A Critical (But Not Outraged) Analysis Of That Horrific Sketch
Calling this drawing “disgusting” is like saying the sky is blue. It’s hard to think of an alternative description. But since it got us all talking, maybe we should delve a little deeper into what it was trying to say and why we feel so offended by it.
I’m not an art critic, but the sketch that cartoonist Seb Tanti Burlo uploaded to Facebook this week threw me back to when I studied literary criticism at University. My first instinct was to have a strong opinion, like everyone else on my Facebook feed. Then it struck me that maybe it’s not so important to be outraged, shocked, or even frustrated at those who expressed outrage or shock. Maybe it’s more productive to simply analyse what the sketch is trying to say, interpret it in my own way, and assess what the reaction to it says about the state of Malta today. So this is my critical appreciation of a sketch that was decried as “evil” by the chairman of Valletta 2018 Capital of Culture and “fucking horrible” by the artist himself.
At face value, the sketch crudely juxtaposes two of the biggest news stories from this month: the horrifying tragedy where two tourists were killed and 50 others injured after an open-top double-decker tourist bus crashed into a tree; and the slogan “Oh My Malta!” which the Israeli-Palestinian-American vlogger Nas Daily has proposed as the island’s official tourism tagline. (He’s only been here a few days, but he’s throwing a massive party tomorrow as part of his campaign to get the government to take on his “accidental” slogan.)
Before assessing the portrayal of these two events, let’s look at the medium. The provocateur is a cartoonist for Times of Malta, but this sketch was not published on the newspaper. Instead, it appeared on Burlo’s Facebook page, where its fate was handed to the Mark Zuckerberg algorithm. Within minutes, it began to go viral – probably more so on WhatsApp threads than Facebook walls, because most people were too horrified to share it publicly. Just like a graphic photo that leaks from the scene of a crime or an obscene sex video from some act of revenge porn, the sketch became the topic of the day for small groups of friends to share among themselves in the perceived safety of their WhatsApp threads. Perhaps that was the first dubious achievement of this image: its ability to overcome the ever-tightening Facebook algorithm and win over the attention of the country – even if for, what some people would term, “the wrong reasons”. Interestingly, the image elicited more shock and horror than it would have if it was a real photograph of the event. The fact that somebody chose to draw the incident and sign the drawing with their name, gave it a sense of deliberateness that an anonymous leaked photograph would not have had. A real image would have gone viral due to our morbid curiosity. A drawing went viral because it offended us.
“The fact that somebody chose to draw the incident and sign the drawing with their name, gave it a sense of deliberateness that an anonymous leaked photograph would not have had. A real image would have gone viral due to our morbid curiosity. A drawing went viral because it offended us.”
The virality of the image was achieved through a combination of shock factor and timeliness (which itself added to the visceral discomfort). The piece was published merely 48 hours after the tragedy, while two young children, among others, are still fighting for their lives in hospital. The portrayal of the incident itself was offensive in its comical depiction. Two tourists, one wearing a wife-beater with a Maltese cross and the other holding an SLR camera, are pictured decapitated, their heads replaced with thick scribbles of red paint looking almost like a child’s drawing of fireworks. The ‘Oh My Malta’ tagline – also written in the same bright bloody red – added another layer of provocative irreverence that fits straight into the Charlie Hebdo tradition.
By forcing Malta to be confronted with a Charlie-esque cartoon, the artist has exposed a hypocrisy that he undoubtedly felt during the #JeSuisCharlie movement, where countless Maltese people joined in the worldwide support of the journalists and cartoonists who were slaughtered by Islamic fundamentalists. What many of those people probably failed to reconcile while changing their profile pictures was that they too would probably not be comfortable with much of the dark humour delivered by the radical French magazine. This theme was already explored internationally when Charlie Hebdo depicted a deceased infant victim of the refugee crisis alongside a Ronald McDonald advert, or when it showed victims of an Italian earthquake as a lasagne. But giving the same treatment to a Maltese tragedy is much more difficult for us to digest – it makes it close to home.
To illustrate how proximity affects our reaction, just imagine, for example, if the image showed Maltese people rather than tourists. The outrage would have been even more pronounced, and the threats of violence against the artist would have probably not remained mere threats.
Tanti Burlo’s sketch may have been intended as a brutal critique of Malta’s lax attitude towards health and safety, contrasted against our over-eagerness when it comes to promoting our tourism product. But because of the sketch’s audacity and the graphic visual of the human being exploding, it could also lead readers to recall the bigger story Malta is still grappling with, the assassination of Daphne Caruana Galizia, which undoubtedly remained etched in the cartoonist’s mind and probably inspired the anger he expresses in this drawing.
“Without making any reference to Caruana Galizia, the sketch manages to evoke her presence. The exploding heads are a reminder of the horrific way she was killed. The ‘Oh My Malta’ conjures the battle taking place internationally in terms of the Maltese narrative: Is Malta a mafia state or the best country in the EU?”
Without making any reference to Caruana Galizia, the sketch manages to evoke her presence. The exploding heads are a reminder of the horrific way she was killed. The ‘Oh My Malta’ conjures the battle taking place internationally in terms of the Maltese narrative: Is Malta a mafia state or the best country in the EU? More importantly, the sheer and deliberate bad taste of the sketch forces viewers to challenge themselves into deciding whether this crosses the line of decency – as with much of Caruana Galizia’s work, even though many people would rather forget that side to her.
Remember the time she celebrated the death of former Prime Minister Dom Mintoff with the headline “Glory, Glory Hallelujah”?
“Bad taste,” people pointed out in both instances. “No respect for the dead!”
Perhaps this exercise by Tanti Burlo was subconsciously a self-exploration of the world Caruana Galizia inhabited: insults, death threats and petitions for silencing. As the six month anniversary of Caruana Galizia’s murder approaches, it couldn’t have been more timely.
Burlo’s confrontational sketch accuses the viewer of indifference, both at the incident involving the bus and at other aspects of Malta that are evoked in the encompassing slogan Oh My Malta.
By seemingly mocking the tragedy so soon after it happened, Burlo alienated even the most vociferous campaigners of freedom of expression – at a time in the country when their unity is so important.
Ultimately, the reaction of the public to this sketch is part of the sketch itself. It shows the power of art. A drawing sometimes provokes more anger than reality because it is much easier to channel our rage at an irreverent artist than to channel it at systems, bureaucrats and our own culture in general.
In the artist’s words, for whatever they’re worth: “This scribble I did is disgusting. It is offensive. It is crass and everything you said it is. It should offend you because this situation is offensive. Be angry at the situation. Not at me.”
Perhaps the question we should ask ourselves is: why does this image provoke such a reaction in us when we’re ready to be silent about so much worse?
What meaning do you find in this sketch?
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