Failure™ Magazine

Graphic Violence

Casualties from the War on Cartoons.

Written by David Wallis   Filed under Arts & Entertainment

At the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, the paper’s publisher took the unprecedented step of vetting all work about the controversy by staff cartoonist R.J. Matson. His first cartoon on the topic was a send-up of art schools that advertise on the back of matchbooks. The “Fatwa Art Instruction School”—which tested prospective “infidel cartoonists” by having them not draw Muhammad—failed to make the grade at his paper despite its lack of jihad-worthy images.

As the violence overseas intensified, Matson started receiving angry letters from readers demanding that he draw Muhammad to “stick it to the Muslims.” While Matson personally deplored the attack on free speech by extremists, he didn’t approve of the Danish cartoons, viewing them as an unnecessary provocation. To express his ambivalence, Matson drew a self-portrait of himself straddling a pen-shaped missile.

Initially, a cartoon entitled “Suicide Cartoonists” was also spiked. But Matson persuaded his publisher to reconsider. He argued that he had a duty to address the biggest story about cartooning since Thomas Nast took down Tammany Hall.

Page 4 of 6 pages « First < 2 3 4 5 6 > Last »