Cartoons Counter Swastika Shock
By David Kaufmann
Not everyone would look at Scotch Tape and think of snails, but Sam Gross did and came up with the most popular cartoon in his 50-year career. One snail looks at another and says, “I don’t care if she’s a tape dispenser. I love her.” It’s a high concept sight gag and it’s all in the shapes — the dispenser and the snails look uncannily alike.
Not everyone would look at a swastika and think of a high concept joke — let alone 120 jokes — but Sam Gross did. Actually, more than 120. “We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons,” due to be released by Simon & Schuster in March, is really only a first installment. He’s got 360 more of them. Over the past 10 years, Gross has been thinking a lot about swastikas.
The idea for the series came to him in 1997. A local newscast started off with a vandalism story. “Some guy drew a swastika on cars and he got on TV,” Gross told the Forward in a phone interview. Gross was angry, but not with the kid with a spray can. “Why is this the lead story, I thought? That kid obviously meant to be provocative, and he was doing his job… The media, though, shouldn’t have given him the chance, shouldn’t have made the swastika such a forbidden and exciting thing. The news gave it too much power.” Gross retaliated in the only way he knew how. He drew cartoons.
When he started working on them, Gross’s wife thought he was crazy. Looking at the book, you can understand why. A cartoon of a man throwing a piece of paper into a swastika-shaped garbage can that sports the sign “White Trash Only” might be funny, or a dog telling a vandal who’s just painted a swastika on a wall to try marking with scent instead (“It’s nicer”) might do a good clean job of making its point, but what about children at a party whacking at a swastika piñata or a frog flicking its tongue at swastika-shaped flies? People could get confused.
Gross showed the cartoons around to friends. The first ones to get what he was trying to do were a married couple, both Holocaust survivors. There are no Jews and no Germans in the book, Gross points out. The goose-steppers are not real Nazis but schnook wannabes. The swastikas appear in incongruous places — on the armband of a psychiatrist, whose exasperated patient says, “Act out. That’s easy enough for you to say,” or on the nose of a man who’s a “Shnozzi.” The point, Gross maintains, is to reduce the swastika to something humorous. He uses swastikas the way Lenny Bruce used four-letter words, to drain them of their shock value, to make them banal.
Gross, who has published cartoons everywhere from Rascal (a girly magazine of the 1950s) to The New Yorker, is hardly a revisionist. He thinks that Nazism always poses a potential threat, and he wants to make sure that no one thinks that his book belittles the Holocaust or makes light of antisemitism. He only wants people to keep things in perspective, to take a matter-of-fact attitude. Symbols are only symbols, he said. They are inconsequential, or at least they should be. In fact, he hopes that “We Have Ways of Making You Laugh” will so demystify the swastika as a symbol that the Nazis will have to go and find another one. If it doesn’t, he’s got three more swastika books just waiting.
David Kaufmann, a frequent contributor to the Forward, teaches literature at George Mason University.
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I'm sorry--I must be getting to be a real alta ---er, but there are things that I just CANNOT, no WILLNOT kibbitz about-- and a Swatstika is one of them--and I am a big kibbittzer! I suppose this is how some other groups feel about the random use of the "N" word-- For me, the cut is too deep-the price that was paid was too high and to turn around and say the symbol now has a funny no meaning is still putting attention on this symbol--WHY, I ASK, WHY? Thee's an ole Yiddish Saying that I love.."Don't Pee on my Leg and Tell me it's Raining" WELL DON'T SHOW ME A SWASTIKA AND TELL ME TO LAUGH..MARLA ANKER
This is perfect. Humour, deregative intellectual intent and percieveed removal of visual shock value; what better way to disenfranchise and disbane a provocative and hideously manipulated iconic symbol.
A swastika can NEVER be a source of humor. 6 million Jews and approximately 50 million people in total paid the ultimate price because of that cursed symbol. People that laugh at a swastika were never touched by its horrific significance. It should be banned everywhere.
If “We Have Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Swastika Cartoons,” were met with a book-burning, would Sam Gross laugh?
The swastika is a symbol of good luck and hope, and HAS BEEN SO FOR 3000 years for many eastern societies, including Indians. We, Indians, have been painting it next to the door of our houses FOR 3000 years and still do. It has religious significance for us FOR 3000 years. Just because some neo-nazi trash or Hitler in all his stupidity corrupted it as his symbol, doesn't mean it means what they want it to mean. And because some may they think horrible things were done "because of that cursed symbol" doesn't make it so. Horrible people did those things, not the symbol. Nor did they do it in the name of the symbol, they did it in the name of bigotry and hate. Although I empathize with the plight of the Jewish people, I can stop using a symbol for good luck and hope that we have been using FOR 3000 years. I hope people can understand that, and look past what people think it means, versus what a lot of Indians have believed for over 3000 years.
sorry I meant I can NOT stop: 'I can NOT stop using a symbol for good luck and hope that we have been using FOR 3000 years."
rofl this is great.Can't wait for the sequel "We Have More Ways of Making You Laugh: 120 Funny Deathcamp Victim Cartoons
Growing up seeing the swastika as a Hindu religious symbol, the swastika symbol does not have the same impact on me as it does for others. However, this doesn't change the disgust I feel toward Nazis and their treatment of the Jews and other minorities during WWII.
What people fail to understand is that by covering a symbol with such passionate hatred, we allow such vandalism to occur. It is because the swastika gets such a strong reaction from the public that it is used by vandals.
Fueling hatred toward Nazis now, decades later, is fruitless. Instead we should be concentrating on remembering the countless souls lost in the holocaust, and learning more about their story. We should be concentrating on making sure this doesn't happening again instead of wallowing in some outdated hatred directed toward a mere symbol. Symbols will adopt the meaning you give them. It is unhealthy to allow a symbol to have so much power. This book is a marvelous idea and is the first step toward removing the stigma surrounding what is, after all, a mere arrangement of lines upon paper.
I sympathize with the author of this; I agree that petty vandalism doesn't become newsworthy just because it has a swastika in it. The media has a responsibility not to let itself be manipulated so easily, and not to insult viewers with shock stories that aren't real news. (Those viewers who desperately want to be shocked by swastikas can always draw their own and hang it over their television.)
I sympathize with the author of this; I agree that petty vandalism doesn't become newsworthy just because it has a swastika in it. The media has a responsibility not to let itself be manipulated so easily, and not to insult viewers with shock stories that aren't real news. (Those viewers who desperately want to be shocked by swastikas can always draw their own and hang it over their television.)
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Come see my new movie y'all!
I'm sorry folks. You all are being incredibly stupid. How can you let a symbol cause you so much pain? You'll notice that the Cross,that so many of you wear, was an instrument of torture, and probably did kill as many people over the years that it was in use as the swastika, except for one fact: The swastika was a symbol, and not an actual killing device. You have no problem wearing it around your necks as a symbol of "Ultimate Love". Get over it. Yes, it was unfortunate, but we're all blowing it out of proportion. The swastika didn't kill 6 million people. People did. So quit blaming it for what happened to the jews 60 years ago.
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