On the Importance of Not Obeying

Lately I have been involved in at once very difficult and very positive dialogues with ALS-patients, who feels the time is creeping closer when they have to make the decision whether to choose a ventilator. It is a choice between life and death, and there is no simple answer to the question.

However, as many doctors are against ventilators, they are very persuasive in talking their patients out of it. Consequently the said doctors are at worst putting themselves into the position of Higher Beings with the word to decide for or against:

Doaa Eladl, December 14, 2012.

Doctors and priests have a tendency to take on the same type of authority. Doaa Eladl has drawn a member of the Muslim Brotherhood deciding on some of the fallen of the "Ittihadiya clashes" in which 11 persons were killed outside the presidential palace in the beginning of December 2012. He is writing who are to rest in heaven - they are the two recognizable on their beards, which should probably be written with a capital B, "their Beards" - whereas the rest are written off to hell. The writing on the wall is mimicking the Brothers' constant talking in terms of "you deserve hell". 

Meanwhile a survey in this country has stated that the Biblical protagonists are still known to the Danish public, a result which Per Marquard Otzen has put in its proper context. There are those who are much older just as there are the recent additions, all of them story-tellers from literature who have not let anything hold them back. As constantly as any kind of priesthood talk in pros or cons, these are exploring the impossible, constantly breaking the human boundaries, having taught us for about 4000 years not to do any less:

Per Marquard Otzen: "Kendisser / Celebrities", Politiken, 24.11.2013.
""Bibelselskabet jubler over, at Adam, Eva, Noa, David og Goliat stadig er berømte", skrev vi i avisen forleden. Ud over de bibelske kendisser ses desuden berømtheder som Polyfemos, Odysseus, Egon Olsen, Faust med spindoktor, kaptajn Ahab, Don Quijote, Mickey Mouse, Atlas, Ikaros, Phileas Fogg, Sisyfos, den lille prins og baron von Münchhausen" /""The Bible Society is rejoicing that Adam, Eve, Noah, David and Goliath is still famous", as we wrote in the newspaper the other day. In addition to the Biblical celebrities, celebrities like Polyphemus, Ulysses, Egon Olsen, Faust with his spin doctor, Captain Ahab, Don Quijote, Mickey Mouse, Atlas, Icarus, Phileas Fogg, Sisyphus, The Little Prince and Baron von Münchhausen are also seen."

The only point of rest in the picture plane is in the golden section between the jazz-mouse and the priest where all story-lines connect. The Eureka. This must be the first time too that it has been possible to nail a classical rule at play in Per's drawings. As an artist he shrewdly bends and tweaks any given rule, which makes him another role model of not obeying any. A cartooning morale, if that was not a contradictio in terminis.


A very special thank you to Tony Daoud for clarifying and not least translating!