This editorial cartoon by Bill Richards was posted in The Red and Black on April 17th, 2007. The cartoon portrays Virginia Tech’s logo on a black background with the “T” replaced with a smoking gun. This was just a day after the horrific school shooting which took place at Virginia Tech which killed 32 people and left 25 others wounded. Many readers were infuriated with this cartoon as it seemed to be joking about one of the worst mass shootings in U.S. history. At first I was also horrified when I saw this cartoon but after further consideration I feel that the cartoon’s artist made a vast error in the interpretation of his work. I believe the artist was trying to infer how Virginia Tech changed from a very prestigious school to a murder scene overnight.
There is a variety of reasons why the artist wasn’t able to successfully portray his thoughts. His first mistake was drawing a cartoon about a tremendously fresh, sensitive subject. If he would’ve waited just a little while, people wouldn’t have had such a harsh reaction to it. The second problem is that he posted this cartoon in Virginia Tech’s school newspaper. This school just went through an extremely traumatic experience where they lost many friends. This school needed support and sympathy, not cartoons about the tragedy. The final mistake that the artist made was that he didn’t consider how others would interpret his illustration. It seems like he didn’t even think about what he was drawing at all. All he needed to do was reflect back on his finished work before he published it to avoid this whole incident.
No comments:
Post a Comment