The Wizards of Oz: Aussie Cartoonists Do It Their Way

Los Angeles Times political cartoonist Paul Conrad told a recent U.S. cartoon conference that only American cartoonists have the freedom to lampoon without restrictions (1999). He argued that the U.S. cartoonists' rights come from the First Amendment; rights not shared by other nations. Australian cartoonists might beg to differ--if they were the begging type. In fact, they would argue that Aussies, not shackled by political correctness, have greater freedom than do their American colleagues.

For the past century, U.S. editorial cartoonists have admired and often borrowed style and content ideas from their Australian colleagues. Perhaps the greatest has been Patrick Oliphant, who has syndicated his work in the United States for the past three decades. He has had a major impact on U.S. cartooning, in particular for his drafting, for his deprecating humor, and for not being intimidated by political correctness. In turn, Australian cartoonists have been influenced by their great U.S. colleagues; among them Thomas Nast, Joseph Keppler, Jay Darling, Herb Block, Bill Mauldin, Jules Feiffer, and Jeff MacNelly.

Even though cross-fertilization has occurred between the United States and Australia, the current state of play of political cartooning, and election campaign cartoons in particular, on either side of the Pacific is trending in different directions. Australian political cartoonists predominantly concentrate on the policies of politicians, while the U.S. cartoonists concentrate on their personalities. Furthermore, as mentioned above, Australian cartoonists claim to be unaffected by the political correctness much lamented by their U.S. colleagues (Day 1999). For example, U.S. syndicated strip cartoonist Jan Eliot was told by her editor, "You can't say boobs on Sunday--but it's okay from Monday to Saturday," and Spokesman-Review political cartoonist Milt Priggee had to change the expletive hell to heck--both issues hardly likely to flutter the eyelashes of Australian editors who publish cartoons of bondage and nudity with barely a qualm.

This U.S. anecdotal evidence is supported by academic research. Almost 70 percent of American cartoonists say political correctness has weakened their cartoons (Lamb 1996). They also perceive a major cause of confrontation over the content of their cartoons to be ideological differences and intervention to limit controversy; editors view content confrontation as more likely to stem from questions of "bad taste" (Ammons et al. 1988).

Across the Pacific, the Australian cartoon culture is different. The Australian cartoonists' freedom does not stem from any formalized legal document like the First Amendment, for, as Conrad rightfully said, no such document exists in Australia. Instead, that freedom seems to stem from the very nature of Australians, who have a nationalistic pride in Aussie larrikinism and a penchant for what is called the tall poppy-chopping syndrome, of which cartoonists are the masters. Negative feedback also may be less prevalent in Australia, where the smaller population means less funding for religious and political lobbyists to be paid to monitor and complain to newspapers. While Australian political cartoonists are well versed in what is seen as Australia's harsh defamation legislation, they are also aware that no case has ever made it to court and that the Australian Press Council has a policy of extreme leniency when it comes to handling complaints about cartoons.

I report these arguments, but much of this is anecdotal. Little research has been done in Australia on political cartoonists, and even in the United States the research has not gone much beyond an assessment of political cartoonists' and editors' views of political cartooning and some work on the symbols used by political cartoonists. For example, what are the political leanings of cartoonists? We do know that 55 percent of U.S. cartoonists say they are politically independent, but we do not know the political leanings of their Australian counterparts: Are they, like their Australian reporting colleagues, slightly left of center (Henningham 1998)? Also, we do not know...