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Freedom is participation in power
Marcus Tullius Cicero
(Roman political theorist, 106 BCE - 43 BCE)
Five hundred years ago in Europe, artists began drawing something ironically different from portraits, landscapes or panoramas.
And apparently unknown to the Europeans for a while, Chinese artists also had begun including humorous "thought bubbles" in their paintings and drawings. Today, these works may be considered forerunners or precursors of modern political cartoons.
A single sketch or cartoon strip can reveal inconsistencies, lies and hypocrisy. Sometimes, it can do so better than a dozen paragraphs of text.
• View images collected by the South Asian Research Centre for Advertisement, Journalism & Cartoons.
• Tim Dolighan draws Canadian, U.S., other international, sports and business editorial cartoons.
• The Cartoon Web political hypocrisy with hundreds of cartoons from Europe, Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Latin America, Australia, Canada and the U.S.
• The CartoonArts Archive is a searchable database of images from The New York Times and other newspapers around the world.
• A German immigrant to the United States, Thomas Nast (1840-1902) may be the first major political cartoonist in the United States. Nast's Santa Claus cartoons are credited with helping the Northern States defeat the Confederacy during the Civil War (1861-1865), according to Karen Leung, "Drawing Blood: Political Cartoonists and the Art of Visual Critique," Columbia Political Review [Columbia Political Union, Columbia University], vol. 6, issue 3 (March 2007), p. 8.
• Try Daryl Cagle's Professional Cartoonists Index.
• Daniel Kurtzman's Political Humor blog emphasizes cartoons that irreverently mock politicians. His cartoons interpret TV news as a form of political marketing. Check out the "Political Jokes" archive on this website.
• View Herblock's feisty cartoons — from the 1929 Stock Market "Crash" until the recent millennium. The talented cartoonist Herbert Block (13 October 1909 - 9 October 2001) was born in Chicago, Illinois.
• A reaction to duplicitous American politicians, Walt Kelly's cartoon character Pogo began running for President of the United States in 1952. Later, using the character "Simple J. Malarkey," Pogo satirized Joseph McCarthy, Fidel Castro, Nikita S. Khruschev and Lyndon B. Johnson.
• From Richard M. Nixon to George W. Bush, pompous Republican and Democratic Party politicians have been deflated by Doonesbury's needling barbs. Garry B. Trudeau created this cartoon series. The website also provides archival "access to every Doonesbury strip ever published," i.e., from 1970 to the present.
• Lloyd Dangle's Troubletown cartoons have attitude! If your computer doesn't already have Flash Player 10.0.32, download it to view the images.
• Engage with Mike Flugennock's Political Cartoons.
• Prevaricating, mendacious, dissembling politicians have no clothes (as in politically naked) in Ted Rall's cartoons.
• Shift gears, and then appreciate John McPherson's Close to Home cartoons.
• Paul Gilligan draws Pooch Café
• Tom Tomorrow's This Modern World also exposes political liars (1990 - present).
• Warning: Not Sorry Not Everybody may offend NeoCons.
• CartoonStock is an online database of "100,000 cartoon pictures and political cartoons."
• Chickenhead Productions provides dozens of political posters. From that website, you may also access outrageously revised transcripts of presidential press conferences. These creations are illustrated with caricatures of well-known political leaders. Warning to parents of impressionable young children: Chickenhead Productions is not approved by the U.S. President, Department of Homeland Insecurity, or the FBI.
• Enjoy ten episodes from Matt Groening's Life in Hell. For Groening, "hell" might be one's home, family, school, church, the workplace or the whole country (usually, the U.S.A.).
• With workingclass wit and humor born of his on-the-job exprience in a cubicle, cartoonist Scott Adams's Dilbert reveals the microsociology and idiosyncracies of supervisory and managerial capriciousness in an office like yours.
• As officers of the court, attorneys sometimes find themselves exposed in Law Laughs.
