A decade after the attack on Charlie Hebdo, caricature continues its decline, marking for the cartoonists an impression of disconnection from society and a strong precariousness. Several of them agreed to testify about the evolution of their profession.
“The end of a world.” This is how the 9th Art specialist Yves Frémion describes in his book From caricature to Charlie Hebdo the state of political design in France after the attack of January 7, 2015 against Charlie Hebdoduring which eight members of the editorial staff were killed including the cartoonists Cabu, Charb, Honoré, Tignous and Wolinski.
Ten years after this attack, the caricature – a news drawing which makes fun of a situation or a person – continues its slow decline. The two press cartoon museum projects planned in Paris and Brussels continue to be postponed. Publication spaces are shrinking and political pressures are increasing.
The anti-religious satirical cartoon, very popular in the 20th century, has disappeared. While the New York Times stopped publishing caricatures in 2019designer Ann Telnaes just slammed the door of the Washington Postdenouncing the rejection of one of his caricatures showing Jeff Bezos, the owner of the daily, offering money to Trump.
The public also seems less receptive, as evidenced by the multiple controversies sparked by caricatures in recent years. Last September, drawings by Félix in Charlie Hebdo linking Emmanuel Macron's consultations to find a new Prime Minister or the release of the film Love phew at the trial of the Mazan rapists were particularly shocking.
“We deny them their best drawings”
Despite an impression of discrepancy or even “outdatedness” of press cartoons in relation to developments in society, this art still has a lot to offer, however assures press cartoonist Aurel, contributor to Le Canard chainé. “Press cartoons are more complex than what we confine them to,” he tells BFMTV.com.
From Fakir to Siné Mensuel through more confidential titles like La Lettre à Lulu or Zeliumthe satirical press remains active in France. “It is the illustration of this French culture of caricature,” greets Aurel, specifying that the press cartoon is also deployed successfully in the form of the audience sketch.
If press cartoonists resist self-censorship, measuring the impact of January 7 on caricatures nevertheless remains difficult. “We can only judge what appears”, underlines Yves Frémion. “I know cartoonists as radical as a Reiser or a Willem, but they are not necessarily the ones that the press publishes. They themselves publish more radical drawings on blogs or dedicated sites.”
“What appears in the press is much less strong. They are refused their best drawings,” assures the specialist. “They all say it: there are subjects that they no longer address in the press.”
“I don’t have the feeling of doing things any differently than before”, moderates to BFMTV.com Urbs. Collaborator of Sud Ouest, he is one of the 34 cartoonists to have his press card in France. “There was no change following the attacks,” adds Aurel. “On the other hand, precariousness has been getting worse for a long time.”
“It made me more worried.”
Outside France, the situation has worsened since the attack. Especially in authoritarian regimes. “What happened with Charlie shocked us and made us feel even more vulnerable and even more alone,” Turkish cartoonist Ersin Karabulut, co-founder of the satirical magazine Uykusuz, told BFMTV.com.
“The attack on Charlie just made me more worried. And more attentive to what people say,” continues this cartoonist now based in France, who retraces his career in comics Istanbul Worried Newspaperthe second volume of which has just been published. “On January 7, 2015, I understood that this profession was not easy to practice anywhere.”
“Killing a person for a drawing is like a disease. And we saw that it was spreading,” he laments.
“It was a great shock for us to see that European countries also had problems like this,” comments the designer. “After Charlie Hebdo, we stopped dreaming that we could make a living from our drawings in France.”
“It could start again (the attacks),” assured Coco on France Inter last December. “Very often, we wanted to make the victims look like culprits in the drawings we make. It targets us more. We always have to be very careful.” The Charlie Hebdo editorial team also works in an ultra-secure secret location.
The pressure of social networks
The explosion of social networks since 2015 has not helped press cartoons either. “We are reaching an audience that we should not be reaching,” says Ersin Karabulut. “When you work in a magazine, you address a specific audience. But with social networks, another audience accesses your drawing. And that can be dangerous.”
“When the people at LFI can't read a drawing by Coco, or try to make us believe that they can't read it just to please their electorate, it's scary,” he denounces. Urbs.
The designer was notably attacked for a caricature on the famine in Gaza published in Libération in March 2024. In this drawing, Coco showed a hungry man trying to eat rats. “Ttt, not before sunset!”, a woman told him, slapping his hand. Entitled “Ramadan in Gaza”, the caricature was judged “simply filthy” on X by La France insoumise (LFI) MP Sarah Legrain.
“I think they’re fake,” further denounces Urbs, who works within the Cartooning for Peace collective. “You won't make me believe that you are a political deputy without having a press culture. It's a use of drawing for political purposes. And it's disgusting because it endangers colleagues.”
Threatened with death after her drawing, Coco conceded last December in Elle having listened to the opinions aroused by his caricature. “The reactions to this drawing (…) made me think a lot. Ultimately, something rather positive came out of it.”
Widespread fear
These increasingly virulent reactions testify to a generalized fear of the incidents that the caricatures could cause, according to Urbs. “We are more afraid of the Kalashnikov than of political cartoons. Reactions to caricatures are often based on fear and cowardice. I think that slows down the public, but not the cartoonists.”
Analysis shared by Yves Frémion. “I have a somewhat radical theory,” he warns. “I think the Kouachi brothers won.”
“They imposed not only on our country but also on almost all countries in the world the absolute fear of political cartoons and press cartoons,” he believes. And the specialist adds: “Publication managers are obliged today to think about the safety of the people who work for them but they are inhabited by an absolute fear of getting into trouble. Not only with fundamentalists but also with all pressure groups that express themselves through the Internet.”
In his work Charlie whenever they wantwhich appears this Wednesday, Aurel moderates these concerns. On the contrary, he tells how press cartoons are caught between “neo-reacts” and “wokes”, two generations that are completely opposed in terms of humor. An opposition which allows press cartoons to evolve for the better according to him.
Precarization
If he denounces the stale ideas of the “neo-reactors”, he invites us to listen to the “wokes”. While “being wary of the stereotypes that can be maintained in press cartoons”, this generation offers cartoonists a new framework for reflection to become “better political humorists” and “finer analysts of society”, insists Aurel.
“This is not the first evolution of the profession,” he continues. “We no longer draw the same jokes as 20 years ago.”
“And it’s not just society that has to evolve,” he adds. “We too have evolved. We realized that certain things were stupid, crude, clumsy. It’s normal and healthy to question our references.”
Because the future of press cartoons and caricatures is now played out less on social networks than in editorial offices. “The importance given to press cartoons in a newspaper is the responsibility of the editor-in-chief. The question is, will future editors-in-chief have this culture?” asks Urbs.
While its place in newspapers is shrinking day by day, press cartoons are largely forgotten in the digital shift in newsrooms – and in union negotiations within the media. “Most newspapers do everything to make us more precarious,” denounces Aurel in his book, citing “increasingly low” freelance rates.
A situation that makes press cartooning complicated. “It’s a job that requires so much permanent investment that it’s complicated to do it as a dilettante,” he emphasizes. “With support like that, press owners can sleep peacefully… and drawing can die in peace,” he concludes in his work.
