Photo Credit: Cam Cardow, Ottawa Citizen
“Sight Gags” is our weekly nod to the ironic and carnivalesque in a vibrant democratic public culture. We typically will not comment beyond offering an identifying label, leaving the images to “speak” for themselves as much as possible. Of course, we invite you to comment … and to send us images that you think capture the carnival of contemporary democratic public culture.
Mixed media is the message?
I love this. Despite the caption, this hand-drawn cartoon featuring a human hand arranged to make a statement about the power of portable technology, incidentally argues for the continued relevance of the editorial cartoon. Cardow’s use of another manual weapon (pen and ink, with a little photo-montage thrown in) to introduce the 21st C weapon highlights the irony of the cartoonist’s own caption and reminds us of WJT Mitchell’s admonition that “all media are mixed media.”
Great point by ER. It extends to the Iranian protest movement as well: what has been celebrated in some quarters as the triumph of new media (e,g., cell phones and Twitter) has in fact been a dynamic process involving provisional and at times remarkably effective combinations of both traditional and new media by advocates and journalists making it up as they go.