The thesis examines the role that Australian graphic satirists play in the theatre of public life. The main focus of the thesis is on newspaper cartoonists but for the purposes of comparative analysis, there is a discussion of a representative selection of satiric texts across different media (essentially, television and radio) since the mid-1960s, and also an historical survey of the development of graphic satire from its origins during the Protestant Reformation in Europe. Apart from a small number of references, this study does not venture into the vast field of on-line satire, a topic more properly addressed in a separate scholarly investigation. Graphic satire in the medium of the newspaper is of particular interest because of its consistent production and wide circulation, its relative freedom from censorship and libel laws, and the ability of the cartoon image to condense and concentrate issues which would be too complex or defamatory in print or on television. Political cartooning as it is understood today emerged during the early nineteenth century, at about the same time as the modern newspaper and the profession of journalism, but graphic satire also has links with a venerable tradition of the artist as social critic and has historically been associated with movements for social justice and democracy. It is in the context of these latter associations that I consider political cartoonists as belonging to the sphere of the public intellectual. The discussion of cartoonists as public intellectuals is framed against a discourse of decline that has been circulating for more than a decade, acquiring an urgency in this country during the later years of the Howard administration. This declinist narrative covers a number of areas of cultural and political life and is not confined to the Australian context; as British writer Helen Small points out, it is “an increasingly transnational conversation” (02:1). Briefly outlined, there is a perception that the terms of public debate have narrowed; that citizens have become disengaged from the democratic process; that between the ‘celebrity intellectual’ and the tenured academic, the life of the mind is not what it used to be, and even political satire itself has been seen by some commentators as being in terminal decline. The different arguments about cultural and social decline can be placed under the more encompassing subject heading of an ongoing debate about democracy and in particular, whether it is functioning as well as it should. With the adoption of neo-liberalism as an overarching political ideology by most western governments in the early 1980s, anxieties about whether the principles of democracy were gradually being usurped or even eroded by the primacy of market values have gathered momentum during the past two decades. The volume of these concerns has been amplified in the aftermath of September 11, 2001 and the subsequent ‘war on terror’, with the state’s increased emphasis on security and control of its citizens being interpreted as threats to some of the basic tenets of the democratic system, such as free speech and the rule of law. In contrast to the various narratives of decline, my thesis proposes that democracy is still very well served by the kind of vigorous and long-standing practice of dissent that the public intellectual represents, and more specifically, the embodiment of this tradition in contemporary newspaper cartoonists. By definition, graphic satire questions and challenges the status quo and at least since Hogarth in the eighteenth century, it has always been a public art-form. Hogarth’s personal involvement in many of the social issues and philanthropic schemes of his day (such as anti-gin legislation and state care for orphans) also exemplifies an important aspect of the extra-professional work of graphic satirists which further links them to the public intellectual. A commitment to social activism and making use of the different platforms available (for example, public speaking and donating work to charities) in order to support, publicise or promote issues of social justice began with Hogarth and continues with contemporary Australian cartoonists.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:ADTP/287460 |
| Creators | Amanda Roe |
| Source Sets | Australiasian Digital Theses Program |
| Detected Language | English |
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