Cartoonists Discuss Their Freedom to Work

Members of Cartooning for Peace, a multinational organization of political cartoonists, discussed yesterday the importance of using their craft to convey political messages, despite limits to free speech in the countries where they work.

Each of the five cartoonists on the panel gave a demonstration of his work and compared the degrees of freedom permitted by the their respective newspapers and countries.

Uri Fink, an Israeli comic book artist and occasional political cartoonist, said that his work has not been censored despite religious, international, and domestic criticism.

But when he eats in Jerusalem restaurants, he sometimes feels threatened due to some Israelis’ disapproval of his cartoons, he said.

Khalil Abu Arafeh, an editorial cartoonist for the Palestinian Al Quds newspaper in Jerusalem, has been imprisoned multiple times for political activism and spoke of Israel’s severe censorship of the Palestinian community.

“I envy Uri [Fink] that he can make fun of his leaders, of settlers, of Jewish religion, everything,” Arafeh said. “That is something I don’t have.”

Le Monde cartoonist Jean Plantureux—better known by his pen name Plantu—said that controversial cartoons could be made less problematic by replacing their subjects with representative symbols.

For instance, a picture of a Muslim man with a pixilated face would be recognized as Muhammad but would not  offend viewers in the same way as a clear rendition of Muhammad.

But cartoonists must be careful to ensure that these symbols are correctly interpreted—which often necessitates the use of cliches understood by an international audience, said Daryl Cagle, owner of the cartoon database Web site Cagle Cartoons and cartoonist for MSNBC.com.

For example, the United States is generally depicted in cartoons as a hamburger.

“When we’re misunderstood, we’re not doing our job,” Cagle said.

The panel also included independent cartoonist Jeff Danziger and was moderated by Boston College Sociology Professor William Gamson.