This cartoon, titled “Paranoid Right”, possesses a wealth of imagery and verbal implications. The cartoon depicts a man, apparently named Virgil, who, at the beginning of President Barack Obama’s second term, is seen peering suspiciously out of his window, firearms prepared, awaiting a fate he has invented in his own head.
I’ve always said that poetry is the pinnacle of verbal expression. Poetry is the most abbreviated, concise manner in which to convey a message. The ability to play with symbolism, metaphor, and complicated language within a poem makes it one of the most effective means of transmitting a hard-hitting message. Poetry can drive a moral, story, or criticism home more effectively than any other type of written word.
Political cartoons are the visual version of poetry to me. They may carry less artistic stock than formal art, but they manage to make massive claims about our global landscape in a significantly small amount of space.
In this cartoon, there is, as McCloud might point out, a perfect harmony between images and words. The expression on the man’s face is one of obvious suspicion and contempt. The frame-within-a-frame (the television screen) helps establish the setting and behind-the-scenes motivator for the scene itself. Further, the clothing and general style of the two human figures in the cartoon seems to indicate right-wing, southern people.
Then we have the text. The man’s wife points out that no one will be coming to steal his weaponry and force him into a homosexual union with an undocumented citizen (though her language is much less politically correct). In just one sentence, this cartoon manages to sum up the massive feeling of paranoia presented by the right-wing in terms of President Obama’s position in the White House. There remains an overwhelmingly ridiculous idea that regulating gun ownership means squashing the second amendment, that legalizing gay marriage must inevitably result in the compulsory practice of gay marriage, and that the left-wing is obsessively pro-“illegal citizen” just because they tend to believe that perhaps these people should be treated as human beings.
I think if McCloud were to view this cartoon, he would find the harmony between the text and the image spot-on. Further, I feel he would find the cartoon as a whole an excellent example of political commentary and concise story-telling without veering too far from the “real.”
Ashton Brasher 