The events in France over the past week have highlighted print media for all the wrong reasons. The journalists and cartoonists so savagely murdered by those who would deny all mankind the right to freedom of expression, were simply going about their daily routines of writing, illustrating and publishing a satirical magazine, Charlie Hebdo.
Satire has been with us for millennia, probably dating back to the Greek plays by Aristophanes. Satire and its close cousin irony, are essential elements in any free society, acknowledged as a bellwether by which to measure its degree of freedom; the more satire is tolerated in the arts and literature, the freer the society and political system. Australia must rate very highly. Satire is hated by tyrants and terrorists because it exposes the unacceptable truths behind their façades.
During World War II, a British film producer names Charles A Ridley edited footage of jackbooted stormtroopers marching and cleverly made them go to-and-fro, skip and jump to the Cockney tune of The Lambeth Walk, (assisted by the Gestapo Hep-Cats). Hitler had him put on a death list for when the Nazis invaded – you can still find the clip on Youtube.
However, it is print media that excels in effective satire. Whole books are written in satirical style, such as Orwell’s Animal Farm. At the height of the British Empire, Punch magazine emerged, not just to satirise other empirically-minded nations, but to expose the hubris and arrogance within the empire’s administration itself. Gilbert & Sullivan mocked the Admiralty with lines such as: Stay close to your desks and never go to sea//And you can all be rulers of the King’s Navy.
Charlie Hebdo’s circulation was around 50,000 copies weekly. Its next issue will have a print run of over one million (since increased to 3 million and now 5 million! - Ed). Around the world cartoonists scrambled to sketch, caption and contextualise the horror of what had happened, with Australian David Pope of the Canberra Times nailing the message with a cartoon showing a masked terrorist holding his smoking AK-47 over a dead cartoonist, still clutching his pen. “He drew first” says the terrorist. Satire does not always have to be comedic.
Online satire abounds, as does its TV incarnation such as The Chaser, Adam Hills, The Office, Shaun Micallef’s Mad As Hell and countless other programmes. But when it comes to influence, gravitas and lasting social change, nothing compares to newspapers, magazines, books, pamphlets and posters that drive to the heart of social, religious or political hypocrisy using satire as the emotive driver.
'Abbott urged to quit bike riding' – that’s reporting. 'Chain comes off Abbott’s Bike Australia' – that’s satire.
But unlike our free speech-loving PM, some sectors of Australian and other societies can not take printed satire when it exposes their own shortcomings. In Charlie Hebdo’s case, the irony of Islam, the ‘religion of Peace,’ is in having a minority element that is violent, savage and murderous, even to its own followers. Their answer is to murder 12 French citizens armed only with pens and keyboards. They even cold-bloodedly murdered a Policeman outside – who was a Muslim.
How fitting then that their murderous rampage should come to an end inside a printing office north of Paris. This crossroads of civilization, armoury of fearless truth against whispering rumour, where words and art are fixed in time not to perish or be varied on the waves of sound, this bastion of democracy and freedom proved the despots’ nemesis. Hiding inside a cardboard box under a sink, a graphic designer named Lilian Lepere was able to text message police from inside the besieged printery, providing crucial tactical information concerning locations, conversations and plans.
Lepere used 21st century communications from within a 15th century technology place to help defeat the terrorists, just as I am doing now.
We must never lose print media communication or allow it to be intimidated. As Ray Bradbury wrote in his seminal book Farenheit 451 – Wherever they burn books, they will ultimately burn people.
After Paris, Je suis Charlie, aussi. And graphic designers do good work inside cardboard boxes. Sorry, that’s satire.