Red Lines

A lively graphic narrative reports on censorship of political cartoons around the world, featuring interviews with censored cartoonists from Pittsburgh to Beijing.

Why do the powerful feel so threatened by political cartoons? Cartoons don't tell secrets or move markets. Yet, as Cherian George and Sonny Liew show us in Red Lines, cartoonists have been harassed, trolled, sued, fired, jailed, attacked, and assassinated for their insolence. The robustness of political cartooning--one of the most elemental forms of political speech--says something about the health of democracy. In a lively graphic narrative--illustrated by Liew, himself a prize-winning cartoonist--Red Lines crisscrosses the globe to feel the pulse of a vocation under attack.

A Syrian cartoonist insults the president and has his hands broken by goons. An Indian cartoonist stands up to misogyny and receives rape threats. An Israeli artist finds his antiracist works censored by social media algorithms. And the New York Times, caught in the crossfire of the culture wars, decides to stop publishing editorial cartoons completely. Red Lines studies thin-skinned tyrants, the invisible hand of market censorship, and demands in the name of social justice to rein in the right to offend. It includes interviews with more than sixty cartoonists and insights from art historians, legal scholars, and political scientists--all presented in graphic form. This engaging account makes it clear that cartoon censorship doesn't just matter to cartoonists and their fans. When the red lines are misapplied, all citizens are potential victims.Series Editor's Introduction
Preamble
1. Introduction: The Power and Precarity of the Pencil
2. When Censorship Backfires
3. We Know Where You Live: Intimate Invasions
4. Post-Orwellian Censorship
5. Gilded Cages: Censorship by Seduction
6. Market Censorship: Freedom for Those Who Own a Press
7. Democratically Rejected: The X'ed Files
8. From Liberation Technology to Flatform Censorship
9. No Man's Land: Dissent in Wartime
10. The Boys' Club: Gender-based Censorship
11. The Trap of Accidental Associations
12. Hate Speech, Taking Offense, and the "Good Censor"
13. Undrawable: The Aura of the Sacred
14. Je Suis Charlie: A Symbolic Battle
15. Concluding Lines, in Words and Cartoons
Acknowledgments
Artists Featured
Notes
Bibliography
Index2022 PROSE Award Finalist, Media and Cultural Studies


2022 PROSE Award Finalist, Nonfiction Graphic Novels

"An absorbing read [...] Red Lines is an invaluable almanac for anyone who has been involved in the defence of cartoonists over the last few decades."—Cartoonists Rights Network International

"I would recommend this title to anyone with an interest in political satire."
—Tjeerd Royaards, Cartoon Movement“This brilliant tribute to political cartoons is not only a visual feast, but also an in-depth treatise on contemporary threats to freedom of expression posed by governments, corporations, and grassroots forces ranging from religious extremists to well-meaning champions of social justice.”
—Nadine Strossen, John Marshall Harlan II Professor of Law Emerita, New York Law School; President, American Civil Liberties Union (1991–2008)

 
“Few books grab a reader as Red Lines does. A history, an analysis, a cri de coeur, a celebration of ideas and art and human rights, all wrapped in an endlessly fascinating example of ‘show, not tell.’”
—David Kaye, UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Opinion and Expression (2014–2020) and Clinical 

“The political cartoon is the art form of our deeply troubled world, and this brilliant, disturbing, and ultimately hopeful book is far and away the definitive guide.”
—Vincent Mosco, author of The Political Economy of Communication and The Digital SublimeCherian George is Professor of Media Studies at Hong Kong Baptist University's School of Communication. A former journalist, he is the author of Hate Spin: The Manufacture of Religious Offense and Its Threat to Democracy (MIT Press). Sonny Liew is a celebrated cartoonist and illustrator and the author of The Art of Charlie Chan Hock Chye, a New York Times bestseller, which received three Eisner Awards and the Singapore Literature Prize.