I posted a non-royal cartoon today because it fitted my contrary mood. I'm also running desperately low on these small one panel cartoons. I drew a sheet of six last week and I've now used them all.
I guess I should draw some royal baby cartoons but Private Eye’s headline ‘Woman has baby’ pretty much sums up my attitude to the news. Yet there was a time when I’d be all over this royal event, producing every conceivable Photoshopped joke, perhaps even writing a spoof 30,000 word book or drawing a series of cartoons. I would have used Twitter, created a spoof account, to voice the baby’s first thoughts about the world.
The fact that I’m not doing any of that, except for one five minute Photoshop last night, is a sign of how things have changed. Everybody is spoofing, usually with lamentable results and for no real purpose. Celebrities have no reason to fear the spoof because to be spoofed successfully is to find your fame more deeply engrained in the public consciousness.
The fake royal accounts actually enhance the status of the monarchy and no longer diminish it (though the royals do a good job of doing that themselves). Spoofs can make real people seem more likable by reducing them to identifiable traits in the way that Spitting Image often worked against its own agenda. Thatcher’s puppet started out as an attack on her policies and ended up by associating her with a series of stereotypes which actually had plenty of purchase among certain sections of the voting public.
So, I won’t be spoofing the royals today. My mind is in the real world, working on a new comic strip about a peculiar group of people I’ve been observing in my local town. I’ve almost finished the first page which I’ll post later today or sometime tomorrow.
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