CSotD: It’s not ordinary when it happens to you
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I don't often pick a cartoon based solely on its artwork, and this Damien Glez cartoon certainly has a deserving message beyond its art alone.
But in other hands, it would be "yep, he's right" and move on to the next one.
There is something obscene, after all, in the western nations obsessing over the problems of too much food — the headline on the magazine is "July/August – Stay on the Line!" (in essence, remember your diet) — while others have none.
But other artists have pointed out the incongruity. It's not a fresh or stunning observation.
Until Glez takes it up and insists, through his art, that it is not a commonplace observation at all.
Funny thing about natural disasters — he said, posting late amid power failures, flooded streets and picturesque covered bridges reduced to kindling — they become a steady drumbeat on the news and it's easy to become deaf to the beat.
But for each person effected, it's not a common occurrence. And Irene wasn't as big a storm as we thought it might be, but if you were plucked out of your car by firefighters, and then watched it swept down the Connecticut River, if you are seeing your house tumble into the waters, if you are the owner of a store that is now three feet underwater, it's likely hard to say that Irene wasn't so bad.
Yes, the Sahel seems constantly on the edge of crisis. We see the stories on the news, we see the pictures of women in their robes, the tiny children, and we think, well, there it is again.
But Glez reminds us that it is fresh for the people there, and with his artwork, he dares us to look into the face of death without a sense of immediacy, and relevance.
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