Recently, the news about the US’s spy Snowden arouses people’s concerns on US’s surveillance. People around the world criticized US’s attempts as intrusion of personal privacy. Recently, I read a cartoon about this issue. It uses the technique of satire and irony, allusion and caricature, as well as symbolism and labeling, to blame president Obama’s monitoring policy.
satire and caricature
This cartoon uses satire to represent the criticism of President Obama’s surveillance policy. The presence of Pinocchio creates an irony that Obama is more dishonest than the kid as his nose is bigger. And, the writer like to focuses more on the big ‘ear’ because it try to put emphasize on the recent news about the government’s wiretapping of citizens. The kid’s speech bubble of ‘WOW and NOSE’ also creates an irony as it tries to exaggerate Obama’s effect of getting a bigger ear. It seems that his history of telling lies is ‘worsen’ than the lying kid. The contrast of the ‘consequence’ of telling lies makes the cartoon more funny and interesting.
Moreover, the use of caricature makes Obama’s image ugly. It is a way to express people’s anger about Obama’s broken promise of ‘no more illegal wiretapping of American citizens’ in the president election (CNS News, 2013).
Symbolism is also used. Obama symbolized the government’s stance in this issue. The government has no intention to deal with citizens’ complaints. For example, Obama keeps on ‘listening’ to citizens’ privacy instead of giving response to the citizen. Also, the ‘government surveillance’ is no longer a secret because the words are clearly shown on the ‘bigger’ ear. The hidden words become clearer… And, we realized that the government surveillance violated US’s democratic values such as freedom of speech.
Source:
http://www.mcclatchydc.com/2013/06/10/193462_a193743/mcclatchy-cartoons-for-the-week.html
http://www.cnsnews.com/blog/bob-parks/obamas-2007-promise-no-more-illegal-wiretapping-american-citizens