Oldal 92 [92]
90
Alexander Kozintsev
The simultaneous use of two options such as 3 and 4 enhances the effect. In
Arthur Johnson cartoon, for instance, the Australian Prime Ministers decision,
reached after the assault on Pearl Harbour, to regard the US, not Britain, as the
nations main ally, is expressed through the metaphor of adultery. Ihe lascivious
Roosevelt is stripping off the Union Jack in which Australia is dressed and offering
her the American flag in exchange while the furious Churchill catches the lovers in
flagrante delicto (Kladderadatsch, no. 3, January 18, 1942).
Satire and Humour: Harmony or Struggle?
How does the unambiguously hateful message agree with the intrinsically peaceful
essence of humour? Is it possible to reconcile hate with mirth, involvement with
detachment, and seriousness with non-seriousness? If so, how?
It is usually said that invective and humour can coexist in satire because their
domains are different: the content of satire is serious whereas its form is humor¬
ous. However, drawing a distinction between form and content is not easy even
when satire is extremely hostile, as in Stürmer. Whereas in Figure 30, virtually no
humorous elements can be found in the content, certain cartoons by Fips are partly
humorous at the content level. One of them shows the Jew as the choirmaster and
the three Allied leaders as choristers (Der Stürmer, no. 8, February 19, 1942, p. 8).
The Jew is omnipotent, but Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt are mere puppets in
his hands. Schilling’s Stalin is monstrous (Fig. 31), but the ugly spinster whom he
seduces—Britain—is pathetic and funny.
Does this bring us back to the canny-stupid opposition, i.e. to pure humour?
To some extent, yes, but with one important reservation. Humour requires tempo¬
rary insensibility, liberation from feeling—a “momentary anesthesia of the heart,”
as Bergson (2008 [1900]: 11) put it. This is not easy to achieve during wartime.
Humorous elements are traceable even in the content of a very bitter satire, but to
become amusing, they must be temporarily isolated from context. For instance,
Hitler in Low’s cartoon (Fig. 32) is as pathetic in his conceit as he is villainous; he
might be laughable were it not for the Holocaust train. Because hate and humour
are antagonistic, satirists must consciously control their proportion to achieve the
desired effect. In fact, they must balance on the edge.
The situation with form is more complicated because conscious control is more
difficult here. Even when the content of the cartoon is unambiguously mobilising,
not amusing, its form is potentially ambiguous. In another context, caricatures of
Jews such as those shown in Figure 30 could well be perceived as funny and in¬
nocuous unless the deformation concerns the essence of the image, for instance,
changing it from human to animal-like and inherently dangerous.
Compare Kukryniksy’s oil painting (Fig. 33) with a graphic cartoon drawn
by the same artists, using the same theme, and motivated by the same feelings
(Fig. 40). Why do they nevertheless convey different emotions? The reason is that
an oil painting carries no meta-communicative message of non-seriousness because