All true.
jovan, the ones I’ve seen vary widely - there are some that are almost photorealistic depictions of real figures (like the Al-Baghdadi one tweeted just before the attack) , and there are some that are, like I said, more in line with antisemitic cartoons, like that first one you linked to. The existence of the former kind of shows they don’t need to do the latter to get their point across.
[QUOTE=JRDelirious]
Are we thinking of the same Charb? 'cause Stéphane Charbonnier died in the attack.
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So he did, I’d read different in an early report.
[QUOTE=Fuzzy_Wuzzy]
Im a bit troubled by this post. Racist pieces of shit(assuming they are not promoting physical violence) have a right not to be shot. Plus, the justice of any murder should not be evaluated on the respective humour of the victims. Unfunny people have the same right not to be executed as funny people.
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Let me introduce you to this new and intriguing thing, it’s called “gallows humour”. All the kids are doing it !
To really understand Charlie Hebdo’s “philosophy”, you have to know a little bit about the history of France post-World War II.
Like several others like L’Écho des Savanes and Fluide Glacial, the magazine has its roots in the civil unrest of May 1968 (commonly refered to as “Mai 68” in French http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/May_1968_events_in_France). While there were lots of similar movements like students protests and wildcat strikes throughout the world in the late 60s and early 70s, May 68 came to be seen as a watershed moment for France, a turning point when French society ditched its old patriarcal and puritanical values. While a lot of people embraced the new, broad-minded attitudes towards sex, education and religion that emerged, May 68 remained a polarizing moment. As recently as 2007, Sarkozy was blaming those 40-year-old events, which lasted less than three weeks, for the problems of today’s France…
But an aspect of May 68 that is sometimes overlooked is the blossoming of edgy, fiercely irreverent artists whose goal was to shake things up or even shock first and foremost, then perhaps make people laugh or sing. Some of the cartoonists that were killed yesterday were not the spiritual heirs of May 68, they were among the protagonists of those times: Cabu was 76, Wolinski 80 and they’d spent their whole career doing this.
What I’m trying to get at is: Charlie Hebdo wasn’t that popular. It had always had problems staying afloat. More importantly, it was seen by many French people as a quaint relic of an increasingly distant past. The magazine’s antics had stopped being shocking to most people decades ago. Their “outrageous” covers would get some chuckle and occasionally a few raised eyebrows but that was it.
On a more personal note, I must admit that Cabu’s death is affecting me. He used to appear on a French kiddie show when I was a child in the 80s. Of course, his material on this show was appropriate for kids but his irreverence was still there, albeit in a toned-down version. I remember how he’d quickly draw these caricatures of famous people or the show’s host (his favourite target) with a twinkle in his eye. I didn’t follow his adult stuff but it still feels as if a little bit of my childhood’s been killed.
Hopefully, Georges Wolinski will get his wish: “I want to be cremated. I told my wife: You will throw my ashes in the toilet, that way I will see your ass every day.”
Mocking the French far right is not a good enough excuse to draw a black person like a monkey. The people at Charlie Hebdo saw a way to draw a black person like a monkey and get away with it (“We’re just mocking the REAL racists”), and they took it.
“Hipster racism” is still racism.
What gagam just said.
British Islamotroll Anjem Choudary has written an editorial called People Know the Consequences. It’s a pity that civilized countries can’t deport their own citizens.
See Streisand Effect.
It never was when National Lampoon did it. And they did it a lot.
…and 99% of the people who just discovered CH will forget it in a month or two, but they will remember tan making fun of certain groups of people can get you killed. That’s how terrorism works. They don’t care for irnoic twists or CH’s readership they simply want people to fell afraid.
What if there’s a second or third attack? I can tell you (living in a country with terrorism) that most people there will say “screw it” and the bad guys win.
Terrorists don’t respond to subtelty or hashtags or candlelight vigils.
CH humor was filled with hate and it wasn’t that funny and going after (even if you try to be equal-opportunity hater) a community that is badly treated a discriminated in your country is legal, but don’t try to justify it morally by saying “gallows humor” o “it’s for fun” or “editorial art”: hatred is hatred.
