– In what ways do political cartoons offer multiple perspectives on the ways in which gender roles and identities are socially and politically constructed?
– How, and to what extent, can humour be used to convey a truth?
– Can anything be understood without an understanding of the historical or political context?
Challenge: Can you comment on how your chosen political cartoon is similar/different from other works by Donnelly?
The cartoonist is basically trying to direct us to this idea of Female expectations by society. The girl in the cartoon is asking herself several questions based on the likelihood of her being raped. These questions are overwhelming as we can see that the cartoonist spread them around the girl such that she is pretty much completely enclosed. Caricatures have been used on certain parts of the body such as the nose which serves to evoke a sense of humour in the audience despite the upset facial expression that the cartoon holds.
Without an understanding of the social or historical context, it would be hard to analyse or comprehend the whole point of the cartoon or whichever method is used to share controversial issues with the audience. As for the above cartoon, the context of the image is most likely to be for an environment where males dominate the females and cases of rape tend to be more prevalent to such an extent that females have to be mindful of their choice of clothing as well as behavior.
This cartoon is similar to the fourth and sixth one as they all stress on the idea of rape that women of almost the same social context are exposed to. For the fourth image, the cartoonist made it appear as if a woman was raped at that particular moment whereas for this cartoon it was chiefly the set of questions that a female tends to take into account to diminish the possibility of being raped.