• Hey, guest user. Hope you're enjoying NeoGAF! Have you considered registering for an account? Come join us and add your take to the daily discourse.

Charlie Hebdo cartoon on dead Syrian child sparks anger

Status
Not open for further replies.
Charlie Hebdo cartoon depicting dead Syrian toddler as a sexual molester ignites anger
The French magazine Charlie Hebdo has sparked outrage by publishing a cartoon attempting to satirise the refugee crisis and recent accusations of sexual abuse in Germany. The cartoon imagines Aylan Kurdi, the three-year old Syrian who died in the sea in September on the way to Europe, as an adult.
CYoPpwqWAAI2O4I.jpg

Al Jazeera
 
Anger from whom? Ohh I see now, so when Charlie Hebdo makes a Muhammadcomic and is attacked then we cry with them and about the lack or free speech or whatever but if they "cross" the line when they make a joke about immigrants?

How about using common sense and see the shitty joke as it is and move on?
 
Anger from whom? Ohh I see now, so when Charlie Hebdo makes a Muhammadcomic and is attacked then we cry with them and about the lack or free speech or whatever but if they "cross" the line when they make a joke about immigrants?

How about using common sense and see the shitty joke as it is and move on?
What?
 

Kisaya

Member
The cartoon isn't funny to me but I guess whatever cause there's an audience who thinks it is. That's how it works really.
 

Xe4

Banned
We're still mad about cartoons, huh?

Can we not this time?

We can absolutely be upset at cartoons, especially ones as disgusting as this one. It's for sure 150% not ok to kill people over cartoons, but it's perfect fine to be upset at a cartoon depicting Muslim immigrants as molestors, and use a dead child to prove your point.

It's the exact same as if the US had cartoons depicting a dead child as a terrorist or something.
 

orochi91

Member
These guys were always shitty, but the Hebdo attacks suddenly gave their "art" much more importance than it deserved.

It would be best to just ignore them and move on, as those attackers that day should have done.
 
I've always been slightly confused by their intent. Are they actually saying this child is a molester, or are they making fun of people terrified of immigrants?

My gut says the later, but everyone's reaction suggests other former reading.
 

Afrocious

Member
I might be naive, but I don't don't get the point of these comics. Maybe it's because I don't find them funny and more offensive.

Are they trying to be like South Park or something?
 

Fularu

Banned
I might be naive, but I don't don't get the point of these comics. Maybe it's because I don't find them funny and more offensive.

Are they trying to be like South Park or something?

Charlie Hebdo has been like that for over 40 years

It's more Southpark mimiking them if such an analogy was to be made
 

kirblar

Member
I've always been slightly confused by their intent. Are they actually saying this child is a molester, or are they making fun of people terrified of immigrants?

My gut says the later, but everyone's reaction suggests other former reading.
Yeah, I need to know the caption before passing judgement- the prior comic referencing the dead kid was blasting people for ignoring the plight of refugees.
 

ghostjoke

Banned
And here we go for another round of "I don't understand satire, therefore I am offended; but I definitely won't take a minute to think about the issue it's addressing, because why would I want to attempt to tackle a serious issue happening in the world when I can go after the low hanging fruit of a shitty comic strip". This is not a hard thing to understand if you have any inkling of the current climate in Europe. It's maddening about how this will probably generate more "discussion" on the internet than the actual hate going on.
 

Afrocious

Member
Charlie Hebdo has been like that for over 40 years

It's more Southpark mimiking them if such an analogy was to be made

Ah I see. Interesting.

It's odd that I see South Park as being more intelligent. Couldn't begin to explain why though. This just comes across as mindless picking and teasing coupled with severe othering.
 
I think the cartoon is highly racist and disgusting, but at this point they're probably just doing it for the reactions.
Its not like this cartoon has any political value or message. (I mean other than: "lol, immigrants are monkey-like rapists, we're better off when they land dead on european shores")

I don't know why there shouldn't be outrage about this cartoon. When Trump or whoever says something racist everyone is outrages, too.
Criticising something doesn't mean you want to take their right to free speech away.
 

Fularu

Banned
Ah I see. Interesting.

It's odd that I see South Park as being more intelligent. Couldn't begin to explain why though. This just comes across as mindless picking and teasing coupled with severe othering.

It's typical french satyre though, it's nothing new and is meant to offend/disturb/make one pause and think

But they very often fall flat
 

Lamel

Banned
Not really that funny or anything, like most of their stuff. But it's a waste of energy to get worked up about it honestly. They will continue to make stuff like this (and worse), as is their right.
 

Surface of Me

I'm not an NPC. And neither are we.
I've always been slightly confused by their intent. Are they actually saying this child is a molester, or are they making fun of people terrified of immigrants?

My gut says the later, but everyone's reaction suggests other former reading.

You could make the argument that it's about how easily perceptions of large groups of people can change. Some people that were sad or mourning over the dead child could now be some of the same people crying foul over the recent New Years sexual assaults. If you dont really know any immigrants, but know of the dead child, you might feel sympathy for those people. On the flip side, if you dont know any and all you hear about them are how they sexually assault the women of the countries letting them seek refuge, you might get a negative bias towards them as well.

If he just wrote "good thing he drowned or else he'd be molesting our women" as a sentence it wouldn't get as much support though

Point being?
 

