Essay On Political Cartoon

1153 Words3 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Roles of media in politics

The next example worth looking at is another cartoon by Bengough entitled “Renewing The Lease” (See Fig.2). The context of this cartoon was that though John A. Macdonald was campaigning in the 1878 election on his signature policy platform, the ‘National Policy’, which was centred on Protectionism (e.g. tariffs on American manufacturing goods) the completion of the CPR (" Scandals and Changes." Par. 24). In addition to scandals, elections provide an opportunity to discuss the influence the press has in politics, not as representatives of popular political sentiments but of private political interests. The political cartoon is a powerful device in this situation as through its seemingly innocuous humour, the artist can inoculate their perspective into the reader’s mind so quickly and subtly that they do not have the chance to analyze (much less reject) it (Osler 79; Walker par. 3). The techniques used by cartoonists to do so include: removing details, emphasising, and domestication (Osler 79; Walker par. 11). These tools can be found in this cartoon quite easily. Bengough portrays his simplistic prediction that voters will reject John A. Macdonald because of lack of credibility, and because of a strong approval of William Lyon Mackenzie. This removes details including the unpopularity of Mackenzie’s goal to enact a free trade agreement with the United States, the fact that the National Policy and that his bluntness about the dismal state of the economy did not resonate well with Canadian, in contrast to Macdonald’s optimistic demeanour (" Scandals And Changes." Par. 25). The other devices used can be seen in how the complexity of the National Policy is stressed and in the way that the political situation is presented as what woul...

... middle of paper ...

...urtoronto/robford/rob_ford_crack_scandal_timeline.html >
Shea, Victor, ed. Ideas of America: The Cultures of North America: Course Kit for HUMA 2320. Toronto: York U, 2014.
Sotiron, Minko Micheal. "From politics to profit : the commercialization of Canadian English language daily newspapers, 1890 to 1920." Spectrum Research Repository. [Concordia University] 8 Dec. 2010. Web. 17 July 2014.
< http://spectrum.library.concordia.ca/3332/1/NN64763.pdf>
Spadoni, Carl. "Grip and the Bengoughs as Publishers and Printers." Papers of The Bibliographical Society of Canada [Online], 27.1 (1988): n. pg. Web. 2 July 2014
< http://jps.library.utoronto.ca/index.php/bsc/article/view/17697>
Walker, Rhonda. "Political Cartoons: Now You See Them! ." Canadian Parliamentary Review. N.p., 30 Apr. 2014. Web. 08 July 2014. .

Show More
Related

  • The Unredeemed Captive, by John Demos

    2243 Words  | 5 Pages

    Gary B. Nash, Red, White, and Black: The Peoples of Early America, 1st ed. (Englewood Cliffs, N.J: Prentice Hall, 1974)

    Read More

  • The Hsi Lai Temple in Hacienda Heights

    1108 Words  | 3 Pages

    Arenson, Lauren J., and Jennifer Miller-Thayer. Cultures of the United States. Plymouth, MI: Hayden-McNeil Pub., 2009. Print.

    Read More

  • Holmberg's Mistake By Charles Mann Summary

    1040 Words  | 3 Pages

    As children, students are taught from textbooks that portray Native Americans and other indigenous groups as small, uncivilized, mostly nomadic groups with ways of life that never changed or disfigured the land. Charles Mann’s account of Indian settlements’ histories and archaeological findings tell us otherwise. Mann often states in his book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas before Columbus that the indigenous groups of North and South America were far more advanced and populous than students are taught. He focuses on many different cultural groups and their innovations and histories that ultimately led to either their demise or modern day inhabitants.

    Read More

  • A Different Mirror

    346 Words  | 1 Pages

    In a lively account filled that is with personal accounts and the voices of people that were in the past left out of the historical armament, Ronald Takaki proffers us a new perspective of America&#8217;s envisioned past. Mr. Takaki confronts and disputes the Anglo-centric historical point of view. This dispute and confrontation is started in the within the seventeenth-century arrival of the colonists from England as witnessed by the Powhatan Indians of Virginia and the Wamapanoag Indians from the Massachusetts area. From there, Mr. Takaki turns our attention to several different cultures and how they had been affected by North America. The English colonists had brought the African people with force to the Atlantic coasts of America. The Irish women that sought to facilitate their need to work in factory settings and maids for our towns. The Chinese who migrated with ideas of a golden mountain and the Japanese who came and labored in the cane fields of Hawaii and on the farms of California. The Jewish people that fled from shtetls of Russia and created new urban communities here. The Latinos who crossed the border had come in search of the mythic and fabulous life El Norte.

    Read More

  • Ida B. Wells, Booker T, Washington, and W.E.B Dubois

    1245 Words  | 3 Pages

    Divine, Robert A. America past and Present. 10th ed. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson Education/Longman, 2013. 245. Print.

