and Marisa Acocella shows up every so often, but the cartoon stable is still pretty much a sausage factory.
I think "sausage party" is the preferred term.
However, I can see why you'd like the other term.
I was at one point thinking about writing something about how the new cartoon caption contests are a bold experiment in subverting the concept of authorial intention
That's not how you spell "ripping off an idea from Punch in the 1970s".
Oh no, it's that old "we had the Magna Carta long before your Constitution" argument again.
Actually what I meant was sausage-fest.
This is more of a "Big Brother started on the BBC, you know" kind of argument.
Remember the caption-contest cartoon from a month or so ago that featured two men in business suits, one of whom was a werewolf, walking behind a woman on the sidewalk? Anyhow, for that one I submitted: "I'd hit that." Predictably, it went nowhere. I think that the Newyorker people think they're better than me.
I'm a big Roz Chast fan. Nothing like a good Chastenng, as those 'in the know' call it.
I thought that "I just remembered where I borrowed the remote" was the best of those three. The winning one, which I'm going to have to look up,* I remember as not making any sense of the dog's expression. (And the dog doesn't look like Lassie, does it? This is one of those mismatches between word and picture that threatens when you reify the separation of powers between cartoonist and caption-writer, instead of allowing an organic development.)
The only one that I've found to be so good that the caption and cartoon might have been designed for each other was the woman telling the clown, "If you must know, he makes me laugh."
And I am going to cross Labs up, and with luck earn that steak dinner, by saying that the very presence of black cartoonists is not necessarily desirable in itself--but none of the existing cartoonists seems able to acknowledge the existence of black people, and that that problem might be solved if one of the cartoonists were actually black. (In fact, for most of the cartoonists, my epistemic access to their ineffable whiteness is provided only by their cartoons.)
*Oh. It is "Who writes this crap?" I thought that was Labs' dismissive comment on its poor quality. Yes, the worst of the three.
The New Yorker would be better if its name were "The New Yorker: a magazine for white people."
I have a hardback collection of New Yorker cartoons from the 20s through some other decade. The 60s, I think. It is absolutely terrific. I shall note that there are plenty of black people represented in the 20s cartoons. However, I'm not certain they're represented in such a way as would satisfy Weiner.
I wouldn't be surprised if fear of evoking those old images, or of being interpreted as doing so, has a chilling effect on modern cartoonists when it comes to drawing black characters.
So when they do the cartoon contests, does the artist have a caption in mind that they don't want to use, or is it just a whimsical drawing with (as yet) no correlative verbal funny?
I wouldn't be surprised if fear of evoking those old images, or of being interpreted as doing so, has a chilling effect on modern cartoonists when it comes to drawing black characters.
See the prior thread on nervously avoiding interactions with black people for fear of saying something stupid that will sound insensitive. At some point white people just have to suck it up.
I went to a concert that was part of the New Yorker Festival this year and, let me just say, that magazine has some rabid fans. I thought some little old ladies were going to throw their panties at James Surowiecki.
At some point white people just have to suck it up.
You first. My guess: the outer limit for number of cartoons including black people drawn by a white person, before the cartoonist loses his job: 5.
Surowiecki didn't call his book The Wisdom of Crowds for nothing.
I was going to agree with 35, and try to say something thoughtful about 37--one point is that in this case finding some black cartoonists would definitely be a better solution than ordering the white ones to start addressing issues of race--but now I'm all disturbed.
The crowd wasn't that wise. There was much muttering by the senior citizens in the audience who thought they were coming to see someone their age. They were shocked to find out he was some punk in his 30s.
ordering the white ones to start addressing issues of race--but now I'm all disturbed.
There's a difference between ordering people to address racial issues in one-panel cartoons, and thinking it would be nice if the not-necessarily-socially-conscious-but-rather-just-funny cartoons they were doing anyway represented non-white people occasionally. I wasn't thinking that New Yorker cartoons needed to be a force fighting for social justice, just that they could continue to be frivolous while being slightly less bleached.
The Sunday comic strip is more progressive. The divide between the legacies like Chic Young and Mort Walker and then Aaron McGruder is jarring.
