Political Cartoons

How to analyze a political cartoon?

Start with point out obvious marks like symbols for different things.

How is the picture “moving”?

Text helps to understand.

http://www.loc.gov/teachers/classroommaterials/presentationsandactivities/activities/political-cartoon/cag.html

The Website uses many things I thought might be useful but in the end it looking for more than just symbols and the text, that is meant to help, but also looking for Irony.

http://842673398711461099.weebly.com/5th-page-of-directions-editorial-cartoons-imperialism-and-social-justice.html

In this Cartoon Probably Spain is playing a card came against the US while the other nations are watching carefully. Whoever wins would get a few colonies all over the world and right now Uncle Sam has most of the money. The Heading of the cartoon is “A quiet little game” which it is just from the perspective of Uncle Sam.

The intention of the Cartoon is to show how easy and fast the US “stool” Spain all its colonies while the other colonial nations like Britain, Germany and Russia were just watching as so often in history.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pax_Americana

In that Cartoon Teddy is waiting with too many ambitions for the Spanish king to make a move to finally fire his long big gun that he pretends to have. On his gun is something written, so that the Spanish king can really understand him. But on the other hand with his large fleet in the back Teddy is not thinking about going once the Spanish did.

The Clothing of all the people makes it clear who is meant: The King looks still like a King from the medieval, the poor farmer who is crying in the middle needs help and the cool Texan guy on the right is lord over the World.

http://users.humboldt.edu/ogayle/hist111/empire.html

Here we have Uncle Sam sitting in nice restaurant with a lot of very good colonies served by President McKinley. Uncle Sam looks very skinny in this picture so he is likely to eat all of them but the question “Well, I Hardly know which to take first!” Shows that America is going to be a empire and President McKinley, Who has power over all of those, just waits for an opportunity to finally make it official. The Question that these are independent people on those Islands is not important at all, they are already ready to be served.

http://ocw.mit.edu/ans7870/21f/21f.027/civilization_and_barbarism/cb_essay05.html

 In this Cartoon a heavily armed American is shown, who stands right in front of a big field of dead Filipinos while he is not even harmed. This is part of the story what happened in the Philippine American War, where way more Filipinos died than American did and where the US used strategies and weapons that were not accessible by the Philippine people. But also the Pose of that guy in front of all the dead enemies could show, that America always needed to proof itself for the world.

http://bl8keshistoryblog.blogspot.com/

Americas Boot of conquest is coming down on the Philippines and is way bigger than the president of the Philippines Emilio Aguinaldo. The big boot stepping on that Island shows how little the sense in that is and Emilio Aguinaldo tries to get it away again but has literally no chance to do so.

http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:1900s_political_cartoons_of_the_United
_States#mediaviewer/File:McKinleyNationalExpansionUncleSamPulitzer.jpg

Uncle Sam needs new clothes. After annexing so many countries he went to a tailor to get better fitting pants which will be made out of “rational expansion” and enlightened foreign policy”.

And he is just looking down on the people who try to give him “Anti-expansion-policy” drugs. But there are already leaving so Uncle Sam will continue to grow in size. And McKinley will give him once again more and more space for expansion, where the expansion is made in national institutions like this tailor shop.