Cartoons as expressions of the artists' unconscious and their role in spreading antisemitism

Cartoons of any sort provide an excellent conduit for the concise transmission of ideas.  Intelligent cartoons can deflate the pomposity of politicians and other public figures and convey alternative messages in ways that verbal or written messages cannot.  They are particularly powerful in evoking emotional responses.

 

How cartoons work

Visual images appeal to the emotions as well as the intellect with an immediacy  that the written word alone cannot.  This was well understood In the early days of Christianity, when large amounts of money were spent creating beautiful environments for prayer, with murals and stained glass windows  depicting biblical scenes and lessons about what might befall a person if he sinned.   These were invaluable in conveying the message of Christianity to a largely illiterate populace. They were, arguably, the cartoons of the time and served similar but more positive purposes than cartoons today.

 

In modern times, with the growing awareness of the role of psychological processes, cartoon and other imagery is employed to influence mass perception.  Visual imagery can be applied to advertising to sway public opinion in favour of or against phenomena.  The following is an extract from a 1982 paper by John R Rossiter of Columbia University about the applications of visual imagery to advertising.   It does not require a massive leap to recognise the power of visual imagery when used in this way to peddle political ideas:

 

".. High imagery visuals are those that themselves arouse other mental images (i.e., a mental picture, a sound, or a sensory experience) quickly and easily. Imagery value is in turn related to stimulus concreteness (both definitions here are taken from Toglia and Battig, 1978)[i]. Concrete pictures, like concrete words, refer to objects, persons, places or things that can be seen, heard, felt, smelt, or tasted; as contrasted with abstract referents that cannot be experienced by the senses...."

 

Various schools of psychotherapy (notably cognitive behavioural and analytical) recognise the power of visual imagery in bringing about behaviour and other change.  Hackman, Bennet-Levy and Holmes, in the Oxford Guide to Imagery in Cognitive Therapy review a number of studies including one in 1997 by Dadds et al[ii] which conclude that imagery can enhance or diminish the strength of classically conditioned responses.  This is particularly pertinent when exploring the contribution of cartoons to the promotion and maintenance of hatred.

 

Some modern cartoons actively promote anti-Semitism.  Others may do so apparently unwittingly and where a pattern can be discerned, may reflect the splitting off[iii] from awareness and projection of unconscious aspects of the cartoonists' attitudes, in this case towards Jews, into that which is drawn. Thus, the cartoonist may well deny antisemitic motivation when accused of it.   Alternatively, as I suggest below, the cartoon's focus may be evidence of displacement⁴

 

Antisemitic cartoons are pernicious in that they provoke and feed negative feelings and, as Dadd et al argue, may reinforce such attitudes as antisemitism when concealed under the threadbare cloak of anti-Zionism by psychological conditioning, because their message may already have salience/emotional or psychological significance for the viewer of them.

 

For when we perceive these cartoons we make our own meanings from them, which are projections of our own fears about what they represent, in the context of what we have experienced before from similar cartoons, or in terms of our world view.  Arguably the cartoonists themselves project their own prejudices in turn into what they draw.  This is demonstrably so in Steve Bell's cartoons in The Guardian in the UK.

 

Many articles in The Guardian demonise and delegitimise Israel... It often invites Islamists who support anti-Israel terror to write for its blog, "Comment is Free" and, during Cast Lead, ran an obituary for Nizar Rayyan, an infamous Hamas functionary and recruiter of suicide terrorists who even though he knew his apartment block was targeted by the IDF and he was given the chance to leave, refused and refused also to allow his wives and children to leave.  All were killed.

 

The Guardian's anti-Israel animus, in line with its over identification with Palestinian "victimhood" and one-sided accounts of the Middle East conflict,  often morphs into antisemitism, particularly on "Comment is Free" where comments below the line which try to set the record straight are often deleted, whereas antisemitic comments are allowed to remain.   Arab governments and Muslim spokesmen do not care to distinguish between "Israeli", "Zionist" or "Jew" and use the descriptors interchangeably and equally hatefully.  The Guardian has allowed this to shape the discourse in its pages and in its cartoons.  I would argue that it is also shaping a wider public discourse and desensitising the reading public to the growing prevalence of antisemitism in the UK.

 

As I have written, Steve Bell's cartoons for The Guardian may be prime examples of his projection of his own Jew-hatred (which he vehemently denies and argues is anti-Zionism) onto his drawing.  Also some of Bell's subliminal imagery is arguably akin to that used by the Nazis.  

 
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