Afrocious

Member
It's typical french satyre though, it's nothing new and is meant to offend/disturb/make one pause and think

But they very often fall flat

Ah I see.

Huh. French humor is weird. I'm sure this isn't indicative of the entirety of French humor though, because if it is, then France must be quite a depressing place.
 
I find it so depressing that THIS is the publication that sparked so much controversy and has garnered so much support for the (rightful) case of free speech, rather than an actual intelligent publication. If they are trying to be a "right-wing South Park" then they are doing a really shitty job at it as a lot of their cartoons are just tasteless and dumb.
 

xandaca

Member
For starters, it's a cartoon. Even if it didn't have any satirical meaning beneath face value, ignore it and do something useful with your life other than frothing impotently.

Secondly, this is a pretty typical example of a certain type of French satirical humour. It's mocking the perception of immigrants/refugees as rapists/molesters by asking if that's what we'd be saying about the dead kid if he'd been a grown-up who survived. Not complicated.
 

Dryk

Member
It's typical french satyre though, it's nothing new and is meant to offend/disturb/make one pause and think

But they very often fall flat
Charlie Hebdo does make me pause and think. But it's usually about how Charlie Hebdo comes across as massively racist without fail.

For starters, it's a cartoon. Even if it didn't have any satirical meaning beneath face value, ignore it and do something useful with your life other than frothing impotently.
Yeah I mean, it's not like cartoons have ever played a large part in the propagation of negative stereotypes and perceptions of another race before... oh wait...
 

Fularu

Banned
I've always been slightly confused by their intent. Are they actually saying this child is a molester, or are they making fun of people terrified of immigrants?

My gut says the later, but everyone's reaction suggests other former reading.

In a twisted way, they're mocking people who put all immigrants in the same bag and view them as molesters/rapists/terrorists/thieves and so on.

It's very very french
 
Yeah, it's pretty gross, but I kind of read it as satire of people who think things like this. "He'd probably just have have grown up to be a killer/terrorist/etc anyway" is totally something xenophobic assholes would say.
 

Fularu

Banned
Ah I see.

Huh. French humor is weird. I'm sure this isn't indicative of the entirety of French humor though, because if it is, then France must be quite a depressing place.

Irony, sarcasm, making fun of awfull things is how french humorists/cartoonists operate mostly, we like our "humour noir" (dark humor)
 
For starters, it's a cartoon. Even if it didn't have any satirical meaning beneath face value, ignore it and do something useful with your life other than frothing impotently.

Secondly, this is a pretty typical example of a certain type of French satirical humour. It's mocking the perception of immigrants/refugees as rapists/molesters by asking if that's what we'd be saying about the dead kid if he'd been a grown-up who survived. Not complicated.

Why do people have to be "frothing impotently" to find something kind of fucked up

Why do you care instead of doing something useful with your life
 

Fat4all

Banned
In a twisted way, they're mocking people who put all immigrants in the same bag and view them as molesters/rapists/terrorists/thieves and so on.

It's very very french

So their comic is a parody on how people who are anti-immigration view immigrants, similar to how they depicted the people ignoring the immigration issue before with the dead kid?
 

Chichikov

Member
In a twisted way, they're mocking people who put all immigrants in the same bag and view them as molesters/rapists/terrorists/thieves and so on.

It's very very french
Does it really?
I'm honestly asking because that is not something that comes across to my non French eyes.
 
I'm sure they got the attention they wanted from this.

They really don't give a shit though.

Does it really?
I'm honestly asking because that is not something that comes across to my non French eyes.

How I understand it is that they're trying to juxtapose both contradicting feeling to show how people can be quick to change their opinion depending on the situation.

Like a couple of months ago it was "Those poor refugees, risking their lives to find a better place" and now it's "Those ungrateful refugees, how can they do this to people who took them in"

That's my personal understanding of it.
 

Fularu

Banned
Does it really?
I'm honestly asking because that is not something that comes across to my non French eyes.

You have to understand how Charlie Operates

They already used the dead kid once, to show christians (Jesus actually) walk on water and beeing "good people" while the kid was dead in the background

With what happened in Koln during NYE, the backlash against immigrants is huge and they are making fun of them (the people complaining baout immigrants that is)
 
In before people who don't understand satire accuse a bunch of pro-immigration liberals of being racist fascists.

Whoops, too late.
 

Afrocious

Member
You have to understand how Charlie Operates

They already used the dead kid once, to show christians (Jesus actually) walk on water and beeing "good people" while the kid was dead in the background

With what happened in Koln during NYE, the backlash against immigrants is huge and they are making fun of them (the people complaining baout immigrants that is)

I think what confuses me is that there's no depiction of the actual people who complain about the immigrates, unless I'm missing something in translation.

It's kind of like when a kid hears something from someone, and draws something based on whatever it was they heard, but when someone else sees the picture, they're confused because that picture alone doesn't provide enough context of what the kid overheard.
 

Fularu

Banned
I think what confuses me is that there's no depiction of the actual people who complain about the immigrates, unless I'm missing something in translation.

It's kind of like when a kid hears something from someone, and draws something based on whatever it was they heard, but when someone else sees the picture, they're confused because that picture alone doesn't provide enough context of what the kid overheard.
There are articles, opinion pieces, context to understand Charlie Hebdo

You just have the comic and no context.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Top Bottom