The Statement of the Century: The Cartoon Body of the New Yorker

By James Spica

On a daily basis, graduate students in university anthropology departments across the nation slave away writing complicated thesis papers and monographs in an attempt to theorize about out cultural leaps and bounds, the ever-changing technological and behavioral puzzle that is the human species. Philosophers and scientists are often in the same quest, studying behavioral and social psychology and other such subjects surrounding human cultural growth. Even art critics such as Michael Hastings ‘review’ our habits and tendencies in wordy, multiple page studies. It is strange, therefore, and consequently more poignant, that the crew of witty cartoonists at the New Yorker do the same work in a simple drawing and simple caption. Any cultural statement worth saying (worth, in this case, referring to the statement’s truth as a phenomenon) about the United States’ culture has been worked somehow into a cartoon at the magazine that has since it’s inception been hailed as being at the forefront of high society.

The most essential aspect of a cultural statement in a humor cartoon is that humor omits (or ignores) the gravity of cultural problems to expose the real truth: life is totally and completely absurd, and we, as humans, make it worse for ourselves. Take, for instance, Ed Siegel’s piece entitled “Off the Wall”, in which he describes how we, as a society are “fixated” on celebrity drama and culture, using Michael Jackson’s gradual downfall as the key example, and saying in conclusion that “the last laugh, though, is bound to be on a society that pays so much attention to Jackson.” It is a critique of the societal magnetic attraction to People Magazine, Star, and US. Alex Gregory’s cartoon in a 1999 issue of the New Yorker does the same work, but in many less words, more cleverly, and with added critique and perhaps a little scorn. The cartoon frame is a television, and on the screen is a reporter standing in front of some firefighters fighting a fire in a city building. The cartoon’s caption is the reporter telling us “Luckily, none of the people inside appear to be celebrities.” This pokes fun at our society in several ways—our faces being glued to our television screens, our obsession with celebrity culture, and the humor in it shows that in an absurd life, we make it worse by our interest in absurdly irrelevant things.

The electronic, technological stairway that our society is climbing at an ever-growing pace is a staple subject of New Yorker cartoons. A new iPod™ is released every few months it seems, and the internet is completely re-defining our daily lives. David Sipress curtly and cleverly describes this cultural phenomenon in a simple drawing (from a 2000 issue of the New Yorker)—a man, sitting in an armchair in his library or study, clicks a button on his remote when he wants a book down from the shelf, and it comes right to him. The cartoon doesn’t even have a caption, and it manages to describe the way in that even a person clinging to older ways of gaining information (books) has allowed technology to permeate their daily life to make it easier, simpler. At the same time, it is mocking the fact that most of society’s commonly used electronic implements are, in a way, completely useless. Why would the man use the remote for a book when he could use it for a more advanced pursuit of information? Arnie Levin’s cartoon from 2001, depicting a tightrope walker in a circus balancing on what seems to be thin air while an audience member turns to his partner and says “It appears to be some sort of wireless technology”, notes that technology works its way into the least likely areas of our lives, especially if it’s not really needed.

Bruce Eric Kaplan, of whom Robert Mankoff (the cartoon editor for the New Yorker) wrote “the New Yorker’s Cartoons have often been dark… …but [Kaplan’s drawings] make the Addams Family look like the Brady Bunch”, drew a cartoon in 2003 for the New Yorker of cupid being irked at the fact that on-line dating has put him out of business—“Fine—if they all want to meet online, screw them.” This critique of the internet’s part in our culture is another classic example of the New Yorker cartoonist’s up-and-coming sense of societal absurdity. Kaplan is joking about both the fact that the internet kills tradition, but might also kill jobs.

These above-mentioned cartoons are simply isolated examples of the great variety and depth of humorous cultural derision found in the form of the single-panel, single caption cartoons on the pages of The New Yorker. This intelligent bunch has no need to write an essay or monograph on culture—they make their statements in a cleverer, more humorous, and more compact way. They have chosen the medium that can truly depict the absurdity of life and of modern human culture. Without them, we would be nowhere.