![South African political cartoonist Zapiro conflates the Libyan Revolution with the Academy Awards. [Source: Mail & Guardian online]](../wp-content/uploads/2011/02/zapiro_022511.gif "zapiro_022511")
Forget dancing with the stars. Now you can rub elbows with the autocrats at the Academy Awards, via Zapiro’s latest political cartoon. The irreverent South African satirist appears on Al Jazeera’s Listening Post, which features his latest seditious venture – ZA News. I was pointed to this panel by AJE’s Libya live blog.
I grasp only a little bit, visually, of what’s going on here. I’d love to hear/read someone’s description/interpretation. Please leave a comment!
![Gustave Caillebotte. Paris Street, Rainy Day (La Place de l’Europe, temps de pluie). 1877. Oil on canvas. Art Institute of Chicago. [Source: Wikimedia Commons]](../wp-content/uploads/2009/02/gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day_1877_wiki.jpg "gustave_caillebotte_paris_street_rainy_day")
I walk through my blindness the way I wander down streets in Paris: unfettered and alive, alert to the raw material of the senses. I am a flaneur. Come along with me. Just don’t try to take my arm, unless I ask. What’s a flaneur? Read the first post, Return of the Flaneur to Galerie Vivienne. After that, try Foot Rage and the Blind Flaneur. Then stay tuned.
![Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]](../wp-content/uploads/2008/04/isle_royale_fog.jpg "Fog at Isle Royale [Source: wildmengoneborneo.com]")
I’ve canoed on Lake Superior for almost as many years as I’ve been losing eyesight. I return year after year like a migrating loon to learn the other side of a slow, uncertain process that we could call “going blind.” After 35 years with the lake as my teacher, I know what lies on the other side. I call it letting go of sight. Read Big Water. See more about the Great Lakes.
If there is an emerging genetic underclass, I could run for class president or class clown. Read more in Not This Pig (2003).
Disabled Americans today have to negotiate for the kinds of accommodations made for FDR, and the caveat “reasonable accommodation” is built into the law. President Franklin Roosevelt did not have to negotiate. He could summon vast resources of the federal government – money as well as brains – to accomplish the work of disability. And it was accomplished with such thoroughness and efficiency that its scale could be called the Accessibility-Industrial Complex had it been directed toward public accommodations and not solely the needs of a single man. Read FDR and the Hidden Work of Disability [MiT8 2013]
Shepard Fairey claimed that his posterization of a copyrighted AP news photo of Barack Obama was a transformative work protected by the fair use doctrine. In other words, it was a shape-shifter. I claim fair use, too, when I reproduce and transform copyrighted works into media formats that are accessible to me as a blind reader. Read Shape-Shifters in the Fair Use Lab [MiT6 2009]
The social engineers who created a system for licensing beggars in New York never imagined that a blind woman had culture or could make culture. She herself may not have imagined it, either. In the moment when Paul Strand photographed her surreptitiously on the street in 1916, he could not have expected that one day blind photographers would reverse the camera’s gaze. Read Curiosity & The Blind Photographer. [MiT5 2007]
Hi Mark,
Thanks for the brilliant post.
Here’s a description of the cartoon.
1st panel: “The 2011 Naked Emperor Oscars” above a statuette of a Roman emperor wearing a laurel wreath, looking embarrassed, covering his privates with his hands.
2nd panel: “Burlesque-oni”. Berlusconi sits in a chair, grinning. On his lap sits a nearly naked stripper wearing a g-string and pasties with tassels. The tassels are airborne, indicating that she’s been exercising them. More strippers kick up their legs on a stage in the background. Two scowling cops, one carrying handcuffs, approach Berlusconi from the rear.
3rd panel: “Hereafter starring Jacob Zuma.” Zuma has a shower head in place of a halo. He’s smiling at the “camera” while hanging a sign reading “Under New Management” on the Pearly Gates. A puzzled angel hovers in the background.
4th panel: “The Fighter.” An R. Crumb-ish boxing referee, wearing blank glasses, is saying “It’s a draw!” His shirt is labeled “AU”. One boxer, wearing trunks labeled “Gbagbo,” is passed out on the floor. The other boxer, one fist still raised from the knockout blow, wears trunks labeled “Ouattara.”
5th panel: “127 Hours - Desert drama starring any Arab dictator you care to mention.” An Arab wearing a qaffiyeh, with an anxious look on his face, is pinned in a narrow gorge by a rock on his arm. He’s holding a knife in his right hand. Tremble lines indicate the knife is shaking as he contemplates cutting off the pinned arm.
6th panel: “The King’s Speech, featuring the incoherent babbling of Brother Leader.” Qaddafi, wearing a fez and looking deranged, hollers into an antique microphone, his left arm raised with the hand in a fist. It’s a take-off on a scene from the beginning of the film The King’s Speech.
7th panel: “the social network.” A young man wearing a fez faces a laptop, his right index finger striking a key. The screen shows a Facebook page labeled “Topple your despot.” Below the title it says “342 million people like this.”
Andy, thanks so much for the vivid detail!