Caricature and Censorship

Definition: Artistic exaggeration—usually through drawings—of the physical or moral characteristics of persons being held up for ridicule

Significance: One of the oldest forms of political satire, caricature has long attracted harsh censorship from the authority figures whom it has attacked

Drawings are especially dangerous, the French interior minister warned his subordinates in 1829, because they “act immediately upon the imagination of the people, like a book . . . read with the speed of light.” Referring to French laws requiring prior restraint of drawings and caricatures, he added, “It is then extremely important to forbid all which breathes a guilty intention in this regard.”

The views of the French minister have been widely shared by repressive regimes throughout history. Often the potential impact of political drawings has been feared far more than that of the written word, as is clearly evident, for example, from the fact that in many countries of nineteenth-century Europe, including France, Russia, and Portugal, prior censorship was required for political caricatures long after such controls were abolished for the written word. Thus, in France, prior censorship of the printed word was abolished in 1822 but was maintained, with a brief interruption, for drawings until 1881.

The Fear of Caricature

Political caricatures have been especially feared because the impact of drawings has been seen as not only more immediate but also more visceral than that of the printed word. In 1835, for example, the French legislature considered reintroducing prior restraint of political caricature, despite the constitutional charter of the 1830s banning all forms of censorship. Prior restraint was reestablished, ending the brief interruption of such censorship in nineteenth-century France. The rather sophisticated reasoning for reinstatement of censorship was that writing speaks to the mind, but cartoons and caricature speak directly to the senses.

In addition to the perception that the impact of caricatures is extraordinarily immediate and powerful, political authorities have especially feared them because drawings can be understood even by the illiterate, a group disproportionately represented by the poorest segments of society. In the United States, political boss William Tweed, who was repeatedly targeted by the brilliant caricaturist Thomas Nast, declared, “Those damned pictures: I don’t care so much what the papers write about me—my constituents can’t read, but damn it they can see pictures!”

Caricature Censorship in Operation

Almost everywhere that political caricatures have been subject to governmental controls, the result has been a kind of guerrilla war between the authorities and caricaturists, who have sought to evade, outfox, or outright defy their influential targets. Means of resistance include ignoring requirements to submit drawings for censorship approval, expressing opposition to censorship by leaving blank spaces where censored drawings were to have appeared, and leveling political criticism in veiled references. A famous example is the portrayal of French king Louis-Philippe as a pear during the 1830–35 period in France. Of all of the caricaturists in nineteenth-century France, probably the most brilliant and effective was André Gill (born Louis-Alexandre Gosset de Guines, 1840–85), who was credited with helping bring down two regimes, despite censorship bans on dozens of his drawings. But such tactics have often carried a high price. In France, from 1815 to 1914, about twenty caricature journals were directly suppressed or indirectly forced to close as a result of government reprisals. More than a score of caricaturists and their publishers and printers were jailed. Honoré Daumier was jailed for six months in 1832 for a disguised portrayal of King Louis-Philippe seated on a toilet throne, receiving tribute from the poor while excreting graft into the hands of his wealthy supporters. In Japan, where until the late nineteenth century all depictions of current events and all portrayals of the country’s top rulers for the past five centuries were forbidden, one of the most famous producers of woodblock prints, Kitagawa Utamaro, was sentenced to two months in jail and house arrest in 1804 for depicting the warlord who had been treacherously overthrown two hundred years earlier by the progenitors of the ruling Tokugawa regime. Between 1985 and 1995, a Palestinian cartoonist was assassinated in London, an Iranian caricaturist and his editor were sentenced to long jail terms for a drawing that supposedly resembled Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, a Turkish editor was jailed for sixteen months for publishing a caricature of his country’s president, and numerous Burmese caricaturists were jailed or forced into exile.

Political caricatures have been so hated by repressive regimes that frequently such governments have not only censored their own press but also banned the importation of foreign caricatures and lodged diplomatic protests against the publication of critical caricatures in other countries. For example, in 1934, the Nazi government protested the exhibit of anti-Hitler caricatures in Prague (produced by German caricaturists forced into silence or exile), a display that a Czech painter praised as “an extraordinarily important artistic anti-Fascist manifestation.” Even in relatively democratic countries, political caricatures have sometimes been subjected to harsh controls or reprisals. For example, India, which has had a generally good record for press freedom since independence (although the prior British colonial regime strictly controlled caricatures while boasting of press freedom at home), censored the written and the illustrated press during the 1975–77 state of emergency declared by Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. In the United States, radicals were prosecuted on at least two occasions for political caricatures around the time of World War I, and the San Francisco police chief was dismissed in 1992 for ordering the seizure of a newspaper that had published a hostile caricature of him.

Caricature censorship often illuminates with great precision what the regimes involved fear most. A careful study of which drawings are censored and which are approved provides a valuable indicator of the preferences and intentions of those who have the control. The French caricature journal L’Eclipse, often the target of censorship bans, observed on September 20, 1874, that “one could, one day, write an exact history of the liberty which we enjoy during this era by writing a history of our caricatures.”

Bibliography

Freedman, Leonard. The Offensive Art: Political Satire and Its Censorship around the World from Beerbohm to Borat. Westport: Praeger, 2009. Print.

Goldstein, Robert Justin. Censorship of Political Caricature in Nineteenth-Century France. Kent: Kent State UP, 1989. Print.

Goldstein, Robert Justin. Political Censorship of the Arts and the Press in Nineteenth-Century Europe. New York: St. Martin’s, 1989. Print.

Goldstein, Robert Justin, ed. The War for the Public Mind: Political Censorship in Nineteenth-Century Europe. Westport: Praeger, 2000. Print.

King, David, and Cathy Porter. Images of Revolution: Graphic Art from 1905 Russia. New York: Pantheon, 1983. Print.

Thompson, Sarah E., and Harry D. Harootunian. Undercurrents in the Floating World: Censorship and Japanese Prints. New York: Asia Soc. Galleries, 1991. Print.