Caricature and political cartoons: essential satire or old news?

The series, now hosted on streaming platform Britbox, hasn’t lost its bite. Early on in the first episode, we find a revolting puppet of Donald Trump’s anus tweeting for him as he lies in bed; we see an alien-species Dominic Cummings trying to eat Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s new-born baby; and UK Home Secretary Priti Patel depicted as a vampire. It is at times shocking and clearly delights in its flirtation with offensiveness.

Indeed, before the first episode even aired, the early press shots of the puppets whipped up a storm of social-media controversy. Some critics argued that it was unfair to mock Greta Thunberg, the climate activist, because she is 17-years-old and has autism. Others felt that the depiction of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg leant too heavily on anti-Semitic stereotypes (including a “gratuitously large, hooked nose and ghoulish appearance”, according to the Campaign Against Antisemitism).

“They call James Gillray the father of political cartooning,” he explains, referring to the cartoonist first published in the late 1700s. What we now call editorial cartoons, however, really first started appearing in the mass-circulation press of the late 19th century. “The reason editorial cartoons came about was that newspapers were aesthetically incredibly dull, because photography didn’t really exist,” he explains. “The great thing about the cartoon is it broke up the text.”

For Tim, cartoonists are at their best throughout history when they’re not just focusing on a person’s outward appearance, but instead trying to find some deeper truth. “Cartoonists and caricaturists try to capture what they’d call their inner essence, they try to capture their being, so that very often their depictions become more like the person than the person themselves,” he says.

Tim cites Steve Bell, a veteran political cartoonist whose work is most often seen in The Guardian, as a perfect exponent of this method. Steve depicted 1990s Prime Minister John Major with his underpants over his trousers, which “captured his nerdiness”; the famously vain Tony Blair with “an ever-growing bald patch”; and David Cameron simply as a condom. “The best cartoonists,” says Tim Benson, “bring out what these people really are.”

Ellie makes a clear distinction between drawing a politician and drawing a private citizen. “For private citizens, I try to be sensitive and avoid leaning towards the grotesque,” she says. “However, for politicians and political satire, I feel all politicians should be fair game. To be free to lampoon them, point out the absurd and the unjust, is part of a healthy democracy.”

Clearly this is where Spitting Image is at its best, highlighting Dominic Cummings’ apparent lack of humanity, mocking Johnson’s buffoonery, and manifesting Trump’s ability to quite literally talk out of his arse. But perhaps in their depiction of Greta Thunberg – a teenager and a globally recognised activist, but not someone who has not sought public office – they haven’t shown enough of the sensitivity that Ellie alludes to.

It also partly comes down to the “social mores of the times”, Wilfrid adds, pointing out that in recent months several sketches from the comedy series Little Britain have been pulled from streaming platforms due to the actors using blackface. As the actors themselves have admitted, it was wrong even 15 years ago, when the episodes first aired. But even so, they were still freely available until May this year. Times have changed. As such, it’s highly likely that we’ll look back on some of today’s caricatures and cartoons and find them offensive in ways we’re not necessarily aware of now.

The other factor here is that political cartoons and caricatures are nowhere near as ubiquitous as they once were. Tim Benson points out that in the 1980s there were around 200 editorial cartoonists gainfully employed in the US; “now there are just a handful.” Meanwhile, “a number of cartoonists in Britain have been laid off this year, so we’ve lost a regular cartoon slot.” On TV, the first series of Spitting Image received up to 15 million viewers a week; the new series will probably consider itself fortunate if it garners one million.

You could argue that this kind of satire has been replaced by meme culture on social media and by comedians like Sarah Cooper and her lip-syncing over Trump speeches. It’s become a bit of a cliché over the past four years to say that satire is dead, that comedy can’t compete with the farce of reality anymore. This is where Spitting Image perhaps has an edge over the panel show and other satirical formats. If the world gets absurd, these puppets can always go one step further – and they do. Every joke might not be a tiny revolution, but the show still has the power to shock in a world practically numb to new surprises.