Causing a net reduction in economic activity, and making everyone poorer. In practice, sharing the wealth usually means moving everyone closer to zero. It’s fairer! We can all be poor together.

But, yes, figuring out what to do that’s truly meaningful is tough.

Be careful what you wish for ;-)…

Boys who are bullied, men who are killed at work, and so on actually are harmed by the workings of patriarchy.

I’m not sure that the patriarchy is always the root cause in these cases (everything from class to neurochemistry can play a role, depending on the specific example*), although the patriarchy definitely twists boys and men in ways that are detrimental to them, leading to their being bullied, hurt, and killed. I don’t mean to belittle that.

I feel free to “cast” characters who are women, POC, and/or fat in some of the “negative” roles, but I also try to avoid doing so where the negative traits in question would obviously dovetail with common negative stereotypes about women, POC, and/or fat people.

I agree. For one thing, portraying women, POC, and/or fat people only as brilliant, beautiful saints while “allowing” white men in your cartoons to have foibles, make mistakes, and be silly sometimes creates the impression that women, POC, fat people, etc are acceptable ONLY if they never make a mistake. Which, of course, leaves out all real women, POC, etc.

I don’t think this cartoon crossed over that line, but of course you might disagree with me on that.

I think that the stereotype of the guilty white liberal leans somewhat more to the guilty white liberal woman, so in that sense it wanders close to the line. However, women, even rich women, usually feel relatively powerless. So a wealthy woman may think that she is powerless to change her situation, or to help anyone, yet at the same time be aware of her position of privilege and feel guilty about it. Therefore, the cartoon “feels” more right to me as it is than when I mentally recast the character as a man. (Oddly enough, when I recast, I also see the cartoon as being much more sympathetic towards the character than I did initially. Some sort of unconsious tendency on my part to be harder on women than on men? Or assumption about your or the world’s tendencies? Not sure what that’s all about…)

Anyway, I hope that my comments are useful to you in some way and didn’t come out as Ampersand bashing. For unrelated reasons** I was feeling rather negative over the past few days and that may have affected my ability to correctly read a cartoon.

*Though isn’t that also true of women’s oppression?

**Including, actually, the possible planned attacks on Iran, but that’s a different rant…

I agree, although doing so forces me to think well of Bill Gates (who is sharing his wealth), which is not the easiest thing in the world.

Of all the possible solutions to the character’s dilemma, the one she picks (continue feeling guilty, do nothing to aleviate the reason for the guilt, take drugs), is probably the worst possible, although “declare greed to be good and try your best to hoard even more” would be a close second.

She could give her money away and go live under a bridge, but frankly, that is rather a self-indulgent solution. Who does it really help in the end?

She could use her money to educate herself about the problems of poverty in the world, pick one or more to work on, and start trying to help the people she’s feeling guilty about. This could involve anything from becoming a social worker to starting a financial organization that gives out microloans to becoming a politician and changing the laws to make them more equitable. Yes, attempts by rich people to help poor people can go drastically wrong too, but they must be better than sitting around angsting over something that you can change.

One reason I felt uncertain about criticizing the cartoon at all is because it is so good: A perfect, succinct demonstration of liberal guilt at its silliest. And I certainly don’t want to detract from Amp’s brilliance in showing that. But the very fact that it was an excellent cartoon led me to want to point out problematic possible readings…Or am I starting to sound like the character in the cartoon…

Why not? I’m asking about the underlying conceptual question. Of course it applies much differently to a novelist; but I’m asking you. (Note emphasis on asking, not telling.) Maybe I shouldn’t have brought up the novelist as a sample.

I think perhaps you actually mean “just creating the art with no regard for what other people might think, or the social context it’ll be read in.”

Yes, that’s what I meant.

Finally, I don’t understand why you say that by avoiding harmful stereotypes I’m reinforcing them. Could you expand your argument?

Well, not reinforcing the stereotypes per se - but having your behavior constrained by them. Isn’t one of the primary evils of stereotypes the fact that they constrain people, put limitations on their options for unjustified reasons? Maybe I should say rather than you strengthening the stereotype, the stereotype is victimizing you.

Although, in your case, the victimization is technically voluntary. You don’t have to be constrained by the stereotypes - you just don’t think that the pain or offense that would be caused as the by-product of that decision are worth the increment in artistic freedom. (I hope I’m reading you right on this one. If I’m wrong, it’s the error of ignorance and not arrogance.)

