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DRAW A LINE, THEY'LL CROSS IT
I'm banking on it...
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Riddell on Major:
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LONDON -- To most of Britain, Prime Minister John Major is simply a political leader.
But to Chris Riddell, a political cartoonist with an eye for a telling physical feature, the top Conservative is a gift.
"I think Major is one big feature," said Riddell, who draws for the Observer newspaper. "Everything's fun to work with: the lips, the glasses, the hair, the posture."
As the election approaches, it's anyone's guess whether Riddell and his fellow political cartoonists will still be having fun with Major after May 1. But after hearing from two of the country's most prominent practitioners of the art, it seems like they wouldn't mind a little variety.
"I don't care who the cast of my cartoons is," says Nick Garland, whose work appears in the Daily Telegraph. "In another way, of course, I look forward to some new faces."
"It would be fun -- both politically, nationally, for democracy, for cartoonists, for everybody -- to have a new government."
The next day's politics...
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Garland on elections:
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Riddell thinks he'll get one. And he believes it will give cartoonists a chance to sharpen their images of Tony Blair, the Labour leader whose party is leading in the polls.
British papers take a clear political stand: the Telegraph is pro-Tory; the Observer supports Labour. But both cartoonists say they're under no pressure to follow an editorial line.
This election may look like a bonanza for the heirs of William Hogarth, the great eighteenth-century British satirical artist. But in Britain's increasingly slick and soundbite-driven political climate, elections aren't what they used to be.
"They've tended to be rather boring," says Garland, "perhaps because so much happens on television, and the politicians get so adept, so highly polished, so skillful at using television."
For Riddell, "the meaty issues are almost the non-meat." He cites the culture of spin, the way politicians appear on TV, "the absence of discernible policy differences, and sometimes, almost, the absence of fully-organized policies."
At Jack Duncan Cartoons and Books, a London gallery specializing in political cartoons, Simon Purse says Major sells big -- and not always to his detractors.
Customers, he believes, "even buy cartoons that make fun of politicians they actually quite admire." And more often than not, the opposition isn't the target. "Satirists always tend to attack the people in power,' he says"
Whoever that turns out to be on May 2, the cartoonists will be watching. And for Garland, it will be business as usual. "I honestly don't think there's any difference between drawing during an election, and drawing before and after an election.
"As far as I'm concerned, it's just the next day's politics."
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