• MCT Campus Cartoons is a searchable database of more than 3,300 editorial cartoons from college and university campus newspapers.
• See Ann Telnaes's Pulitzer Prize-winning Cartoons.
• Steve Kelley of The Times-Picayune (New Orleans) comments on American life, society and politics. Kelley's cartoon archive dates back to 18 August 2002. According to Slate Magazine, Kelley "has delighted readers by consistently consigning office-holders to the one fate they fear most: that of not being taken seriously." Framing his focus a bit more broadly, Kelley says, "I tend to limit my cartoons to two subjects — politics and stuff people actually care about."
• View Slate's databank of cartoons by Kelley and many other artists. Topics range from "Abortion" to "Karl Rove" to "War Casualties."
• Review the fifteen most recent cartoons by Clay Bennett of The Christian Science Monitor, as well as Bennett cartoon classics.
• In Pulitzer Prize winner Walt Handelsman's animated political cartoons, politicians mock themselves with their own words!
• Personally contact your favorite political artist in the Editorial
Cartoonists E-mail Directory.
• For views of the Hawaiian Kingdom's turbulent political past,
view Political
Caricatures of the Hawaiian Kingdom. Curated by Linda M. L. Soma,
these are political caricatures drawn before and after the overthrow of
the Hawaiian Monarchy — during 1875-1905. Referring to that
historical context, Richard E. Marschall writes as follows:
• View Corky's
Hawaii by the late Corky Trinidad of the Honolulu
Star-Bulletin. Earlier art by cartoonist Trinidad is searchable in
the Star-Bulletin archives.
• Since 1993, John S. Pritchett's bitingly irreverent cartoons of
politicians in national and
international politics have entertained and infuriated readers.
Tilting to the Republican side, Pritchett's "Hawaii Politics" cartoons
satirize politicians, issues and causes. Among them are the following:
• View U.S. presidential TV campaign
commercials produced during 1952-2004.
• Visit Gregg and Evan Spiridellis's JibJab, and click on the
"Animation" link.
• Comedy Central
(needs Adobe Flash Player 9.0 or higher).
• Women Make Movies (WMM) "is a
national non-profit feminist media arts organization whose multicultural
programs provide resources for both users and producers of media by women.
WMM was established in 1972 to address the under-representation and
misrepresentation of women in the media."
• Using the search engine to DocuSeek Film
& Video Finder, you can find detailed information about 2,500
documentary films, DVDs and videos. (Click the "Advanced Search" link.)
• Or visit The Internet Movie
Database.
• Movies.com / Fandango
provides summaries, credits, trailers and screening times for recent
films.
• The Political Film Society (PFS) has published more than 450 reviews of
socially significant movies. This unique website is also a portal to 18
other film review websites. Founded in Honolulu in 1986, the PFS has been
headquartered in Los Angeles since
1998.
• Those with online access to JSTOR may download the article "Why
a Political Film Society?" by PFS Coordinator Michael Haas in P.S.:
Political Science and Politics, vol. 24, no. 1 (March 1991).
© 1999-2009 Vincent K. Pollard. It is prohibited to include this website's content in passworded or
fee-for-service electronic databases. If your website uses "no-frames"
html web pages, linking is allowed. Hawai‘i cartoons
To today's scholar, [the magazines] are an excellent
reflection of American civilization of the day...Humor cuts through
pretense, and by exposing prejudices, fads, morals and life-styles, the
cartoonist paints a unique and unrivaled portrait of his contemporaries
("A History of Puck, Judge and Life," In Maurice Horn (ed.), The World
Encyclopedia of Cartoons [Detroit: Gale Research Company, 1980]).
Lieutenant Governor Mazie Hirono (1994-2000); Governor Ben
Cayetano (1994-2000); Hawaii Democrats; Mayor Jeremy Harris (1994-2005);
Bishop Estate Trustees; Locals Only; Crime; Fireworks; and Pedestrian
Safety.
Films, videos
Movie reviews
Last modified, 17 October 2009.
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