Peter Dunlap Shohl: Three myths about the Charlie Hebdo murders
Myth No. 1: Cartoons caused the killings. Cartoons can be powerful, but that power is not inherent, it is invested in them by the viewer. This is true of all images, and explains why most don't find the portrayal of other people's prophets offensive, but come unglued when their own are portrayed disrespectfully. What killed these people? Murderers and their twisted ideology.
Myth No. 2: The killings were caused by Islam. No. The killing was not Islamic. Violence certainly occurs in Islamic countries, as it does in Christian countries, Buddhist countries, etc. But even leaders of Hezbollah said that the killings did far more to damage Islam than the victims ever did. Many Islamic cartoonists condemned the killings in drawings following the event. This was a terrorist act, not a religious one. That the terrorists claim they acted because of Islam does not make it so. Tomas Serrano, a Spanish cartoonist who lived through years of Basque terror in Spain, has this to say about terrorism: "In the name of that 'freedom' they could kill and kill people. Always they could find the relation with their cause. This is the terror. Today Charlie Hebdo because the caricatures, and tomorrow you by the color of your eyes."
Myth No. 3: The way to respond to these murders is to draw and publish cartoons of Muhammad. As Alabama cartoonist JD Crowe pointed out, "Why draw Mohammed when the offender wasn't the Prophet Mohammed. The offenders were the murderous jihadists who dragged the prophet's name through their bloody rampage." Those cartoonists who felt obliged to assault the misperceived enemy are like George W. Bush, who led us into war with Iraq, a state that had not attacked us, while Osama bin Laden slipped across the Afghan border into Pakistan. On top of all this, lashing out in the wrong direction undermines allies in the moderate Muslim world, making collateral damage of the people we ought to empower.
Certainly cartoonists, like everyone, have the right to be offensive. For one thing, anyone can be offended by anything. If we are to try to communicate with our fellow humans, we always risk offending them, even if unintentionally. So let's all toughen up. But more important than that, the protection of free expression is critical because no matter who you are, you might be wrong. And no matter who the opposition is, they might be right. Or you could both be wrong. The only way to sort it out is to keep talking. There is an appealing humility in this most precious right, an important acknowledgement that we are all human and, as humans, fallible.
There is a brutal stupidity in this cycle of violence, and a perverse masochism in our eager willingness to repeat history we should condemn. Cartoonists are supposed to be creative. Surely we can imagine better ways to respond to murderous provocateurs.
Peter Dunlap-Shohl regularly offended readers for more than a quarter-century as the Anchorage Daily News cartoonist.
Michael Carey: Power to create demands need for critical judgment, not censorship
Visual representations -- statues, paintings, drawings -- have been met with violence for centuries. English Puritans destroyed or defaced Catholic icons and stained-glass windows. The Nazis made war on so-called "degenerative art." In our own time, the Taliban has destroyed statues of the Buddha, and politically agitated museum visitors have assaulted artwork in front of astonished security staffers.
The power to create is the power to offend. Picasso's "Guernica" offended the Franco regime in Spain, and Picasso knew why, Franco knew why, we know why -- because the painting conveyed the truth about the slaughter of innocents in the Spanish Civil War.
From time to time, some Anchorage readers have complained that cartoons are "not fair" or "don't tell both sides of the story." The complaint is valid but shallow. Cartoons are not balanced news stories. They are more like funhouse mirrors that bend and reshape reality.
In the hands of Mad Magazine, Barack Obama became Alfred E. Obama, the gap-toothed leader of the free world holding a sign reading "Yes we can't." (Mad parodied "The Godfather" with "The Oddfather," Marlon Brando now cast as Don Vino Minestrone.)
At one point, Mad's circulation reached more than 2 million.
Would enraged militants target Mad headquarters if the prophet appeared on the cover as Mohammed E. Neuman? Who can say. The attack on Charlie Hebdo demonstrates once again the destructive power of a tiny number of heavily armed, inflamed people.
In France and the United States there has been extensive hand wringing over the potential for "self-censorship" and "editorial cowardice." These are real concerns but they demand careful analysis. Is an editor "self-censoring" or displaying "editorial cowardice" if he or she concludes a cartoon lacks artistic merit and does not publish it? Charlie Hebdo ran a cartoon of the naked prophet on all fours, seen from behind, with his genitals hanging down. There is virtually no intellectual content in a drawing like this -- only penned contempt. Pat Oliphant, one of the world's great cartoonists, brilliantly mocked the Catholic Church's self-serving response to the pedophilia scandal without resorting to such brutish, vacuous drawing.
Exercising critical judgment is not the same thing as capitulating to terrorists.
Michael Carey is an Alaska Dispatch News columnist. He and Peter Dunlap-Shohl worked side by side at the Anchorage Daily News for 16 years.
The views expressed here are the writers' own and are not necessarily endorsed by Alaska Dispatch News, which welcomes a broad range of viewpoints. To submit a piece for consideration, email commentary(at)alaskadispatch.com