Monday, February 13, 2006
Freedom of art
The latest manifestation of the bad trip Iran seems to be going through these days is the Mshahari newspaper's holocaust cartoon competition. My first reaction is - why? what did we do now? How is this our fault again?
My second reaction - it has been done before. Not in the form of competition, but humor and the holocaust have met before. The holocaust isn't "holy", it's a tragedy, and dealing with it was done in many different ways - building memorials, writing its history, making movies (some of them comic - like Roberto Benini's or Mell Brooks's The Producers), in arts and yes - in jokes as well. There's a whole genre of Holocaust jokes which won't translate well to English, but are extremely dark humored.
So mixing humor and the holocaust is not a new thing, but I don't think that it's postmodernism that inspired this campaign. there's an attempt to get a reaction from Jewish organizations and show the double face of "free press", but whatever reaction they'll get won't be the burning of Iranian embassies. There isn't one in Israel, and Jews outside of Isael are too sissy to do that. Something else might happen - something they don't expect - reaffirmation of the idea of the freedom of the press, the arts and expression.
And I say, send your cartoons! My contribution to the the contest, had I been talented in this field, would be a drawing of a huge boot about to crush a very small creature, with a bubble coming out from him saying "please don't kill me". I realize it's not very funny, but I guess so was the holocaust.
We won't be so cooperative when it comes to the bomb, though.
For those who read Hebrew - a wonderful commentary about the one-dimensional, caricature-like Holocaust related art, which oversimplifies the tragedy into a black and white, good versus evil cartoon instead of deling with a more complex reality.
My second reaction - it has been done before. Not in the form of competition, but humor and the holocaust have met before. The holocaust isn't "holy", it's a tragedy, and dealing with it was done in many different ways - building memorials, writing its history, making movies (some of them comic - like Roberto Benini's or Mell Brooks's The Producers), in arts and yes - in jokes as well. There's a whole genre of Holocaust jokes which won't translate well to English, but are extremely dark humored.
So mixing humor and the holocaust is not a new thing, but I don't think that it's postmodernism that inspired this campaign. there's an attempt to get a reaction from Jewish organizations and show the double face of "free press", but whatever reaction they'll get won't be the burning of Iranian embassies. There isn't one in Israel, and Jews outside of Isael are too sissy to do that. Something else might happen - something they don't expect - reaffirmation of the idea of the freedom of the press, the arts and expression.
And I say, send your cartoons! My contribution to the the contest, had I been talented in this field, would be a drawing of a huge boot about to crush a very small creature, with a bubble coming out from him saying "please don't kill me". I realize it's not very funny, but I guess so was the holocaust.
We won't be so cooperative when it comes to the bomb, though.
For those who read Hebrew - a wonderful commentary about the one-dimensional, caricature-like Holocaust related art, which oversimplifies the tragedy into a black and white, good versus evil cartoon instead of deling with a more complex reality.
# posted by Effi @ 9:22 AM 
