Liberty Leading the People

deephurting — Sat, 12 Feb 2011 23:25:16 +0000

I spent several weeks trying to come up with something good on the protests against autocratic, Western-supported President Hosni Mubarak in Egypt. Most other cartoonists seemed to be falling on cliches like the pyramids and the Sphinx without making very good use of them, and I didn’t want to do that, so I decided to let the topic continue rolling around in my brain rather than rushing out something as unimpressive.

After awhile, I remembered the painting Liberty Leading the People, by French Romantic artist Eugene Delacroix, and thought that it’d adapt well to the modern subject matter, since there seemed to be some parallels between the French revolutions of the 18th/19th centuries, and the protests happening throughout the Middle East today.

The revolutionaries in the original painting are carrying guns and swords, but since social networking sites seem to have been one of the main weapons utilized by people in Egypt, I replaced them in my cartoon with smartphones. As an acquaintance of mine observed, this also made it easy to tie in Obama’s Blackberry.

I was a little uncertain whether I should include the nudity from the original painting, since it seemed like it might be inappropriate for the region, but I ultimately decided to leave that detail as it was, because I recognized how it symbolized freedom arising from destructive skirmishes, and I didn’t want to undermine or contradict that message.

Edit:
Turns out my friend Roxanne had the same idea as I did. Take a look at her approach here.

The First Rule of Nuke Club

deephurting — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 14:06:14 +0000

Before commenting on this cartoon, for which I wouldn’t be surprised to get a lot of hate mail, I’d like to encourage readers to first make note of the previous piece I drew on this topic.

Here’s what I’m not arguing with this:

• That Iran has nuclear weapons, or is even necessarily pursuing them.
• That Iran’s current government can or cannot be trusted with nuclear technology.
• That Iran should or should not be welcomed into the proverbial nuclear clubhouse.
• That the international community literally has a “no Muslims” rule in effect on nuclear-armed nations.

The reason I drew this was to further illustrate my feeling that nobody can be trusted with nuclear weapons, but also to add that the double-standard the international community is applying to Iran seems unfair, especially when the two countries most aggressively criticizing them on the acquisition of nuclear technology are the only one who’s actually used nuclear weapons in an offensive manner (the United States), and an ally of the former who refuses to be open with the rest of the world about their own nuclear program (Israel). Israel, of course, has every right to feel threatened by the idea of Iran’s current government and other hostile regimes possessing such technology, but by the same token, I think a lot of Israel’s neighbors feel just as threatened by their alleged weapons.

Also, I found the image of the tree that’s also a mushroom cloud irresistible. I hope others find it clever, even if they dislike everything else about this drawing.

Many people may recognize the dialogue in this as being paraphrased from episode 2F09 of The Simpsons, “Homer the Great.”

This is Historic Times » France

Liberty Leading the People

The First Rule of Nuke Club