What part offends you most about the Sotomayor cartoon?
June 12, 2009
Sotomayor cartoon by Chip Bok
I don’t want to be that overly sensitive white girl at the party, but I see lots of fodder for criticism in this cartoon published in The Oklahoman on June 3rd.
That she’s shown as a piñata at a fiesta hosted by Obama in a sombrero, and she’s not even Mexican?
That she’s about to get beat by an all-male group of elephants with baseball bats? Is this a culture in which a gang-bang is not offensive if it’s only symbolic?
That the cameras and microphones are voyeuristically pointing at the spectacle as if there needs to be more phallus represented?
That she’s smiling so big, so passively, about to enjoy the public beating?
And is that candy falling out of her vagina or what?
That, of all the newspapers that cartoonist Chip Bok sent this cartton to, only The Oklahoman printed it?
Please don’t buy any copies of this newspaper ever!
Queezily yours,
Spring
June 15, 2009 at 8:50 pm
GROSS! how patently lame.
June 16, 2009 at 12:55 pm
Hi Spring-a-ding!! I just wanted to let you know that I gave Progress on the Prairie an award on my blog!
Love ya,
Tara
June 16, 2009 at 5:15 pm
I would like to submit that while the image is ugly and the iconography is racist and misogynist, the argument that is being presented is actually fairly complex and ambiguous for a cartoon. It seems that the cartoonist is trying to use tools too rough to make too fine a point.
One of the above questions, at least, has a pretty easy answer that begins to get to the point of the cartoon. Sotomayor is smiling because there will not be a beating as the whole situation is a standoff, not a party. Taking a swing is be political suicide. The position of weakness is reversed and shown to be a position of power.
There is plenty to take issue with beside this. One can construct arguments that will be offensive at the expense of the ones one is arguing on behalf of (shows like Southpark do this quite often). The cartoon is still problematic, but not in the ways (or in more complex ways) that it seems most people are taking it.
June 17, 2009 at 8:58 am
Joe, thanks for visiting my blog, hun! I totally agree that it is a complex and ambiguous cartoon. Which is why I think there could be really interesting conversation built around it. I think your point that “taking a swing is [to] be political suicide” is very interesting. I agree that that is part of what Bok is trying to say, and I think it’s disgusting that grown adults can’t have fervent debate without feeling like they are being pigeon-holed or committing political suicide.
Still, it’s so cheap and easy to go to a person’s race and gender for cartoon fodder when they are a non-white male.