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Example Of Political Cartoon

Decent Essays

In his 1988 Supreme Court opinion in Hustler Magazine v. Falwell, the late Chief Justice Rehnquist argued, “the art of the cartoonist is often not reasoned or evenhanded, but slashing and one-sided...the political cartoon is a weapon of attack, of scorn and ridicule and satire...it is usually as welcome as a bee sting”. Despite these biting words, the Court ruled that political cartoons are essential tools in a democracy. Political cartoons are inherently controversial, as they seek to mock both the legal and governmental process. However, they are also inherently American, as they reflect the core tenets of the First Amendment, the right to free speech, and expression. In this paper, I will analyze a political cartoon, created by the artist Paul Conrad in 1972 for the Los Angeles Times. I will first provide a description of the cartoon, its relevance at the time, and the political salience that it still maintains today. Secondly, I will examine this cartoon through five intersecting lens: the efficacy of visual rhetoric/graphic discourse, materiality, technology/modernity, power, and institutional/male domination. Through these lenses, I will trace my object's physical and ideological genealogy, and examine its social, political, and historical significance in contemporary culture. This object came to the archive in a collection of political cartoons and was clipped from the Los Angeles Times. The collector probably saved a series of Los Angeles Times political cartoons,

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