On behalf of nerdy white Catholic guys whose sensitivities you’ve thus respected, thanks. ;) And I understand and to a degree share the empathic impulse underlying it. On the other hand, I think that as an artist (to the microscopic increment that anything I do is art) I come down more in the direction of erring on the side of a less edited presentation. If I have an inspiration to write a three-panel comic about [oppressed minority] doing [stereotypical behavior or trait], I think I’d do it, if I thought it would be good.

I wonder where artists come down on this.

The last bit was meant as an illustration to say you’re right to make choices like the one here, where you have a rich woman instead of a rich guy, because the world just isn’t tidy.

Much of the problem that Ampersand and earlier cartoonists like Jules Feiffer have is that you’ve got a tiny amount of space to make a point. And someone who twitches whenever women are characters will be immediately suspicious if you make a woman a brunt of a joke.

This makes it sound like I’m operating out of fear of offending oversensitive, overzealous readers. But the truth is, I myself am such a reader. :-) I do what I do because I think it makes me a better cartoonist, not because I think it’s wrong for readers to criticize perceived harmful stereotypes in media.

But the great cartoonists don’t exclude anyone from any of the roles that humans can take. Silliness comes from the mouths of men, women, blacks, whites, capitalists, communists, theists, atheists, straights, gays, and everyone in-between.

Actually, quite a few great cartoonists in effect did cartoons that were only about white people, or white people plus a single token black character. It doesn’t mean that they’re not great cartoonists, but in some cases — despite the enormous merit of their work as individual creations — it means they were contributing to a harmful overall pattern.

Make all your bad people white men, and you’ll never notice what Margaret Thatcher or Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas or Alberto Gonzales have done.

I’m not sure that criticism is applicable to how I write my cartoons nowadays, Will. I certainly admire other cartoonists’ lampooning those people in their cartoons, but I don’t really do cartoons which focus on individual politicians (regardless of their color). I used to do that stuff, but that was years ago; now I try to do cartoons that are more about general systems of power than about individual miscreants.

So saying “what if a novelist used your system” is a pointless question. Obviously, a novelist wouldn’t approach novel-writing the exact way I approach writing political cartoons, nor would I say they should.

More broadly, I don’t understand how what I’m doing isn’t “just creating art, and letting it stand on its own.” In the long run, most of the people who read my cartoons read them without my explanations; to me, that’s the art standing on its own. I think perhaps you actually mean “just creating the art with no regard for what other people might think, or the social context it’ll be read in.”

Finally, I don’t understand why you say that by avoiding harmful stereotypes I’m reinforcing them. Could you expand your argument?

That said, I think you’re right to wonder “how his own boundaries give power to these stereotypes by the very avoidance of them.” I love artists like Lenny Bruce who grab the forbidden and shake it inside out.

But I don’t think it’s fair to compare the considerations you make for a novel with those you make for a four-panel cartoon. In a novel, you have room to make Leon the black drug dealer a human. In a cartoon, you’ve got to expect some people to simply look and say, “It’s a black drug dealer! You’re racist!” I try to just accept that and tell the stories that interest me, but I understand why it makes artists nervous.

Shetterly for the win!

(Good to be agreeing with you again, Will.)

My question to Amp is really trying to get him to explore (or more likely, articulate what he’s already explored internally) how his own boundaries give power to these stereotypes by the very avoidance of them. He’s self-limiting his work; that has implications. Since Amp is one of the artists I most respect, I’m interested to know how he perceives this.

Much of the problem that Ampersand and earlier cartoonists like Jules Feiffer have is that you’ve got a tiny amount of space to make a point. And someone who twitches whenever women are characters will be immediately suspicious if you make a woman a brunt of a joke.

But the great cartoonists don’t exclude anyone from any of the roles that humans can take. Silliness comes from the mouths of men, women, blacks, whites, capitalists, communists, theists, atheists, straights, gays, and everyone in-between. Make all your bad people white men, and you’ll never notice what Margaret Thatcher or Condi Rice or Clarence Thomas or Alberto Gonzales have done.

So basically, stereotypes control your art?

Not intending to snark; I understand your dilemma. But it does seem like your ethics end up handing control over your voice to the people you would consider to be most problematic.

You’re in a pretty fortunate position on this whole thing, being an editorial cartoonist. Since nobody expects you to depict the whole world the way we would if you were writing novels or something, you can pick and choose to avoid stereotypes. Artists who create larger pictures would be in a terrible bind using your system, though. I’d like to write a novel about Leon the black guy with a drug problem, but POC = drug user in the stereotypes, so every novel about Leon is off the table. And so on.