Can you imagine the shitstorm if, say, MAD had a cover with MLK being pig-roasted by two klansmen while saying “thank you, massa”? Even if it came after/before similar ones with whomever you think is despicable? At some point it is morally indefensible even if 100% legal and 100% not meriting being killed.
Heard an interview on NPR’s “The World” today with Nick Cohen, a journalist from Britain(The Observer), and a guy with the Washington Post. Cohen was saying his paper wouldn’t run the cartoons because they’re scared they’ll be killed next. The WaPo guy was saying they aren’t afraid, they just made an editorial decision not to run them as part of the news section(they did reprint one, Mohammed with a bomb in a turban, in an editorial about the issue) because they believe it’s not a necessary part of the story.
Cohen then went on to say that many newspapers who run the story of Charlie Hebdo will not publish the cartoons and will pretend it’s because they don’t see them as a necessary part of the story, but the real reason is because they’re afraid and won’t admit it. The real issue, he says, is that journalists are afraid to be seen as self-censoring out of fear, although they ARE self-censoring out of fear. So some papers/news outlets will run the story but not the cartoons.
The WaPo editor said again that the WaPo news section just made an editorial decision that re-printing the content someone found offensive enough to kill over was not a necessary part of the story. It is perfectly possible to tell the story of a spate of cartoons that resulted in death threats against the publishing organization and may have resulted in the attacks against the cartoonists and publishers, no re-printing of the cartoons necessary.
Cohen again said that no matter what other editors may be saying the real reason they’re not reprinting the Charlie Hebdo cartoons is because they’re afraid. Just that some news organizations, like his, were honest enough to admit it and others were not.
I mention this because I’ve heard a lot of people say things like “we need to re-print these cartoons and plaster the cities/internet with them!” I see no reason to do this. I wasn’t intending to do that before the attacks, why would I do it after the attacks? I don’t find them funny, or useful in a dialogue about religious tolerance or the issues of radical extremism. Why would I find them funnier, or more useful now than I did before?
It’s like the political opinions occasionally aired on South Park or Family Guy. They’re crude points couched in toilet humor and stereotypes. I wouldn’t have used them in any sort of argument, although I have no problem with others who do choose to do so. But what I don’t get is why my position on using them myself is supposed to change now that their creators have been, unjustly, murdered. If South Park Studios had been bombed by Scientologists, would that make it my duty to distribute bootlegs of South Park episodes critical of Scientology? Why? What if I still think they’re only marginally funny and largely useless in actually dispelling the myths around Scientology?
Well, guess what. I find the Charlie Hebdo cartoons only marginally funny and largely useless in any sort of discussion/process of religious tolerance/integration. That was the case a week ago, that’s the case today. This doesn’t make me a coward who is self censoring out of fear. It means I choose to do things differently than the writers/artists/editors of Charlie Hebdo did, and their deaths don’t change that any.
Enjoy,
Steven
[QUOTE=Aji de Gallina]
CH humor was filled with hate and it wasn’t that funny and going after (even if you try to be equal-opportunity hater) a community that is badly treated a discriminated in your country is legal, but don’t try to justify it morally by saying “gallows humor” o “it’s for fun” or “editorial art”: hatred is hatred.
Can you imagine the shitstorm if, say, MAD had a cover with MLK being pig-roasted by two klansmen while saying “thank you, massa”? Even if it came after/before similar ones with whomever you think is despicable? At some point it is morally indefensible even if 100% legal and 100% not meriting being killed.
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Allow me to quote (and translate) this pertinent article (quoted and linked for the three or four people who give an actual shit, as opposed to using the massacre as a platform for whatever it is they’re selling) :
Translation mine :
Unanimity, national grief, “we are all Charlie”, massive demonstrations for freedom of speech all across the country. But… *Charlie *? Really ? Nobody read it any more. For those on the left who still think a little, its rampant islamophobia under cover of secularism and “the right to laugh at anything” was all too obvious. To the people on the right : they hate the whole post-68 culture *Charlie *represented, but hey it’s still cool to point and laugh at those assholes from the Levant, stuck in the Middle Ages. For the far right : never read, authors and artists culturally and politically loathed, but still useful - their cartoons are often pasted in Riposte Laïque [a far right, islamophobic website]. For many Muslims : a weekly insult, but it’s “French culture” so you keep your mouth shut.
