= 03 August 2024 =

Weekly Single Page of Cartoonmag / No 13

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NO:13 , Saturday, 03 August 2024

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WE CARTOONISTS…

Abbas Naaseri / For years, I have chosen to depict pain with a smile, and this choice stemmed from my suffering. The governor reminded me with a smirk that this art would not provide me with bread and butter. He was right, a painful truth mixed with a smirk about the choice both of us had made. But the pain and the cartoonish smile we endure are worlds apart from his venomous words and suffering. In (March 2022), at the closing ceremony of the last festival I organized, the governor when  handing me my statue, said: "If you sell this, will they give you a loaf of bread in return?" His mocking laughter, was a blow to my soul, showing his insensitivity. It's a shame even firewood answers such an insensitive man—a person who considers poverty an inherent part of an artist's life. With a lump in my throat from my pain, that nobody ever empathized with them, I replied: As long as people like you hold this position, the situation for us cartoonists will remain the same.

The situation for us cartoonists has always been like this behind the golden statues of festivals. It's akin to the line of the character "Masky" in the 1960s animation "Deputy Dawg," who would say, "And now the famous lawman, Deputy Dawg, speaks to you, a man with a heart of gold behind his tin star...". Behind the tin star of Deputy Dawg and our metal statues lies a mission—to promote peace, security, justice, tranquility, and happiness in our world. It extends beyond our inner selves to accompany the world's pains.

We are those who, in pursuit of our mission in this universe, portray it through seeing pain juxtaposed with a smile. We cartoonists, in a borderless geography, become a universal language with our smiles, to show what is unseen or deliberately ignored.

Behind these metal statues, which perhaps a responsible person believes would not even be exchanged for a piece of bread, lies a world of our memories, our lives, and the effort we put into achieving them. We are not willing to trade this world for another because we cartoonists believe in our mission and have decided to remain cartoonists despite all our shortcomings.

True, our works might not have a place in the shopping baskets of families, but cartoons are present in people's daily lives. Cartoons promote a universally understandable language without being taught in foreign language universities. Cartoons are a display of a piece whose logic in presentation sometimes penetrates the heart of the audience through a laugh or a sweet or bitter smile. This unique language can be understood by audiences of any race, ethnicity, dialect, or educational level, and this is the secret of the accessibility of understanding this art. Cartoonists use the effective and pleasing tool of a smile to enhance the impact of their works. The audience sees a seemingly simple cartoon but does not realize the expertise required of cartoonists to create a work.

Creating a cartoon is not an accidental event. Cartoons are based on storytelling, and a cartoonist must be proficient in writing, especially in the form of humor. This is harder than being a writer because the message must be conveyed in a much narrower format and a few seconds.

We cartoonists first need to master drawing, color theory, even composition, and scene design principles. We must direct our characters as if we were stage directors, design costumes for our characters, and handle camera angles and scenes like a film director. We also need to figure out how to show sound and visual effects within a limited two-dimensional frame. As sociologists and psychologists, we study social relations and people's lives thoroughly. We might spend hours, days, and weeks thinking until we produce a work that must connect with the audience in seconds.

Our art as cartoonists is the result of our thinking, studying, specialization, exaggeration, dreaming, imagination, maturity, genius, wit, and accumulated experience.

No art has the capability like cartoons to become a collection of distinguished works in various cultural, social, and political contexts

A call for submissions has a more significant impact than hundreds of articles and books. For instance, a few years ago, the then-President of the United States went to the podium and gave a speech due to a festival. The power of cartoons is such that it can provoke reactions from world leaders. Added to this is the influence of cartoon and caricature publications worldwide from the beginning until now.

I once read, "It may sound like a bold claim, but I believe cartoonists are valuable people." I wrote this article to say: Cheers to us, amidst all this pain, what a ruby pain we have..

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