May 3, 2018
Jim Carrey, Newspaper Cartoonists, Digital Artist Zoller & Students Let their Art Talk about Trump, Putin & Other Covfefes
“The promise given was a necessity of the past: the word broken is a necessity of the present.”
Political cartoonists, artists and even students are having a field day covering Donald Trump. Newspaper cartoonists from the New York Times and the Toronto Star to UK’s Guardian are visually letting their art do the talking.
“I’m not interested in preserving the status quo; I want to overthrow it.”
And, so are people like Hollywood comic superstar Jim Carrey, who recently skewered both Trump’s “bromance with Macron” and also the President’s new lawyer, Rudy Giuliani, bitingly captioning his art, “Ghouliani: Finally a face we can trust.”
And, in the New York Times 2017 Editorial Cartoon Contest, more than 800 students submitted cartoons on issues ranging from immigration and gun violence to Harvey Weinstein and standardized testing. But over 40% of all submissions included an image of Mr. Trump or his tweets; “Students were clearly excited to try their wit in making a commentary on the president’s actions, whether they focused on his exchanging insults with North Korea’s president, calling climate change a hoax, or throwing paper towel rolls in Puerto Rico…”
“Politics have no relation to morals.”
Professional cartoonist Michael de Adder, who contributes to the Toronto Star, suggests, “As cartoonists, when the world is burning we have an easier day of it. I actually think that a good political cartoon these days has a huge amount of power. You can reach everybody, literally, right now. At least people on social media.”
“A prince never lacks legitimate reasons to break his promise.”.
Screenwriter Stephen Zoller (Metal Messiah, Snow, Charlie Jade) has taken his own commentary into the area of digital collages, creating his own “dossier” of Trumpian faux-pas. Zoller recently created Colors of Noir, a series of digital collages inspired by his childhood fascination with hardboiled crime films, suggesting: “Noir is Hollywood’s greatest contribution to the pantheon of 20th century art. The movies represented a truer reflection of American mores than any other movie genre. Probably for that reason alone they have aged the least. Despite heavy censorship, noir films were subversive in many ways. They exposed the seedy underbelly of capitalism and the hypocrisy which lay behind the American Dream. And they did so with terse dialogue, smoke filled rooms, tense action and lots of inferred sex.”
“Men are so simple and yield so readily to the desires of the moment that he who will trick will always find another who will suffer to be tricked.”
Zoller has expanded his digital series with this new dossier of cheeky collages.
“If an injury has to be done to a man, it should be so severe that his vengeance need not be feared.”
PS None of the unattributed quotes above were spoken or even used by the President, as he’s a tad averse to reading. And, we’re pretty sure he’s never read The Prince (Il Principe) by Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli, the Italian Renaissance diplomat and writer. “Machiavellian” the term is associated with political deceit, deviousness, and realpolitik. However, other commentators opine that Machiavelli was actually a republican, and his writings were an inspiration to Enlightenment proponents of modern democratic political philosophy. Perhaps, if 45 could read, he’d learn a thing or two about running our Republic.
So, we’ll leave it to philosopher/Enlightenment writer Voltaire, who read a book or three, to add:
Caveat Emptor, indeed!
Check out Jim Carrey, Michael de Adder and Patrick Chappatte on Twitter, and Stephen Zoller on Facebook.
