"They send one to jail to intimidate millions"
Siri Dokken, January 22, 2021.
Cartoons are inconsequential, what do they change anyway? - is a statement we see constantly popping up in the research on satire, which is finally gaining track. The statement tends to end with the like of "the burden of proof must lie on those who disagree" (see e.g. Paul Lewis ed., 2008).
That was a convenient proclamation and a lazy one academically speaking easing themselves out of an argumentation. Besides "I am right! Full stop!" belongs to the domain of autocrats, which happens to be one of the protagonists in Siri Dokken's cartoon above.
How much can be understood from one image? What about the nuances such as the social and political implications of the situation drawn? Let's make it one better and add the notion of bravery and moral obligation too in that everything is inherent in the composition before us.
Siri Dokken has even restricted her visuals to a silent shadow theatre in which the impossible is taking place: the superhuman heroism of Alexei Navalny, having only barely recovered from being poisoned with novichok fabricated in the old Soviet regime and upon returning to Russia he was arrested and yesterday sentenced to three years of imprisonment.
His struggle, roaring in his endeavour - and with him the demonstrators who have had enough - is the insistence on the right to live, which is not an option in Putin's Russia. The dignity of life is crushed underneath the heel of his shoe. The struggle is contrasted with the lightness of everyone else atop Putin's shoe - us, their contemporaries - lauding and egging on Navalny, but ultimately passive and only adding to the weight he has to take on.
We do get a glimpse of an ankle, the weakest detail in any supersized human form. Just ask the sculptures of Antiquity. "This is how it works. They send one to jail to intimidate millions", but Putin "will go down in history as a poisoner", Navalny stated yesterday. However hopeless the task may seem, the possibility has been manifested.
An epic cartoon on epic bravery to the creation of change. We do not know the continuation, but we have all the elements before us to understand the many layers of the struggle still ahead. And maybe we could do more than giving him a thumbs up?
The cartoon shown is courtesy of Siri Dokken and must not be reproduced without her permission.
