Cartoons: "Critical seismograph for current developments"

As of: October 26, 2024 6:00 a.m

Since February 1, 2023, <a href="https://www.world-today-news.com/catherine-meurisse-receives-the-14th-german-lawyers-caricature-award/" title="Catherine Meurisse receives the 14th German Lawyers Caricature Award”>Eva Jandl-Jörg has been the director of the Wilhelm Busch Museum in Hanover. In an interview with NDR Kultur, the Austrian native talks about the relevance of caricature today.

by Anina Laura Pommerenke

Caricatures make an important contribution to forming opinions, says the cultural scientist with a doctorate. A conversation about cartoons in daily newspapers, on the Internet and access to young people.

Ms. Jandl-Jörg, do you have a favorite cartoon?

Eva Jandl-Jörg: No! There are very different shapes and types of caricatures. I’m relatively free to choose, which is why I don’t have a favorite cartoon and, by the way, I don’t have a favorite cartoonist.

Nowadays, information and images are spreading ever faster, including via social media. What significance do cartoons have today in terms of shaping public opinion?

Jandl-Jörg: Caricature is fundamentally a great medium for disseminating content with the greatest possible impact, especially in times of crisis. The difficulty is getting the cartoon online. The daily press often puts its big cartoon of the day online. There are enough cartoonists who put up-to-date cartoons online on their websites. There are also comics online on platforms like Instagram and Facebook. What we are missing, however, is access to young people who no longer read daily newspapers. This is different than before, when caricatures were served to you at the breakfast table via the daily press.

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Is the daily press still the main outlet for caricatures?

Jandl-Jörg: In any case! There is also a scene of comic book friends, which is of course networked differently with specialist magazines etc. But when it comes to current affairs and political cartoons, it is always close to the current press. Of course, this also depends on how the respective newspaper designs its website and whether cartoons are distributed there.

What relevance do you think the cartoon has today?

Jandl-Jörg: I think they are very important. The advantage of the caricature is that it also works without text. Globally, we have many similar problems – such as crises and wars. There are no language barriers in the cartoon, which is an uncanny advantage. In addition, the caricature always manages to convey depressing content in such a way that you don’t have to completely bury your head in the sand, but you reflect, think and get a different perspective on an event. But we have to think about – and that is also our task here in the house – how we can get the caricature back into society across the board.

For example, I don’t separate the drawn caricature from the spoken satire. Thank God there are formats like Böhmermann or Extra 3 that also reach young people. It’s about looking critically at the current movements in the world. I believe that together we can manage to be a critical seismograph for current developments. I see it as our responsibility as cultural workers to provide the population with the broadest possible spectrum of views and perspectives so that they can form their own opinions – in the spirit of democratic society and community.

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We live in an increasingly diverse society, and in order to understand cartoons you often need a lot of background knowledge or a comprehensive understanding of a society and a culture. Is this a challenge for the cartoonists?

Jandl-Jörg: I don’t think so, because the advantage of caricatures is that they often work on multiple levels. So there is often a very simple level that is immediately understandable to everyone, even without a lot of previous training. For the middle level you need a little more knowledge and if it is very attractive and subtle work, then there may be a third or fourth level for which you need specialist knowledge.

Caricature “Carefree” by Wilhelm Busch from 1908.

Basically, I’m not worried about a cartoon not being understood, because they are understood differently. We see this, for example, during tours of our house, how differently caricatures are perceived. One person finds it totally funny and the other finds it completely horrifying. The individual recording of a caricature is always very diverse.

There are some cartoons that are really well known in our culture. For example, “The Pilot Disembarks” at the end of Otto von Bismarck’s service or the cover of the French satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo “Tout est pardonné” after the terrible terrorist attack on the editorial office. When can a cartoon develop such charisma?

Jandl-Jörg: These are isolated cases and depend on the circumstances. It depends a lot on the event in question. Was this reported in the media worldwide or across Germany? Different formats often contribute to things sticking in. So if a topic gets traction online in addition to media coverage, social media plays an important role. It has to be about a topic that really affects people – it can be very funny or sad, or even a current online trend. It’s really impossible to predict which topics will ultimately have the potential for this.

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When you took over as director of the Wilhelm Busch Museum last year, you also made it your mission to reach out to more younger people. Are they still familiar with caricatures and what does it take to reach younger people with caricatures?

Jandl-Jörg: They are somewhat familiar with cartoons, especially when you include comics and graphic novels. This is a better way to appeal to young people than with an individual political cartoon. Topics that are closer to the lives of young people also naturally work better, for example illustrated in the form of a graphic novel. Young people often read less, but are very fond of pictures. Even science is already relying on very fact-oriented graphic novels, but with a great story. The learning effect happens incidentally, regardless of whether it is historical or personal topics, such as isolation during the corona pandemic. We can easily get the young people into our house via this channel.

We are lucky that Wilhelm Busch is considered one of the forefathers of comics and we can rely on a very large inventory in our house. We have set up a room in the museum in which we look at the creation of comics and also want to set up a comic reading room. As a private establishment, we also aim to allow free entry to young people up to the age of 18. The goal is to always have current comics, graphic novels and caricatures available in our house that can then be viewed.

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Likewise, if you want to make your audience more diverse, how will you go about that?

Jandl-Jörg: The predecessor had already started opening the house to families. This is very important to me. But young people often split off and go their own way. That’s why we specifically try to appeal to young people on their own – for example through the reading room and free entry. In cooperation with the city library, we have set up a children’s room for families, where we provide current children’s books and publications on the exhibition topics. In each exhibition there is a large book table with publications that have something to do with the exhibition – so we provide lots of reading material. These include historical non-fiction, fiction and cookbooks – everything we came across during our research. So that the audience can discover a lot of content beyond the cartoons.

The interview conducted Anina Pommerenke. The Wilhelm Busch Museum is a cultural partner of NDR Kultur.

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