Oldal 39 [39]
Constructing Images of the Other in Peace and War
bulky overalls and heavy boots of the lesbian and the neat and fashionable ‘camp’
suits of simpering gays—all these are the familiar markers of a group cast as the
Other and used by the caricaturist, sometimes malignly.
It is equally important to distinguish between the humorous and the serious
images of the Other particularly if the seriousness is linked to hostility. There is
a tension between humour and didacticism. A humorous image can be used in
a serious way but that requires intention on the part of a cartoonist. This is more
likely to be present in wartime or if the artist is employed to do propaganda. But
there is always an agent involved, someone who deliberately or under duress makes
choices, which is not the case for jokes which have no authors. Jokes in conse¬
quence lack tendenz, those non-existent hidden purposes and intentions sniffed
out by psychoanalysts. A purpose may only be (and may well not be) inserted by
the individual teller (Davies 2011). In addition, we make different kinds of judge¬
ment when looking at a caricature of our own or someone else’s chosen Other. As
Kant (1951 [1790]) points out, we can and should distinguish aesthetic merit in
images that are contrary to our own loyalties or sentiments, however mixed our
feelings may be, and I would argue that the same is true of humour (Davies 2011).
In time of war the images change to reflect the very real hostility that exists for
the duration of the conflict. When the conflict ends, the image reverts, except that
the cartoonists now have at their disposal the wartime images that can be adapted
and softened. The goose-step, the Aakenkreuz and the straight-arm salute still turn
up in British images of Germans, as does the samurai sword, the kamikaze pilot
and the rising sun in the case of Japan—but as humour for its own sake and not as
renewed resentment (Larry 1995; Stubble 1987).
However, totalitarian systems generate, perhaps even need, a permanent hostile
Other, one that may have little relation to reality but which is held responsible for
every real failing of the system. Their mind-set is one of always being at war. The
Jewish Other is the classic and most extreme case of this, but the hated Other is not
necessarily an ethnic or religious group or nation. For the upholders of religious
orthodoxy it might be a set of heretics from within such as the Albigensians or
the Ahmadis, both of whom suffered deadly persecution. In Marxist-Leninist
countries it might be a class such as the kulaks, landlords or capitalists or a group of
Marxist heretics, and images of them reflect this. The class hatred is even inherited
so that the penniless children or grandchildren of the propertied may also be
a demonised other. The stronger the commitment to a collectivist ideology that
excludes Others—whether nationalism, Marxism or a religion such as Islam—the
more intense the tendency to turn those outside the fold into not just Others but
rejected Others and even hated demonic Others.
We should always ask the question ‘how much’ even if we are going to answer it
in numerical terms. How much alterity? Some Others are more Otherly than other
Others, though in each case there will be several different dimensions of this. It is
worth building a speculative model of one of these dimensions—the dimension of
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