December 17, 2003
I kinda like it
Leunig's cartoon is not very visual. It's more or less image as text.
It reminds me of conceptual art in the 1970s. In a good way not a negative way. Cartoons are normally not included as conceptual art.
They can be, since conceptual art means that artistic production should serve artistic knowledge and that the art object is not an end in itself. This is what this cartoon is doing:
Leunig
The cartoon captures the black and white mentality of foreign policy. You need the bad guy---a Hitler, a Stalin or a Saddam Hussein---to demonize. Its evil versus good.
Hussein has gone from being the Butcher of Baghdad to a cornered rat in a hole. The media flows of the last two days have been devoted to the hole, the beard and dirt.
Leunig operates in the critical mode.
What is being played in the media these last few days? An old fashioned morality play? Or a tragedy with the media acting as the chorus?
Posted by Gary Sauer-Thompson at December 17, 2003 01:40 PM | TrackBack...everyone's forgotten about Osama hey
Posted by: G on December 18, 2003 02:36 PMSeems like it, doesn't it.
Posted by: Gary Sauer-Thompson on December 19, 2003 06:43 AMI can't ping for a trackback. Any problems with that lately, Gary?
Posted by: Jeremiah on December 19, 2003 06:47 AMJeremiah
Not that I know of. I'll run a check.
Jeremiah,
there was a track back ping on 'Peter Weir The Truman Show' post late last night.
Jeremiah,
track back is working. I did one from public opinion to junk for code.
Hmmm. I am guessing the problem's on my end. Trackback has been giving me problems of late, as well as pinging web.blog and blo.gs. Thanks for checking.
Posted by: Jeremiah on December 19, 2003 11:19 PMWell, I've got a permalink to this post. I guess that'll have to do in lieu of a trackback.
Posted by: Jeremiah on December 20, 2003 12:55 AM