Yup. It’s all about football this week. I am not going to try to avoid all those cartoons this week, especially since everything else is a bit of a downer. Of course, there are a lot of cartoons commenting on how football dominates.. well.. everything these days (here, here, here, here & here). Then, there are football-themed caricatures. Lots of them. You should browse through our collection if you haven’t done so yet and you should sign up for the 2010 CARICUP i’ve you did one of these caricatures. The third category I identified is general goal-centered football gags. These tend to be a bit old-fashioned (here, here, here & here).
Personally, I am more interested in cartoons that specifically deal with the 2010 World Cup. Among German artists a new subgenre of football cartoons has sprung up: the Vuvuzelatoon. Part of this national phenomenon is probably due to the plastic trumpets’ name somewhat resembling the name of famous German football player Uwe S. (here, here, here, here & here).
Of course I am also interested in cartoons on the 2010 World Cup in nations other than Germany. So far I have found cartoons from Turkey, Brazil and Palestine. Please tell me, if there are others.
I also noticed how the phenomenon of perceiving this South African World Cup primarily as an African World Cup is also found in cartoons. Since this is the first World Cup taking place in an African country this definitely is a valid way of looking at the event. On toonpool.com this tendency shows, for example, in some illustrations that are more in a ‘general’ African vein (here, here & here). And, of course, there are some cartoons that contrast “Africa’s hungry children” with the decadence that is the current football spectacle (here, here, here & here). African artist Damien Glez once told me that he would mind such generalizations. Still, I don’t feel comfortable with the way actual human suffering is thus turned into a cliché.
Cartoons of Interest
Regarding the problem mentioned above, I was happy to find “Fußball-Chance” by German artists Jünger & Schlanker. It effectively plays on the rhetoric of ritualized pity and creates and absurdly funny image. The caption reads “For many of them, football is the only way to escape their misery.”
Tags: Fifa, football, fußball, futbol, last week, letzte woche, soccer, toonpool.com caricup 2010, WM, World Cup
