Friday 29th of March 2024

cartoon controversy...

leunig

Controversial cartoonist Michael Leunig has been accused of unfairly judging mothers in a cartoon that suggested some love their phones and Instagram more than their children.

Key points:
  • Some people took to Twitter to "fix" and re-caption the cartoon to address its apparent criticism of mothers
  • Mothers said the cartoon failed to understand the reality of modern parenting
  • Others argued the issue of parents becoming distracted by their phones was a fair target

 

The cartoon, published in Melbourne's The Age newspaper on Wednesday, showed a mother reading her phone as she pushed an empty pram while an infant lay on the ground behind her.

A four-line poem accompanying the cartoon said the mother was "busy on Instagram" when her baby had fallen from the pram "unseen and alone, wishing that he was loved like a phone".

Feminist author Clementine Ford said Leunig's cartoon amounted to "condescending judgement" and labelled him a "f***ing gronk".

"I bet you never spent hours walking babies around in a pram, feeling isolated and alone and terrified," she wrote in a tweet, which has been retweeted more than 400 times and attracted more than 3,500 likes.

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-24/leunig-cartoon-criticising-mother...

 

To Gus Leonisky, Cartoonist ordinaire, this cartoon could be a fully live observed situation. Leunig is usually more whimsical, but from time to time he hits the jackpot where it hurts, yet not on a universal scale, as some women are careful while others are not. Daily, one sees women pushing prams crossing busy roads paying ziltch attention to cars, trucks and other prams, as they look down to their pryer smartphone.

 

Gus has observed that what used to be a three-second attention span on a mobile (cell) phone a few years ago, is now reduced to less than a second on average, while the one-thumb pushes onto the next image or topic. Nothing enters the brain except a subconscious illusion that will be reinforced by some unavoidable boarded advertising when the person inadvertently looks up. Something that someone does not need will soon be bought... Google made a few more bucks...

 

See also:

http://www.yourdemocracy.net.au/drupal/node/33229

the dog has a say...

And family doggie-mutt named Posh

Usually leashed to the outside table café
Where mum stops for a bit of nosh
Can only whine at the empty roller-tray.


"Hey! Look! Babe is a hundred feet away
trying to swim in Lavender Bay
In the race that will be shown on Instagram!"
Barks the mongrel left outside.


"Next time", woofs the neutered mongrel 
"Leave us in your locked SUV heap 
with no window opened, so we can both die
of 50 F-ing bloody degrees heat, inside."

from 30 years ago...

Of phones and babies. These brilliant Leunig cartoons were published nearly 30 years ago. Gus thought that in regard to the present "controversy", they deserved a bit of airing. 

phones

 

Phones: Leunig predictions were fairly accurate except for the phone with the swimming pool...

 

babes

Babies: Leunig is relatively on song here, as we end up the days of our lives in a "home" (euphemism for dementia clinic in a retirement village with no hope of understanding or seeing the world outside any more)...

bummer...

The artist [Michael Leunig's sister — Mary] said she published the response because she was “sticking up for mothers” and because her brother was “picking on people who don’t need it”.

“But for this particular one … I know mothers. I talk to women with children and the load they carry …And they are not the people that Michael thinks they are.

“I think that he does not talk to people enough, he doesn’t listen enough. And because of that, he is missing out. If he was to speak to people, to talk to these women, I don’t think he would do something as stupid as that.”

Mary, 69, said she had become estranged from her brother in recent years.

“It is difficult for mothers, we try very hard,” she said.

“That’s the only reason I respond to that [cartoon]. I could have let that go. If it was about feminists, I could have let it go because he does that and we all know. But I couldn’t let this one go. Because I do know women and parents who have kids, and he just shouldn’t do that. He shouldn’t do that.

“But listen, he’s getting old,” she added. “That’s all I can really say about that particular cartoon.”

 

bummer

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/2019/oct/24/michael-leunigs-artist-sis...

ducking under the duck, because of an opinion...

The Michael Leunig cartoon that suggested mothers love their phones and Instagram more than their children was originally rejected by the Spectrum editor for Saturday’s Sydney Morning Herald and Age and published on Wednesday’s opinion pages instead.

Leunig has been offending large sections of the population for decades, notably parents who use childcare or vaccinate their kids.

Sources told Weekly Beast the cartoon was rejected on the grounds of taste but executive editor James Chessell says the decision to move it to the op-ed pages was taken because it “expresses an opinion”.

“We like the duck ones for Saturday,” he said. “There’s not a conspiracy.”

 

Read more:

https://www.theguardian.com/media/commentisfree/2019/oct/25/michael-leun...

 

 

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Cripes... I'm getting too old for this caper. Leave the cartoonist alone...

free piano lesson...

Michael Leunig has denied his cartoon of a mother ignoring her baby was misogynistic after he received heavy criticism over the drawing.

Key points:
  • The cartoonist said he was 'engulfed in free-floating hate' after his drawing was published
  • His cartoon depicted a mother ignoring her baby while looking at her phone, which some criticised as being unfair to mothers and misogynistic
  • Leunig denied this, saying the work came from a "special interest" in infant development

 

The cartoonist was accused of unfairly judging mothers after his drawing appeared in Melbourne's The Age newspaper last week. His sister Mary Leunig, also a cartoonist, called it "feminist baiting".

It was accompanied by a poem about a mother being "busy on Instagram", with her abandoned baby lamenting he was "unseen and alone, wishing that he was loved like a phone".

Leunig has defended the cartoon in an opinion piece titled Aiming to stir the possum, I got engulfed in free-floating hate, published by The Age.

"I drew a mother not out of misogyny but because of my lifelong special interest in the mother-infant relationship and all that is at stake in that early connection," he wrote.

"To paraphrase [paediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald] Winnicott: the attentive, loving eye contact made by mother with the baby is crucial in the child's developmental process.

"What the father can do best at this point is to protect and nourish the flourishing of this early mother-child connection."

 

Read more:

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-11-01/leunig-mother-phone-cartoon-backl...

 

 

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