TWO #23 Political Cartoon by Chan Lowe

     

Visual Goals

-Pick a visual that requires thought 

-Pick a topic outside of my comfort zone

Writing goals

-Strong thesis

-Direct evidence from text  

       Political Cartoonists have the power to point out problems in the world, which many others would never dare to say out loud. In a political cartoon in the Tribune of Two nameless company bosses done by Chan Lowe is a powerful statement on religion in cooperate America. Chan Lowe has been the only editorial cartoonist at the Sun Sentimental for the past 24 years, and he was won numerous awards for his political cartoons. In this particular cartoon there is a newspaper in the background with the headline “Can corporations have religious beliefs?” The cartoon aims to answer this question through the depiction of two nonreligious bosses. Lowe uses an allusion to bible to assist in proving the purpose. The two bosses in the cartoon each have a speech bubble that split up the quote “blessed are the under compensated for we shall inherit the earth!” The dialogue is a manipulation of the many bible verses that begin with “blessed are the...” only in this cartoon it is obvious they are going against the common structure of the verse. It shows that the men hold their cutthroat business philosophy as their religion. The people who can really understand the article are those who have the background knowledge that these two men are speaking in a distorted form of religious exchange. Lowe supports his own opinion on the topic with exactly how the two men are depicted in his cartoon. These two men are both the stereotypical image of large corporate bosses. Both of the men appear to be white, middle aged, smiley blokes who are in a high rise office building overlooking a city. The unnamed men in this cartoon do not look like the most trust worthy of fellows, even the way Lowe drew their curling mouths resembles the way an evil Disney character would be drawn. Although Lowe never writes anywhere on the actual cartoon Corporations do not hold religious beliefs he makes it very obvious where he stands on the situation. He made an allusion to a text that a majority of people would be able to be able to pick up on and depicted the men as bad guys. I believe that Lowe was able to capture the message he was going for, and achieved what most political cartoonist aim to do: make the audience think about the situation.