Again, notice the oddly gratuitous detail - the star next to the “crescent moon.”
There is no “cresent moon” in the picture, just a turtle’s finger. The star seems to be a conventional way to indicate “ouchie” in a comic. I obviously see what you’re getting at, but I think it’s stretching.
Which is more likely?
A. It’s an innocent pun involving a reference to a specifically crescent moon because that works best for the joke, and a tiny drawing of a star because that’s the standard cartoon convention for indicating pain, or
B. Johnny Hart in his dotage was witty enough to craft jokes with two entirely separate levels of meaning.
I should say, the one thing that does seem a little incongruous to me is not the star, but the use of the word “crescent.” That does seem a bit unnecessary.
edit: Biffy - Sorry, your post wasn’t up when I responded. I would say both are equally likely. Perhaps I’m not giving Hart enough credit and he’s much more crafty than I previously thought. But if it’s a slam on Islam, it’s a really subtle and ineffective one. I still vote pun with coincidental alternate reading.
On your side, you do have Pulitzer Prize winning humorist Gene Weingarten opining rather confidently that the double meaning was intentional. He does, however, read even more subtlety into Hart’s strip, saying it wasn’t a smear of Islam, but rather of Islam terror ("I do not see this cartoon as hatred of Islam - it is a statement about Crescent Moons that BITE, which is to say, Islamic terrorism. I don’t see anything wrong with Johnny Hart condemning Islamic terrorists. ")
The turtle can’t just say “moon-shaped”; that would suggest a full moon, and that the bite is simply round. Nobody calls anything round “moon-shaped.” (Well, except for round faces.) He could say “half-moon-shaped,” but even that sounds like a slightly odd way to describe a semicircle. The crescent moon, however, is the essence of mooniness. If you wanted to sketch something instantly recognizable as the moon, just a quick, simple representation, wouldn’t you naturally make it a crescent?
It certainly wasn’t my intention to align myself with that “side.”
Whoops. Got the characters in this thread mixed up a bit. (And by “side” I mean “side of the argument.”)
As for the crescent moon analysis, that’s the same line of logic I was following. But I think you could get away with the term “moon-shaped” without confusing readers. That said, even if Hart dropped the “crescent,” I’m sure there’d still be plenty of people reading into it, anyway. It’s still a star and a moon and, like you said, when you think of a moon, what shape do you think of? A crescent.
You can read the Washington Post article on Johnny Hart from the April 4, 1999 edition to get a glimpse of the man’s true feelings about Jews and Muslims. (The article must be purchased). That’s where Wiki gets that charming quote in their Johnny Hart entry.
Well, if you’re a fundamentalist, isn’t anyone who doesn’t accept Jesus Christ as their savior going to Hell?
Anyhow, I’m well aware of Hart’s theological leanings. I simply don’t think the outhouse strip is a clever dual-layered joke. I do think more of an argument can be made for the turtle/crescent moon/lunatic joke. And, if it is indeed an intentional double meaning joke, I think it’s quite a clever one and have to give Hart credit for it. But I’m not convinced it’s intentional.
Nope. It’s an all purpose symbol of Judaism, and before WWII it was the primary symbol associated with the Jewish people*. You are thinking of the Hanukiah which is a special type of menorah which has extra candles to symbolize the miracle of the oil lasting eight days.
As a Jew I felt like the menorah and cross strip was a clear swipe at Judaism, but then as a Jew I am a bit sensitive to this sort of thing. It’s been less than four months since we were asked to leave daycare because they found out our daughter was jewish, so it’s not like people aren’t still hateful bastards even in this day and age.
I have to think that Hart knew exactly what he was doing with that strip, that symbolism, and the timing of the strip’s release. In fact, it’s because that strip was so very clear that I am not really sure that the other strip was a swipe at Islam. I am not convinced that he could be that subtle.
*If I am remembering it correctly it wasn’t until the concentration camps that the Star of David became an all purpose symbol for Judaism, before that it was more a symbol of Zionism. My memory might be a bit rusty, though wiki does seem to back me up.
I don’t think it is either. I think it’s a single-layered religious or politico-religious commentary. I would guess that by the time of the strip from three years later he realized he had to put some form of actual joke in there to cover himself.
I guess we’ll just disagree, then.
(bolding mine) What? Unless you deliberately enrolled your child in an overtly religiously oriented (assumedly Christian) daycare how could this ever happen?
I agree that Hart was a bigot, but he was incapable of being subtle. Look at the Menorah strip, that was about as overt as you can get.
Your two examples are just too subtle for Hart.
Or this guy.
If one accepts that the turtle strip is a Muslim reference it would be hard to maintain that the earlier outhouse strip was not as well. What would be the chances that Hart would get into all kinds of hot water, have his strip pulled, etc. for making an innocuous gag that people imagined was anti-Muslim… and then three years later make an intentionally pointed Muslim reference in the same strip?
If the turtle strip had come first & was the only controversial one I might be on the fence about it - provided that I didn’t also know the following:
that Hart was a Christian fundamentalist
what he was willing to say about Muslims to a major newspaper
that he was in the habit of making apocalyptically-minded comments, such as his
thought that the world might end by 2010
that he frequently includes religious commentary in his strips
that he had already published the “unsubtle” Menorah strip
Evidently Jesus died during Backwards Hannukah.
Though having cavemen know about Jesus is interesting chronology, even assuming B.C. stands for “Benny Claude” or whatever.
There it is.
But I don’t accept the turtle strip as a Muslim reference. Like I said, we’re going to have to disagree on this.
Okay, I’ll bite. What DID he say about Muslims to a major newspaper?