I Came Here For Cute Animals, But All I Got Was An In-Depth Understanding Of How Art and Politics Are Intertwined
Creating webcomics is, for the most part, a fun endeavor. I get to draw and make some jokes, and folks online get a quick laugh (or get to scratch their heads inquisitively and pretend that what I made is funny). But it’s not always a light-hearted affair. For the past several years, alongside drawings of animals saying things like “gleemp,” I’ve also been using my comics to comment on political and social issues.
Whenever I post a “political” comic, I make an effort to read every single comment. Some of them are extremely inspiring, some offer false or faulty information (which I try to correct), and others can be best described as “cruel and unusual.” While I get some of these angry replies on Twitter and Instagram, it’s among the Facebook audience that the true rage emerges. Good job Zucc!
Here’s a collection of some of my favorite FB comments that I’ve received on political posts over the years:
“This page is less innocent and more into politics each day and its sad.”
“You got famous for humour, not for knowing anything about politics”
“I kinda miss when it was only just cute and funny comics but 90% is just political which is fine and all but it’s not the content I fell in love with. Politics in its self are just horrible and 99% of American dont even understand it which makes it worst.”
“Annnnd unfollowed. I said seperate your politics from your art and you dont listen. Its one thing to be an artist and another thing to be an activist. If i wanted activism id follow activists. Not a comic artist.”
“I’m going to AGAIN ask kindly yet firmly that this nice page stays outta politics lol. I could care less about either sides views, I’m here for wholesome content, not some bs about a war I haven’t even heard about bc I refuse to watch the news, purely bc I despise world politics(‘:”
“Yeah…I don’t follow comics for the politics. B-bye now.”
“Bye tiny snek, you idiot, stick to memes”
“I cAmE HEre foR ThE cUTe AniMAls nOT poLItiCs.”
(That last one was a joke, but at this point it’s become a meme for friends and followers alike to comment variations on that theme on nearly everything I post.)
It is with my deepest regret that I must announce to the above commenters (and the thousands of others that have unfollowed me after I posted such controversial statements as “nazis are bad”) that I don’t care if you just came here for tiny snek — you’re getting the politics too. It’s a package deal.
Now here’s the part where I explain why those two things are inseparable! That’s right, I’ve tricked you into reading something educational about art and political expression.
Art is Political
Art is, and always has been, a political medium. No matter how hard you try to pull it away, art is inherently connected to the backdrop of its social and political context. (Art historian TJ Clark is a good starting point in the scholarship if you want to read more — trust me, I asked a friend with an MA in Art History.) It doesn’t matter if it’s “low art” or “high art” (if you want to divide things in a weird classist way) — as long as it was made by a human, it’s political.
Sure, not all creative endeavors, whether they’re paintings, songs, films, sculptures, literature, etchings in a cave, etc. are expressly political. But you don’t have to have a big “VOTE FOR X” sign in the middle of your canvas to make a statement about the world. Politics isn’t just candidates and campaigns and government — it’s the way that we organize our society, the resulting stratification and oppression, and the crusade for justice. And just as silence in the face of injustice can be considered a form of injustice itself, art that makes a meaningful effort to avoid politics demonstrates a political agenda through its avoidance.
I’m far from the first person to point this idea out. Author Toni Morrison put it a little bit more succinctly:
All good art is political! There is none that isn’t. And the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, “We love the status quo.”
(It’s for this reason that I also have a really hard time with the notion that you should separate the art from the artist — creative works don’t exist in a vacuum.)
In my view, the evaluation of an artist’s politics should come on a macro level. It shouldn’t be a thorough inspection for overt political and social values hidden within every miniscule detail of their work, but rather the overall messages and values that are conveyed in the totality of what they do. The majority of what I make are non-political comics, but I still make a clear effort to imbue those comics with a certain set of underlying values; values which are deeply political.
One caveat to this — it’s certainly a reality that some artists with strong political beliefs have valid reasons to steer clear of expressly political art. Sometimes you have to put food on the table, and sometimes you want to avoid threats from angry fans (and in some cases, the very real consequence of being imprisoned or killed for speaking truth to power). I’m not trying to shame my fellow artists, and the goal of this essay (or whatever this is) is not for you, the reader, to go screaming at every creative that you follow that they need to make bolder political statements. Like I said above, it’s likely that their values are already present in what they make in less obvious ways. But speaking from my personal perspective as a person who a) has a large online following for an artistic endeavor; and b) actually works full time in the politics/law space, there is no way for those two elements of my life to be divorced from each other.
