I sometimes see Geoff Pryor in the early morning walking near the frost-covered school oval. To the casual observer he is walking his dog. But I know he is at work. He is wearing headphones listening to AM. He can be seen in the office later in the day with the same headphones, listening to Question Time.
And then he trawls the office and works the phone. He talks to colleagues and contacts. He comes into news conference. He tosses ideas about.
Most people imagine that the difficult part of Pryor’s day is drawing the cartoon. Not so. For him it is the easy part. The hard parts are selecting the topic and picking an angle. In that respect his job is similar to editorial writing. The churning out of the 700 words is the lesser part of the task. The
selection of topic and picking the angle is far more difficult. Once you have done that the writing (or in Pryor’s case the drawing) is like winding up a rubber band and letting it go.
Pryor and other cartoonists in Australia came in for a bit of flak recently from the Opposition spokesperson on the status of women, Jenny Macklin. She said that cartoonists had portrayed Democrats Leader Meg Lees in a sexist way. Pryor had her as a housewife hounding John Howard through a shopping centre. In another cartoon he had her in bed in a maternity ward with Howard visiting the baby GST which had not come out as he had hoped.
Pryor argues that the bed is the cliche rather than putting the female politician in a female role. Getting into bed and giving birth are common tools of the political cartoonist. More than 20 years ago Larry Pickering put (male) politicians in bed, as this excerpt of a cartoon with Bob Hawke and Malcolm Fraser illustrates.
And as for always depicting women in women’s roles, I recall a recent Pryor cartoon with Kate Carnell as a rugby league player. Hardly a typical female role.
Pryor cops flak on several other grounds. Some readers don’t like swear words or even the traditional *!#%?!. And some readers think he is making fun of religion. Then there are the usual battery who think he is mocking their favourite causes: animal liberation, peace, gun ownership, euthanasia and so on. But that is what he is there for.
At least the politicians have got the good sense not to attack his cartoons. Indeed, most politicians will call seeking the original even if they are being bagged unmercifully. If the same sentiment were expressed in words, they would no doubt sue. Very few people sue over cartoons, however. For a start launching a lawsuit over a cartoon is a public announcement you have not got a sense of humour. Secondly, juries usually do have senses of humour and side with the cartoonist.
Some people imagine that in these days of high resolution scanning and e-mail a cartoonist could easily work at home and e-mail the result. That misses the point. The essence of cartooning is not the drawing but the idea. That said, Pryor is a very talented free-hand black-and-white-artist, unlike, say, Luenig (ch sp) or Nicholson or even Moir, but like Bill Leake. Pryor uses perspective (coming at a scene from an unusual angle), full grey-scale shading and background detail in every cartoon in the tradition of the great English cartoonist Giles. Many cartoonists leave the background blank and their characters are little more than line drawings. Both sort of cartoonists, though, to be successful must get the issue and idea right. E-mailing from home will not do. Good cartoonists have to do their office work. They have to know what is going on and have a feel for the political wind. That can only be achieved by talking to people in the business, reading the papers thoroughly and listening to radio bulletins, all day every day.
The biggest pressure on the cartoonist comes from the fact that there is only one cartoon spot. The cartoonist has only one shot in the locker. To pick the wrong issue or to get the wrong sense of what is happening invites irrelevance. And the cartoonist is only as good as today’s cartoon.
Walking the dog is not all it seems.