As I promised in my first Inkpen Flyer, here are Big Noses.
Many cartoonists, including me, draw people with big noses. I'm guessing it’s because big noses look more ... cartoony, meaning, of course, “funnier.”
They can also stir up criticism.
Soon after I started at the paper in Pittsburgh, I was at my drawing board one Sunday afternoon when Al, a longtime reporter, popped by. We chatted a bit then he brought up the stereotype of Jews and big noses. I said I certainly knew about that, and the shameful drawings throughout history depicting them and Blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans. Al was Jewish and politely reminded me I’d drawn Pennsylvania's Governor Milton Shapp that morning with a big nose.
I had recently moved to Pittsburgh from Seattle and said, "Wait — Milton Shapp is Jewish? I didn't know that! Jeez, I draw everybody with big noses!"
Al was mightily relieved. He may have feared the publisher had hired some closet Nazi. He had a point. Cartoonists do, as we know, use stereotypes which can tick people off, but we have maybe five seconds to show readers what we're up to. While professions today are rightly diverse unlike the bad old days of even the 1960s, in cartoonland, judges, lawyers, doctors, CEOs and Congressfolk often remain old white guys.
For one thing, by going after the white establishment we’re punching up.
Early on, I learned that if I drew a political cartoon with, say, a woman judge or a Black Congressman, readers (and editors) would ask, "Who's that supposed to be?"
In my patch of cartoonland, artists have beards, construction workers are beefy, most teachers are women, criminals are white, Brits wear bowlers, Arabs wear robes and kafiyas, and Texans wear cowboy boots and cowboy hats and often carry shootin’ arns.
And here is the sommelier:
In fact, the few actual sommeliers whom I’ve met are helpful and courteous and thankfully know much more about wine that I do. And they’re not all male.
I know many women artists, and male artists who remain clean shaven.
In the comic strip “Wordsmith” I drew many deadlines ago, the central character was a young reporter, but his newspaper’s sports editor was a salty old woman. I did another comic strip called “Cooper” with my longtime pal Mike Keefe, the retired cartoonist at the Denver Post. Cooper was a male teacher whose principal at his school was an African-American woman.
Comic strips, like books, movies, plays and sitcoms, give the cartoonist or writer the time and space for some creative casting.
Indeed, for me a strip, book or movie is much more engrossing — and funnier — if a judge wears a turban, a lawyer is an ex-rapper, the family doctor is a Russian woman, the CEO is a millennial accordion player from Louisiana, the local pol is a pole dancer, a painter keeps a parrot that sings opera and cusses out critics, the sommelier doubles as a TV evangelist … and the cartoonist at the local rag is named Donna Corleone.
American cartooning from the time Thomas Nast was going after Boss Tweed once meant a sea of white men but over the years that’s been changing. I predict that out in cartoonland we will be seeing women judges and doctors — and much smaller noses.
I’ll sign off, not with another cartoon, but some of the writerly wisdom I routinely passed along to my prisoner-playwright students a few years ago. This is from Elbert Hubbard, writer, publisher, philosopher:
“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, be nothing.”
Many thanks for reading.
OK -- Some Big Noses
Interesting. I don’t know anything about cartooning.
this is terrific.