I must admit that I am occasionally baffled by the use of extreme caricatures in public discourse. I don't see how mocking someone's appearance could possibly be considered an accepted way to make a point.
I definitely understand the idea of someone exaggerating a feature in, for instance, a cartoon, to make someone more recognizable in a simplified drawing. But many caricaturists go out of their way to draw a semi-realistic portrait... only with extremely exaggerated features, where you would easily have recognized the person without going such lengths to hammer the point in.
Seriously, when making a point, who cares if Obama has a prominent jaw (which, by the way, I thought was considered an attractive feature in males) or that Bush has a long upper lip? Apart from the occasional low-level very crude humor that goes on in certain places (and which I sometimes enjoy with guilty pleasure), why should anyone print a drawing that makes fun of someone's appearance in such a way in, for instance, a newspaper? How can this be considered acceptable by people in general? It is completely immaterial and childish. It is on the level of flinging schoolyard insults at people you happen to disagree with.
Beyond that, I must say that I find many caricatures of today quite unsettling and sometimes even disturbing or distressing to look at - in particular the ones that jack up the feature exaggeration fifteen notches. I guess it's something about facial recognition and distorted faces that messes with my head.
I definitely understand the idea of someone exaggerating a feature in, for instance, a cartoon, to make someone more recognizable in a simplified drawing. But many caricaturists go out of their way to draw a semi-realistic portrait... only with extremely exaggerated features, where you would easily have recognized the person without going such lengths to hammer the point in.
Seriously, when making a point, who cares if Obama has a prominent jaw (which, by the way, I thought was considered an attractive feature in males) or that Bush has a long upper lip? Apart from the occasional low-level very crude humor that goes on in certain places (and which I sometimes enjoy with guilty pleasure), why should anyone print a drawing that makes fun of someone's appearance in such a way in, for instance, a newspaper? How can this be considered acceptable by people in general? It is completely immaterial and childish. It is on the level of flinging schoolyard insults at people you happen to disagree with.
Beyond that, I must say that I find many caricatures of today quite unsettling and sometimes even disturbing or distressing to look at - in particular the ones that jack up the feature exaggeration fifteen notches. I guess it's something about facial recognition and distorted faces that messes with my head.
via JREF Forum http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?t=262982&goto=newpost
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