{"id":3692,"date":"2025-11-17T19:49:07","date_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:49:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/17\/a-savage-art-documentary-explores-political-cartoonist-pat-oliphants-legacy\/"},"modified":"2025-11-17T19:49:09","modified_gmt":"2025-11-17T19:49:09","slug":"a-savage-art-documentary-explores-political-cartoonist-pat-oliphants-legacy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/2025\/11\/17\/a-savage-art-documentary-explores-political-cartoonist-pat-oliphants-legacy\/","title":{"rendered":"\u2018A Savage Art\u2019 documentary explores political cartoonist Pat Oliphant\u2019s legacy"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>More than 140 University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor community members gathered at the Michigan Theater Sunday afternoon for the viewing of \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/asavageart.com\/\">A Savage Art: The Life &amp; Cartoons of Pat Oliphant<\/a>,\u201d a documentary detailing the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist<a href=\"https:\/\/www.illustrationhistory.org\/artists\/pat-oliphant\"> Patrick Oliphant<\/a>. The documentary was followed by a <a href=\"https:\/\/wallacehouse.umich.edu\/the-ann-arbor-premiere-of-savage-art-the-life-cartoons-of-pat-oliphant\/\">panel discussion<\/a> hosted by the Wallace House Center for Journalists about modern-day media control and the role of editorial cartoons in questioning authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The documentary centered on Oliphant\u2019s life and the impact of his career as an editorial cartoonist spanning over half a century. It specifically focused on the long-standing history of using humor in political cartoons to question those in power, including the renewed importance of political cartoonists in today\u2019s era of<a href=\"https:\/\/carnegieendowment.org\/research\/2023\/09\/polarization-democracy-and-political-violence-in-the-united-states-what-the-research-says?lang=en\"> political polarization<\/a> and<a href=\"https:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2025\/sep\/14\/rightwing-news-media-journalism\"> the centralization<\/a> of media control.<\/p>\n<p>Beginning in 1990, Oliphant made annual visits to the University to give lectures to <a href=\"https:\/\/wallacehouse.umich.edu\/knight-wallace\/\">Knight-Wallace Fellows<\/a>, and many of his original works hang in the<a href=\"https:\/\/wallacehouse.umich.edu\/\"> Wallace House Center for Journalists<\/a> today.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Michigan Daily, Law School student Clint Keaveny said Oliphant\u2019s cartoons gave him perspective on how political cartoons have impacted political discourse over time.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-1    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cIt was interesting to see that people have had the same reactions and indignation and emotion about a lot of similar topics for a long time,\u201d Keaveny said. It kind of gave me a sense of the continuity of outrage in American politics.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, Law School student Jem Ruf, who attended the screening, said while he was unfamiliar with Oliphant\u2019s work, his view of cartoons changed after watching the documentary.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe don\u2019t, obviously, have as much exposure to print media anymore, so I thought it was really cool,\u201d Ruf stated. \u201cI didn\u2019t really understand how much artistry went into his work, so I was really blown away by some of the quality. \u2026 I kind of considered cartoons more like the Charlie Brown style, where they\u2019re not as lush and not as interesting visually.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Immediately following the film screening, director Bill Banowsky; Charles Eisendrath, journalist and former Knight-Wallace Fellowships director; and Mike Thompson, four-time Pulitzer Prize Finalist for Editorial Cartooning, discussed Oliphant and his legacy. The panel was moderated by Wallace House director Lynette Clementson.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Banowsky said the project began as a series of five-minute portraits of interesting people in Santa Fe, N.M., but became an 87-minute-long documentary after Banowsky met Oliphant and was inspired by the depth of his work.<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-2    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI had no idea about the importance or the history of political cartooning, and I had no idea that when we finished this film, that we\u2019d be in such a moment \u2026 where editorial cartooning is really almost \u2014 not a dying art, (but) it\u2019s very close to a dead art because newspapers just simply won\u2019t put these things out,\u201d Banowsky said.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Banowsky said he and his team attempted to run three ads for the event, each including an image of one of Oliphant\u2019s political cartoons, on The Daily\u2019s Instagram story as a sponsored post. Only two were run, the first including Oliphant\u2019s 2002 cartoon \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/d3ggs9wi9hwg8r.cloudfront.net\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/11120441\/ASA-still-33_00181320-1024x576.jpg\">The Annual Running of the Altar Boys<\/a>,\u201d about pedophilia in the Catholic church following<a href=\"https:\/\/www.npr.org\/2007\/01\/12\/6765175\/abuse-scandal-still-echoes-through-catholic-church\"> a string of scandals<\/a>, and the second including an unnamed cartoon depicting Alice from \u201cAlice\u2019s Adventures in Wonderland\u201d being asked to pick between two identical figures wearing \u201cRepublican\u201d and \u201cDemocrat\u201d shirts.