But What If I Just Want To Escape?
It’s an entirely valid feeling to not want to have to think about the political issues that we face in America and across the world. Even before society broke (#roni2020), the weight of the crises and the daily political sideshow in Washington was something that could be really exhausting to deal with. I get that, and I understand that sometimes people simply don’t want to think about it. It makes sense that you might want to turn to a usually wholesome webcomic for a little escapism.
Here’s the thing though. It’s a great privilege to be able to just not think about it. If you can live your life free from politics and block out what’s happening in the world, it likely means that what’s happening isn’t really affecting you. To repeat Toni Morrison, “the ones that try hard not to be political are political by saying, ‘We love the status quo.’” And maybe you don’t love the status quo. But if you can functionally ignore it and carry on with your day to day, it means you probably don’t hate it either. It means you can live with it, while it’s literally killing others.
That doesn’t mean you have to devote your entire life to marching in the streets and protesting (although that’s a good vibe to have), but it does mean that you should at least devote a little time to learning about, and getting angry about, the injustices in our society. It’s uncomfortable to dwell on some of these truths, but to solve our problems, we must first be aware of them.
Comics Have Always Been Political
This takes us full circle to the use of a usually silly webcomic to speak on political and social issues. I am, again, not the first person to do this! Countless webcomics have political bents. A lot of them are great. Some of them are nazis. (Do not follow webcomics artists that are nazis.)
But even before the age of the internet, the ever-evolving medium of “comics” was a tool for political expression, in a far more expansive way than just typical “political cartoons” that respond directly to the events of a given day. During World War II, Theodore Geisel (Doctor Seuss) drew hundreds of anti-fascist cartoons; Yertle the Turtle is a direct allegory for the rise and fall of Hitler. At the same time, many of his drawings were incredibly racist, especially towards Japanese people. No excuse there.
In the weeks after Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated, Charles Schultz added Franklin, a Black child, to the cast of the Peanuts. It doesn’t look like that radical an action today, and in many ways it wasn’t, as Schultz only did so after he received a letter from a fan asking him to, and Franklin never became as central a character as the otherwise all-white cast (yes, I said it, Snoopy is white). But it was still an attempt to increase racial representation and the introduction of a “political” element into the strip.
I could go on and on and on with historical examples. But I won’t because this is already kind of long.
I certainly don’t think of myself as some sort of arbiter of what’s right and what’s wrong, or a person who knows how to solve every problem that we face. I have a lot of privilege in this world and still have a lot to learn. Nor do I think of myself as a particularly talented artist — I’m making largely wholesome comics about woodland creatures and snakes eating beans. But what I do have is a platform, and an education in politics and economics and history. The wise Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn once said that “the ability to speak does not make you intelligent.” He may be right in many contexts, but in our world, if you have the ability to speak and a well thought out message to promote equality and equity and justice, then I believe you have a moral imperative to share it.
Speaking can come in so many forms — it doesn’t even have to be your voice. Uplifting the unheard and amplifying their voices is key to combatting injustice. Some artists who attempt to “go political” can do it poorly, applying their artistic license to a complex situation they don’t fully understand or respect. Sometimes, it can be better to serve as the megaphone for someone else’s message.
Some of my political comics are simply educational, designed to remind us about oft forgotten or twisted events in history. Others have been to advocate for others to speak out or get involved in issues like the teachers’ strikes or combatting gun violence. Many have been to raise money for local and national causes, from the Yellowhammer Fund to RAICES to the ACLU. There’s no right way to do any of this. But what I think is truly important is that we all do something, especially those of us lucky enough to have an online soapbox.
The key takeaway here, for all you lovely people who’ve made it this far, is that art and politics must co-exist. Artists have values and beliefs that are informed by their society, and those are subsequently translated into their work. And that’s why I’m going to keep bashing you over the head with fundraisers and history lessons and calls to action, amidst the smollini animáles. Those are my values, and that’s my work. I hope you all stick around!
P.S. Your reward for reading the whole thing is a little political philosophy lesson… how fun!
