On 13 September 2022, Iranian police arrested twenty-two-year-old Masha Amini for not wearing her hijab in the prescribed manner. The police beat her severely; three days later she died from cerebral trauma. In response, under the banner of “Women, Life, Freedom,” Iranians protested Amini’s death, Iran’s systematic oppression of women, and the regime’s very existence. … Continue reading “What a Breath of Fresh Air!”: Doonesbury on Iran and the Veil.
Tag: Mark
“An Experiment in Holy Fascism”: The Iranian Revolution Comes to Walden College
In November 1978, as protests against his regime escalated, the Shah of Iran instituted military rule and clamped down violently on street demonstrations. In an interview with The MacNeil/Lehrer Report, Shahriar Rouhani, an Iranian anti-Shah activist and a doctoral candidate in physics at Yale, described the situation in Iran as “a mere calm before the … Continue reading “An Experiment in Holy Fascism”: The Iranian Revolution Comes to Walden College
“A Firehose of Awfulness”: Doonesbury on Trump, Madness, and Rape
Last time out, I examined how events such as COVID, Donald Trump’s failed coup d’etat, and his subsequent legal woes contributed to Garry Trudeau – reflecting a broader trend among more liberal Americans who’ve lost patience with their MAGA co-citizens – turning his pen against those who had abandoned their civic responsibility to support a … Continue reading “A Firehose of Awfulness”: Doonesbury on Trump, Madness, and Rape
“A Cautionary Recap of the Life of a Genuinely Awful Human Being”: Donald Trump in Doonesbury.
In his introduction to a 1968 compilation of cartoons about Lyndon Johnson, Jules Feiffer quoted an 1831 essay describing political cartoonists as those who “insult inferiority of mind and expose defects of body … [and] aggravate what is already hideous,” about their targets. Good political cartoonists, Feiffer continued, had “a blackmailer’s savvy,” allowing them to … Continue reading “A Cautionary Recap of the Life of a Genuinely Awful Human Being”: Donald Trump in Doonesbury.
“But Duane! He Won the Election!”: Political Symbolism and the First Ten Days of the Carter Administration.
Our last look at Doonesbury in the Carter years ended just after Jimmy Carter’s inauguration, with Zonker and his friend Nemo the Begonia discussing the new president’s political navieté. Nemo saw Carter’s campaign stump-speech touchstone about wanting to lead a government that was as unselfish and kind as the American people as a sign of … Continue reading “But Duane! He Won the Election!”: Political Symbolism and the First Ten Days of the Carter Administration.
“Have a Nice Day, John Mitchell”: Kent State and the Cartoon Activism of Garry Trudeau
Last week marked the 52nd anniversary of the Kent State massacre. Garry Trudeau’s strips about the tragedy (which happened about six months before Doonesbury debuted) marked an important step in his early development as a cartoonist. For the first time, Trudeau engaged in a style of activist cartooning that was explicitly political, intentionally devoid of … Continue reading “Have a Nice Day, John Mitchell”: Kent State and the Cartoon Activism of Garry Trudeau
“Well, Great. A Massive Coronary”: Death and Dying in Doonesbury
There have been, by my reckoning, five significant Doonesbury characters who have died (not counting Duke, who has “died” twice, once when he was mistakenly declared dead after being taken hostage in Iran in 1979, and once when he spent some time as a zombie in the employ of Haitian strongman Jean-Claude “Baby Doc” Duvalier). … Continue reading “Well, Great. A Massive Coronary”: Death and Dying in Doonesbury
“I Bring You Greetings from President McKinley”: Duke in American Samoa. (The Gonzo Chronicles, Part Two)
In my introduction to this series of posts about Uncle Duke, I argued that Garry Trudeau’s caricature of Hunter S. Thompson revealed the “excess, racism, greed, self-interest, and ground ethos of amorality” that defined much of American culture as the nation emerged from the failed revolutions of the 1960s.In these next two posts, I’m going … Continue reading “I Bring You Greetings from President McKinley”: Duke in American Samoa. (The Gonzo Chronicles, Part Two)
“It Sure Is Against the Law.” Marijuana, Part One: Zonker’s Bust and Box Brown’s Cannabis.
On 23 June 2019, Garry Trudeau returned to a topic that has woven its way through Doonesbury since the earliest days of the strip: marijuana. Zonker asks Zipper to sweep out the drying shed at their (now quasi-legal) marijuana grow-op, Z&Z Bud. Zipper resents having to do menial work when he could be focusing on … Continue reading “It Sure Is Against the Law.” Marijuana, Part One: Zonker’s Bust and Box Brown’s Cannabis.
The Gonzo Chronicles, Part I. “That Place Where the Wave Finally Broke and Rolled Back”: Reconciling Duke and Hunter S. Thompson.
In 1984, I was a first-year student at John Abbott College in suburban Montreal. In my last year of high school, I had heard about a John Abbott English teacher named Rod Smith, who taught a course titled “The Vision and the Apocalypse," which focused on books and films that came out of, or dealt … Continue reading The Gonzo Chronicles, Part I. “That Place Where the Wave Finally Broke and Rolled Back”: Reconciling Duke and Hunter S. Thompson.
Reading Doonesbury 