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The Context of the Charlie Hebdo Cover Cartoons
Last edited Sun Jan 11, 2015, 06:37 PM - Edit history (1)
I've posted versions of this as comments in a couple of earlier threads, but given that a number of us are still trying to figure out what some of the cover cartoons were aiming at, maybe this OP will help discussions when these issues come up. Or maybe it'll just add to the furor? If anyone can fill in more context for these or other cartoons, please go ahead.
I found a discussion on Quora where number of people were answering the question, "What was the context of Charlie Hebdo's cartoon depicting Boko Haram sex slaves as welfare queens?" You may have seen the cartoon in question. If not, there's a copy at this link:
http://www.quora.com/What-was-the-context-of-Charlie-Hebdos-cartoon-depicting-Boko-Haram-sex-slaves-as-welfare-queens
The full question was:
After the terrorist group Boko Haram kidnapped and enslaved Nigerian girls for sexual slavery, french satire magazine Charlie Hedbo had this as their cover:
Which depicts pregnant girls saying "Touchez pas a nos allocs!", which translates to something like "Don't touch our (welfare) allocations!"
What was the context though? It'd be great if a French person who's read that article could explain.
Which depicts pregnant girls saying "Touchez pas a nos allocs!", which translates to something like "Don't touch our (welfare) allocations!"
What was the context though? It'd be great if a French person who's read that article could explain.
One of the answers reads:
Jean-Baptiste Froment, toulousain
This cover is mixing two unrelated elements which made the news at about the same time:
- Boko Haram victims likely to end up sex slaves in Nigeria
- Decrease of French welfare allocations
In France, as in probably every country who has welfare allocations, some people criticize this system because some people might try to game it (e.g., "welfare queens" idea). Note that if we didn't had it there would probably be much more people complaining because the ones who really need it would end up in extreme poverty.
Charlie Hebdo is known for being left-wing attached and very controversial, and I think they wanted to parody people who criticize "welfare queens" by taking this point-of-view to the absurd, to show that immigrant women in France are more likely to be victims of patriarchy than evil manipulative profiteers.
And of course if we only stay on the first-degree approach, it's a terrible racist and absurd cover.
As Adrien points out in his answer, it was neither the first nor the last time Charlie Hebdo used this kind of "satirical news mixing", and had no "preferred target".
This cover is mixing two unrelated elements which made the news at about the same time:
- Boko Haram victims likely to end up sex slaves in Nigeria
- Decrease of French welfare allocations
In France, as in probably every country who has welfare allocations, some people criticize this system because some people might try to game it (e.g., "welfare queens" idea). Note that if we didn't had it there would probably be much more people complaining because the ones who really need it would end up in extreme poverty.
Charlie Hebdo is known for being left-wing attached and very controversial, and I think they wanted to parody people who criticize "welfare queens" by taking this point-of-view to the absurd, to show that immigrant women in France are more likely to be victims of patriarchy than evil manipulative profiteers.
And of course if we only stay on the first-degree approach, it's a terrible racist and absurd cover.
As Adrien points out in his answer, it was neither the first nor the last time Charlie Hebdo used this kind of "satirical news mixing", and had no "preferred target".
There are also explanations of the depiction of French Justice Minister as a monkey (it was parodying and labeling as racist a Front National politician's Facebook post which carried a photoshop of a similar image), among other cartoons you may have seen.
There are no explanations there of other cover cartoons, for instance those showing "Mohammad," "Jesus," or certain politicians. Maybe a number of them don't need explanation or context, but fall or stand in their own right as to some people obscene, to others iconoclastic (and to others both) depictions of figures of renown and influence.
One explanation I've found of a cartoon of a naked "Mohammad" lying on a couch with his behind to a cameraman, saying "And my buttocks, do you love my buttocks?" is that it's a parody of a famous bedroom scene between Brigitte Bardot and Jean-Luc Godard in the movie Le Mepris where she runs through parts of her body and asks her paramour a similar question for each.
I wrote in my earlier posts:
My problem with people outside France simply reproducing these particular cartoons as part of "Je suis Charlie Hebdo" - which they're obviously free to do - is that they're removed from their context, which makes them ambiguous - to non-French audiences, probably not even ambiguous, but incomprehensible, if not downright offensive to some, and cheeringly offensive in a non-liberal way to others (like those who love to circulate cartoons of Obama as a monkey, for instance). Again, they're obviously entirely free to do so, but how many understand what they're circulating, and how many who see them understand what they portray?
On the other hand, I don't think there's similar ambiguity about a number of the other cartoons about religious figures or French politicians. They're often scatological or sexually explicit. There's a long tradition of that in satire, not just in France (the British 19th-century cartoonist Rowlandson, among others, is definitely NSFW at times). I also find some of the depictions of Jews and Muslims very stereotyped - which may be part of the joke, but is a bit sophisticated for something that's going to sit on a newsstand and be visible to people who aren't necessarily going to take the time to parse it.
On the other hand, I don't think there's similar ambiguity about a number of the other cartoons about religious figures or French politicians. They're often scatological or sexually explicit. There's a long tradition of that in satire, not just in France (the British 19th-century cartoonist Rowlandson, among others, is definitely NSFW at times). I also find some of the depictions of Jews and Muslims very stereotyped - which may be part of the joke, but is a bit sophisticated for something that's going to sit on a newsstand and be visible to people who aren't necessarily going to take the time to parse it.
I am not Charlie Hebdo. Different people will mean different things when they adopt this slogan, but for me to make such an audacious claim, I would need to do the following:
(a) feel it worthwhile to post cartoons such as these in public;
(b) do so under my own real-life name;
(c) have my physical location widely known and advertised;
(d) do all this in the full knowledge that I had been threatened with violence or death if I did so.
Others are obviously free to make their own choices. These are mine.
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