It's Not That Long Ago
Feb. 12th, 2006 02:32 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
poliphiloBack in the early '50s Malcolm Muggeridge (as editor of Punch) published a cartoon of Churchill (then prime minister) as a senile old man (which he was) with a caption politely suggesting it was about time he stepped down- and there was all hell to pay!
In the same era it was taboo to publish a caricature of the Queen. If you absolutely had to have her in your cartoon, it was allowable to show her from the back or with her face artfully concealed. I believe it was Gerald Scarfe in Private Eye who finally demolished that convention.
And of course cartoon representations of God and Jesus and other holy personages were absolutely unthinkable.
In the same era it was taboo to publish a caricature of the Queen. If you absolutely had to have her in your cartoon, it was allowable to show her from the back or with her face artfully concealed. I believe it was Gerald Scarfe in Private Eye who finally demolished that convention.
And of course cartoon representations of God and Jesus and other holy personages were absolutely unthinkable.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2006-02-12 11:24 am (UTC)I suppose I'm particularly interested here in issues of taboo and self-censorship. There were no legal sanctions against caricatures of the Queen (though there were and still are against "blasphemy") but cartoonists censored themselves rather than risk offending public opinion.