The articles, the opinions, the stories, the poems and the cartoons Ovi magazine covers for Friday October 29th, 2021
Cancelling Cartoonists by Dr. Binoy Kampmark
On January 7, 2015, the staff of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo found themselves facing a form of cancel culture before it became fashionable in the Twaddle sphere. It was of the most severe, lethal sort. Twelve people were butchered and the fanatic’s credo asserted. The assailants Chérif and Saïd Kouachi had been offended by the magazine’s cartoon depictions of the Prophet Muhammad. To add insult to grave injury, figures of various shades of political colour not exactly disposed to free expression were suddenly claiming they stood with the slain, declaring themselves in solidarity to be “Je suis Charlie”.
Despite the support, the usual cast of apologists made an appearance, citing matters of violated cultural and religious sensibility. They did the same when it came to justifying the calls by Iran’s Ayatollah Khomeini to murder Salman Rushdie for having authored The Satanic Verses. Behind many an apologia for such instances of censorship is a witch-burning, stoning, amputating goon salivating with delight.
The commissars of cancel culture have also gone for cartoons and animations of late, though the reasoning has varied. The cartoonist’s history is filled with grotesque caricature: the blackface Bugs Bunny from 1953 who pretends to be a slave; the same character who ends up, in 1944, on a Pacific island filled with unsympathetically depicted Japanese figures. (That’s war propaganda for you.) In 1968, the studio pulled a series of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies cartoons in what came to be known as the “Censored Eleven” for reasons of offensiveness.
In recent times, the creepy skunk Pepé Le Pew, accused of supposedly contributing to “rape culture”, has been given the excision treatment. Dr Suess, the pen name for Theodor Geisel, has received his share of retrospective punishment, with the foundation bearing his name withdrawing six books. Call it, suggests Philip Nel of Kansas State University, a “product recall”. “They’re not being banned. They’re not being cancelled. It’s just a decision to no longer sell them.”
Continue reading HERE!
So Liquid #poem by Saloni Kaul
“Like words fixed in time on empty page,
Some images tucked away that only we see,
The mind that writes sees all at every stage
And streamlines all till taken is all space free.”
Continue reading HERE!
Sceptic feathers 21#20 #cartoon by Thanos Kalamidas
For more Sceptic feathers, HERE!
For more Ovi Cartoons, HERE!
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