TOW #19: Political Cartoon as a Visual Text

As tensions flared once again this month between the United States government and that of North Korea, political cartoonists once again turned to the deep seeded hostility for comedic inspiration. In this comic, a vintage Japanese warplane, representing hackers who recently compromised massive amounts of data from Sony Pictures, is seen bombarding the aforementioned company with binary code.

This comic, as published in The Week several weeks ago, is directed towards the educated masses of the American public. This is the case due to the fact that this publication's primary audience resides in the United States, and international publications of this publication are scant. It is directed more specifically towards the educated American public because the primary audience for a publication such as this would be politically conscious, liberally opinionated, highly-educated individuals. While this comic in and of itself is easily understandable, much of the content published in The Week is aimed at this sort of an intellectual audience. It is important to understand who the intended audience for this sort of a political cartoon is, as that viewership plays a large role in determining the sort of rhetoric that the comic makes use of.

In so far as this rhetoric is concerned, the comparisons being made between  modern day computer hacking against major corporations to achieve political ends, and the bombing of Pearl Harbor at the dawn of WWII in 1941 is blatant, but nuanced. While the comic can easily be taken at face value,  as a visual text showing a modern occurrence of a mostly historic issue, the level of nuance that the comic features are worthy of discussion, Perhaps the most interesting trait of this comic is the comical way that the violation of privacy rights is portrayed, along with the comical way that a surprise attack on thousands of Americans is shown.