Many years after the fact, political caricatures are hard to appreciate properly, generally speaking – politicians’ names get forgotten, events become blurry in the collective memory, and what was surely witty and acerbic just seems incomprehensible. They’re of great historical interest, and often of considerable artistic merit, too, but it’s not something I’m particularly interested in. That being said, nothing rekindles my enthusiasm like an octopus, especially if he’s sprawled all over the map of Europe, or, heck, the whole world. Power is an aphrodisiac!
People far more erudite than myself have written about political cartooning and its historical usage of octopuses. For a good overview of the subject, head over to an article published in Never Was Magazine. If you just like looking at pretty pictures, for a more comprehensive gallery of images I recommend The image of the OCTOPUS: six cartoons, 1882-1909, which breaks down components of six historical political caricatures of the tentacled kind, and Cartography’s Favourite Map Monster: the Land Octopus, superbly informative and thoroughly illustrated. There’s a also this fascinating article, but alas, in French, so only our French-speaking readers (of which we have quite a few) will be able to partake.
I have no system – I tried including images that aren’t seen too often in articles of this kind, or ones that are stylistically striking.
But let’s go back to the 19th century, seemingly the golden age of tentacled propaganda. The line between propaganda and social criticism is blurry, of course – with my environmentalist tendencies, I think of the following trio, all condemning stabs at Standard Oil, attacked for being an unlawful monopoly, as perfectly justified attacks drawing attention to a serious problem.
Another monopoly that was detrimental enough to warrant an octopus caricature was the Railroad Monopoly:
The following trio take on the same map, making for interesting compare-and-contrast material. The years may go by, but Russia continues to be grabby… Incidentally, as I am Russian, apparently these Tentacle Tuesdays of mine were pre-ordained by Fate.
Speaking of Russia…
And speaking of communism…
Lest I be accused of all this having no relevance whatsoever to today’s political climate… well, fortunately some traditions die hard, and tentacles as a representation of an all-encroaching evil are here to stay!
I wasn’t going to let the other party off the hook… Or is it one and the same?
≈ ds
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