CSotD: … and she is us
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Liza Donnelly posted this to her blog.
I like it because it is open-ended, which goes back to last week's rant that included an anecdote in which Ezra Pound (I think) snaps "It's a poem. It doesn't mean anything, lady. It's just a goddam poem."
Well, this is just a goddam cartoon, but it's brilliant and I'm not sure, if pressed by an eager fan, that Donnelly could tell exactly what it means. And judging from her relatively brief comments at the blog, I'm pretty sure she couldn't:
When I drew this cartoon, I actually had in mind that the little girl was asking her mother about whether or not she acted to fight against this war on women. But I see now it could be interpreted either way. No matter. Children hear the word war and interpret it any way they can. It’s just sad we have to have such a word.
But she's not required to explain it, for two reason:
A. Art proceeds from a level below consciousness. Critics can, after the fact, draw all sorts of conclusions about what it means and where it sprang from, but it just is. The meaning is within the piece, and within the onlooker. If you get it, you may not know why. If a critic helps you understand that, good. But you get it or you don't. Art that is produced with a conscious purpose is not art, it's illustration.
B. She's a cartoonist for a reason. She's not supposed to be as eloquent a writer as she is a cartoonist. Carlos Santana and Doc Watson relate to their guitars in a way that, no matter how many music lessons you take, you never will. Liza Donnelly is far from illiterate, but she's a cartoonist at heart. She draws things, very well. She relates to her pen in a way we don't
Which leaves it up to people like me to write about things.
So, for those who may not recall the historical underpinnings of this cartoon, here is the original poster, which began appearing around England in 1915:
Like the cartoon, it's open-ended, which forces the viewer to perform the analysis, to provide the answers, to fill in the blanks.
But it contains an overwhelming aura of regret, tinged with a little Henry V: "Gentlemen in England now a-bed shall think themselves accurs'd they were not here, and hold their manhoods cheap whiles any speaks that fought with us upon Saint Crispin's Day."
The poster, like Marley's ghost, is an exhortation to act before the opportunity to shape your legacy has passed. The boy plays with redcoats, so we may assume Britain won the war, but, of course, when the poster was created, that was uncertain. But the implication adds a dimension, asking not so much whether Britain needs your particular help, as whether you will one day be able to look back and know that, when the moment came, you stepped up.
Or did you sit back and let others shoulder your share of the load?
It's all very well for little girls to learn about Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Sojourner Truth and Emmeline Pankhurst and Alice Paul, but that's just a re-ordering of Old School History in which children memorize the names and deeds of Great Men, as if all it takes to make things right is for some Great Person to act. Adding women and people of color to the list does not change the authoritarian fallacy at the heart of that approach, the lesson in passivity that lies at its core.
The poster, and the cartoon, like Henry's speech, call upon the mass to get up and follow, to act, to be part of something bigger than themselves.
So that, when Gandhi-ji walks to the sea to make salt, he does not march alone.
So that, when Dr. King asks for a bus boycott, there are no black faces on those buses.
So that, when Henry charges the French line, he does not do so as one vainglorious fool, wasting his life in a solitary, futile gesture.
And so that, as women's rights and dignity are taken from them, bit by bit, law by law, court decision by court decision, joke by joke, insult by insult, princess fantasy by princess fantasy, they do not sit passively waiting for Susan B. Anthony and Shirley Chisolm and Bella Abzug to rise from their graves and fix things for them.
The poster was created during "The War to End All Wars," and, of course, that war did not end all wars. But it did end, and the current war on women will end, and will not be the last.
The question is, how will it end? And what world is that little girl living in, as she asks the question?
And what will her mother answer? What will she think?
And what can she do about it now?
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