Is there any chance Charlie Hebdo can continue? Is there anybody left to restart publication?
The terrorists planned this well… Everybody that ran the publication was in that room.
The State just decided to dump a million euros on the up-to-then ailing paper to keep the National Martyr Publication going. They’ll be alright. Which is all the more ironic that they’d been circling the drain for a while now (not to mention been attacked by the selfsame State almost every year since its inception…).
Who’ll write and draw, I have no idea. I’m sure there’s no end to the hopeful volunteers though. Not now. If it had already turned to shit before IMO, I’m guessing you ain’t seen nuthin’ yet.
Correction : the million euro is just a proposal from our Culture Minister at this point, my mistake. It’s not done yet.
Still, plenty of people have subscribed as their grand/token solidarity gesture (and to do like everyone else, you know, gotta be part of the trend before it becomes the next one !), so financially Charlie’s presumably doing better than it ever did.
First, FOR FUCK SAKE, WE ARE ALL AGAINST KILLING PEOPLE OVER SATIRE. QUIT ACTING LIKE SOMEONE WILL THINK YOU’RE A TERRORIST IF YOU DON’T SAY THAT!!!
Ahem.
Second, the cartoons I saw were pointedly antagonistic. Fine; I’m a troll in real life, too. HOWEVER, they violate the other two main rules of satire: Be funny and be well crafted. They’re crap, and we see that the French are still manacled by another legacy of the 60s in that they wouldn’t know funny if it shot them in the head. (See: Jerry Lewis, twice recipient of the Légion d’Honneur.) The National Lampoon had some of the best cartoonists in the world, and if Rick Meyerowitz wanted you offended, as with his “Martin Luther Nails His 95 Feces to the Cathedral Door” (unavailable online), you were offended, you were grossed out, and you laughed and admired his artwork. Charlie Hebdo has been likened to The Onion, but I don’t see it. Maybe their prose is funnier, but Jerry Lewis.
A random person will be hit and killed by a car today.
FEAR YOUR DEATH, MY FRIEND. THE CAR MIGHT COME (with 0.000001% probability)!
This attack was not random.
My comment was about mr. jp’s hypothetical, not this attack.
Well…
I was not a fan of the magazine. Not at all. In fact, I’m pretty sure I’ve never read a single issue. But two things come to mind.
First, I’ve seen the reprints of the cartoons in English-speaking media. The translations, when provided, were not always very good. Plus a lot of the cartoons require some knowledge of the French cultural background. Take the “Intouchables” drawing for instance. When you only translate the words in the captions, it’s not funny at all. Actually, it’s borderline nonsensical. But there’s more to it than the caption. The title refers to a French film that was a huge success at the time the cartoon came out. Plus it translates as “Untouchable” meaning if you make fun of the people depicted (Jews and Muslims) you’re in for some serious trouble. Is it funny? Moderately. Is it offensive? I don’t think so but YMMV. However, I do wonder whether all the English speakers making comments about how unfunny the cartoons are actually understand them and how deeply they understand them.
Which leads me to my second point, this time specifically @dropzone.
While I understand that you may not be fond of some forms of cultural humour, I find your not-so-discreet dissing of all of French humour distasteful and I seriously wonder how much you know about it. So far, the only name you’ve provided is Jerry Lewis who is American. You may be puzzled at his success in France (so am I) but that was in the 70s. I sort of remember him being occasionally on tv in the early 80s but since then… he hasn’t exactly been in demand. Oh, he got the Légion d’Honneur ? Great. Since the 19th century, the Légion d’Honneur as been awarded to tens, perhaps hundreds of thousands of people, the vast majority of them forgotten. In practice, it does mean as much as you seem to think.
So yeah, feel free to diss French humour but at least provide some genuine examples. Otherwise, the only possible conclusion is that your contribution was just a gratuituous attack on a culture you know very little about…