    Read More

  • The Bill of Rights (a story drawn in strips): Political Cartoons

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    Political cartoons could be defined as illustrations or cartoon strips that contain a social and/or political message in them. Political cartoons are often based on the current events around when they were written.

    Read More

  • Women In the Fur Trade

    2974 Words  | 6 Pages

    Kugel, Rebecca, and Lucy Eldersveld Murphy. Native women's history in eastern North America before 1900: a guide to research and writing. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2007.

    Read More

  • Current Event Article Analysis

    1475 Words  | 3 Pages

    This article really caught my attention and my eye. This article is very historical and has facts within it that date back to the 1700’s. The article talks about how political cartoons play a part with an election. Specifically the presidential elections and how each and every year cartoonist depicts the candidates as a some sort of superhuman. I believe that this article gives people some background on political cartoons and how they have helped play a part within the U.

    Read More

  • Abraham Lincoln and Slavery

    1612 Words  | 4 Pages

    Bibliography:  Bibliography 1. John Majewski, History of the American Peoples: 1840-1920 (Dubuque: Kent/Hunt Publishing, 2001). 2.

    Read More

  • Analysis Of Ralph Steadman

    1687 Words  | 4 Pages

    This paper will discuss Ralph Steadman as an illustrator, but more specifically as a political cartoonist in post World War II Britain. His deeply set animosity for certain political figures and his caricaturization of them is a purely geographic feature. Steadman’s involvement in England’s top satirical publications boosted his credibility enough locally to garnish him better paying illustration jobs in the United States. These jobs not only brought better pay, but a new cast of politicians and elite society members for Steadman to poke his jokes at, thus further solidifying his reputation as the next great satirist from a long line of English caricature artists. In particular I am going to discuss other British cartoonists that share Steadman’s feelings towards the socially “elite”. This will help illuminate similarities between the artists and their common contempt for high society as well as prove that Steadman’s location of upbringing molded his satirically based career. Among these additional British illustrators are Gerald Scarfe and John Tenniel; both had also illustrated the pages of the weekly satire Punch (Fig.1)(Fig. 2). Scarfe’s style was extremely similar to Steadman’s and both Steadman and Tenniel are well known for their illustrations of Alice in Wonderland (Fig. 3)(Fig. 4). Thomas Nast is yet another illustrator who focussed on political cartoons in the British satirical publications of Punch and Private Eye (Fig. 5). Nast’s wit was not only responsible for the iconography that has become known as the modern day idea of Santa Claus, but one of his more famous illustrations was responsible for aiding in the capture of Boss Tweed (Fig. 5). Punch and the satirical ora that surrounde...

    Read More

  • Comparing the cultures of the United States and Japan

    690 Words  | 2 Pages

    Zimmermann, K. A. (2013, April 22). American Culture: Traditions and Customs of the United States | LiveScience. Retrieved February 9, 2014, from

    Read More

  • American Studies

    1841 Words  | 4 Pages

    This leads into the past and current methodological approaches in studying American culture and what different authors have to say.

    Read More

  • A Political Cartoon Analysis

    1460 Words  | 3 Pages

    Pictures are not made without a reason. Every visual construct has some underlying purpose. Often times this purpose is to express the thoughts or emotions of its constructer. Political cartoons are used to this effect. These cartoons speak volumes about a period or event in time. If a picture truly is worth a thousand words, a political cartoon is worth one thousand one. Political cartoons are almost always drawn from the ideas of the public. Because of their significance to an event in time, they can be examined to reveal the opinion of the people during the time frame. Cartoonists are voices of the public and Greenberg is not an exception.

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Cartoons

    786 Words  | 2 Pages

    Someone is seriously going to get hurt or worse. Turn on a television set and pick a channel at random; the odds are better than fifty-fifty that the program will expose children to violent material. Naturally kids are attracted to things that captures their attention. What was a major contribution to a fun childhood? Cartoons! Cartoons are very fun to watch and learn from. However, there is something that all cartoons have in common and that is hilarious violence.

    Read More

  • Politics And Politics Essay

    1222 Words  | 3 Pages

    The study of politics is an essential part of our everyday experience and can be simply defined as a universal activity, although there is no universal consensus regarding such definition. Indeed, there are many interpretations of what politics actually is, and with disagreement come dispute. Of these interpretations, there are four main collectives: politics as the art of government, which is the traditional viewpoint; politics as public affairs which interprets politics being associated with public life (which itself is hard to define) and focuses on the state institutions; politics as compromise and consensus, where importance significantly gravitates to the way in which decisions are made; and finally politics as power, and power as the

    Read More

More about Essay On Political Cartoon

Open Document