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>The third ad, which was not run by The Daily, contained an unnamed cartoon depicting a Star of David with sharp teeth being wheeled in militaristic pursuit after a small woman labeled \u201cGaza.\u201d The cartoon has been<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nbcnews.com\/id\/wbna29899216\"> denounced<\/a> by various Jewish groups as antisemitic.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Banowsky said he felt that many people are not receptive to satire cartoons because they\u2019re afraid of inciting anger from current political leaders.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think it\u2019s important for people who are my son\u2019s generation \u2014 who haven\u2019t grown up with satire \u2014 to be able to see the history of satire, and the importance of satire, and (have) the ability to poke fun at our leaders,\u201d Banowsky said. \u201cThat is gone, and that\u2019s the real threat to a free society.\u201d<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-3    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>Adam Zyglis, Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist who was featured in the documentary,<a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/2025\/07\/11\/buffalo-cartoon-flood-threats-00448272\"> faced death threats<\/a> this past summer after his<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/p\/DL0LIspxGzu\/?utm_source=ig_embed&amp;utm_campaign=invalid&amp;ig_rid=0aacd58a-52a5-4ad2-8c86-5c14a0c72117\"> cartoon<\/a> depicting a man wearing a MAGA hat submerged in the Texas Floods and holding up a sign that said \u201cHelp,\u201d was critiqued in an<a href=\"https:\/\/www.newsweek.com\/buffalo-news-cartoon-texas-floods-social-media-fallout-fury-2097264\"> official statement<\/a> from the White House.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Banowsky said other cartoonists have been driven out of mainstream media due to backlash, including Ann Telnaes, who<a href=\"https:\/\/anntelnaes.substack.com\/p\/why-im-quitting-the-washington-post\"> resigned<\/a> from The Washington Post because The Post refused to run a cartoon depicting billionaires currying favor with President Donald Trump, or Rob Rogers, who, according to himself, was<a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2018\/06\/15\/opinion\/cartoonist-rob-rogers-trump-fired.html\"> \u201cfired for making fun of Trump.\u201d<\/a> According to Banowsky, many cartoonists have taken to alternative publishing like Patreon or Substack.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>Panelists linked the discussion to a broader debate over the role that memes play in political critique. Ultimately, while memes often critique those in power in the same way that editorial cartoons do, those on the panel believed that memes lacked the same impact.\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think memes are akin to gag cartoons,\u201d Thompson said. \u201cPolitical cartoons, ultimately, you\u2019re trying to say your opinion or express a point of view \u2026 whereas a meme, they\u2019re funny, yes, a lot of them, but there\u2019s no larger opinion being discussed. I don\u2019t agree with the notion that political cartoons have been supplanted by memes.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n<p>In an interview with The Daily, Law School student Robert Julien said cartoons were a vital medium for questioning authority.\u00a0<\/p>\n<aside class=\"scaip scaip-4    \">\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p>\u201cI think that we\u2019re at a time where there aren\u2019t enough people who are fearless enough to kind of \u2018stir the beast\u2019 in the way that (Oliphant) did,\u201d Julien said. \u201cHopefully, this film will inspire more people to be comfortable and willing to take that risk.\u201d<\/p>\n<p><em>Daily Staff Contributor Rebecca Borlace can be reached at rborlace@umich.edu.<\/em><\/p>\n<aside>\n\t\t<\/aside>\n<p><h3 class=\"jp-relatedposts-headline\"><em>Related articles<\/em><\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>More than 140 University of Michigan students and Ann Arbor community members gathered at the Michigan Theater Sunday afternoon for the viewing of \u201cA Savage Art: The Life &amp; Cartoons of Pat Oliphant,\u201d a documentary detailing the life of Pulitzer Prize-winning political cartoonist Patrick Oliphant. The documentary was followed by a panel discussion hosted by [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3693,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[385,3674,1316,321,1867,3676,3675,783,3673],"class_list":{"0":"post-3692","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-news","8":"tag-art","9":"tag-cartoonist","10":"tag-documentary","11":"tag-explores","12":"tag-legacy","13":"tag-oliphants","14":"tag-pat","15":"tag-political","16":"tag-savage"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3692"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3694,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3692\/revisions\/3694"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/3693"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3692"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3692"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tmbglobal.news\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3692"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}