"But now I'm all disturbed" was to 38. Ogged horned in. And I guess I do agree--it would be better than the status quo if the same cartoonists occasionally depicted black people. But I don't think that the cartoons are going to get past the occasional stippled tokens (and some cartoonists may, or used to, do this sometimes, I think) unless they actually go out and find some black cartoonists--and can it be so hard to do this?
To 39: I think the cartoonists are all technically freelancers, so that issue doesn't arise as such--more likely that anything controversial will get rejected.
18: The first promo for Boondocks is... promising.
hi, I'm a nyorker cartoonist, a woman, and a half-latina, and I thought I'd tell you what we talk about amongst ourselves when it comes to black cartoon characters. We do talk about it, because it's one of those drawing challenges.
I think it's mostly because we don't usually do full color drawings. Since most of us do line drawings, in black and white and sometimes shades of grey, it's actually quite hard to draw a decent black person. They tend to come out all grey and blend into their suits or the background, or if they're not painted in, they look like a white person with "black" facial features. It takes a delicate touch to do it right. We don't all have that touch.
They only time I found myself drawing black people without even thinking about it in a cartoon was when I did a full color cartoon (it didn't get bought, for reasons not related to this discussion I'm pretty sure), and then I had people of all skin colours just because it was a pleasure to be able to indicate skin color for once. Danny Shanahan did quite a good black person in a regular black and white cartoon not long ago, and I recall being impressed and thinking, hey, I guess I should try again.
On the socially conscious side, it seems you have to be a bit of a nerd and a geek to be a cartoonist, really, and I don't see a hell of a lot of nerdy geeky black men and women out there. It's a thankless mind-warping job, lots and lots of rejection, very low pay, it's amazing anyone does it really. You sort of have to be a desperate little nerd who can't do anything else, and know it. And embrace it.
I personally like to draw people who I find mysteriously stupid, you know, boring middle class people who are in ruts of some sort, or who need making fun of, like the people I knew when I was growing up in Long Island. Since I now live in Washington Heights, I don't see a lot of black people who I would think were stupid boring middle class people that need making fun of. Generally, they look pretty hard-working and earnest. At least the ones in my little neighborhood.
I might add that I don't see a lot of latin people in cartoons anywhere! Or asians.
Hope that helps!
carolita
This is so cool, having an actual New Yorker cartoonist show up. (I am studiously resisting asking whether you know Roz Chast, and if she's that funny in real life.)
I have to admit I had never thought of it as a drawing challenge -- this is what I get for being one-dimensionally verbal.
Thanks for the response Carolita! I don't understand the technical issues involved, so thanks for the help. I do vaguely recall some full-color subway panaromas with more black people (and I think Latinos and and Asians) in them.
I think the "mysteriously stupid" thing goes to 37, a bit; if cartoonists are in the business of making fun of people, it can be very awkward to start making fun of black people if you're not black.
On the nerdy geeky thing, though, my guess is that the NYer (which has to be one of the premier outlets for that kind of cartoon) could find more black cartoonists if it made an all-out effort. Ditto women. My guess is that would improve the overall strength of its cartoons.
There are a lot of black comic book artists, but I'm not sure that I can think of a single woman in that part of the genre.
Do you mean comic books as the genre? There's Debbie Drechsler, and hasn't Lynda Barry done books? And Francoise Mouly and Aline Crumb might count, though I'm not familiar with too much comics. (And I don't think any of these work within any variation of say, the superhero paradigm--even in the way that some of Daniel Clowes's stuff does.)
Hey, I'm glad to contribute anything that helps. You guys are right, it's hard to make fun of anyone but The Man, who we all see as a fat white guy... And yes, there are relatively few women cartoonists, or non-white ones. But they're not non-existant, there are some. There will be more, I'm sure.
I also think women cartoonists can be less popular because when they are chosen for their woman's point of view, their cartoons can be rather subjective and personal. Who can blame them for wanting it to be obvious it's a woman behind the pen, after all? But TNY isn't a woman's home journal, it's meant to be for a broader audience.
So anyone who is specific about their interest or audience can limit themselves and their buyability. Anyway, glad to help if possible, and yes I do know Roz Chast (as a fellow cartoonist, not as a personal friend), and she is a very nice person!
I'm signing off now, cause I have to go heat some water for my bathtub (no hot water today).
-c