GGeorges Wolinski was assassinated ten years ago, along with 11 other people, including seven other members of the “Charlie Hebdo” editorial staff. Ten years before his death, he had won the Angoulême Grand Prix and was preparing, at the end of 2005, to chair the 33e Comics festival. He then received “Sud Ouest” in the living room transformed into a workshop at his Parisian home. During this very long interview, there was a lot of talk about press cartoons. Some of the selected pieces that we publish here have taken on a particular resonance since his death.
Censorship and self-censorship. In “Match”, or the JDD, which are general public newspapers, which pass through everyone’s hands, I do not have the same daring as in “Charlie Hebdo”, which is bought precisely for its daring. I can’t fuck the Pope in the “Journal du Dimanche”, I can in “Charlie Hebdo”.
Engagement. For me, a press cartoonist must have opinions. He must be committed, without being an activist. I am a man of the left, and I remain so in what I do. A press cartoonist must be free. He must not believe in anything. I’m an atheist, like all my friends, like Cavanna, like Reiser was, like Cabu. Not only atheist, but sometimes anticlerical. And therefore we are free from all beliefs and all obedience. It is in the French tradition, like Voltaire or Victor Hugo.
Take yourself seriously. Plantu has a real speech about what he does, he takes himself very seriously, and he explains his drawings. I can’t do that myself. Not taking yourself seriously, that seems essential to me for my job.
Testify. Recently, I noticed this sentence from Ronald Searle, an English cartoonist who spent three and a half years prisoner of the Japanese in Burma during the Second World War. He wrote: “I wanted to testify and it helped me live. » I repeated this sentence to the cartoonists of “Charlie Hebdo” and they all nodded, they all felt concerned. That’s it, “I wanted to testify and it helped me live”.
“Moral terrorism, in France, we could fight against, but the terrorism of suicide bombers, we are overwhelmed”
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Faced with terrorism. I’m not being provocative on purpose. I make provocative drawings when I am outraged and when I want to fight against something, or to show injustice or excess. I go to excess to show off excess. People often tell me, “you are less provocative than before”, but we are less provocative than before because we won, on everything we demanded in 1968, and before. Progress, particularly for women, and for press freedom. […] There are still areas where we still have to fight. Today there is terrorism. If we could fight for freedoms in France, how do you want to fight against terrorism? What drawing am I going to draw that would make terrorism stop? Moral terrorism, in France, we could fight against, but the terrorism of suicide bombers, we are overwhelmed.
“A comedian is never mean. Fierce, yes, not mean”
The weapon of derision. In Italy or Germany, there were revolutionary armed groups, not in France. Why didn’t it work in France? Thanks to derision. Because to assassinate a man for his ideas, or to defend his own ideas, is really to take oneself very seriously, it is to have certainties. And there is nothing worse than people who are certain, they are fascists, left or right. Certainties are horror. So people like me, who have no certainty, who don’t know, who move forward in life, with their little intuition, their little convictions, we are not murderers. A comedian is never mean. Fierce, yes, not mean. We don’t do evil, we show evil.
“A comedian is never mean. Fierce, yes, not mean. We don’t do evil, we show evil,” said Georges Wolinski, here in his Parisian apartment, at the very end of 2005.
Archives Christian Daumerie/SO
Dying for ideas. I’m a man of the left, but I still have an anarchist side. But not to the point of killing to defend ideas, that Brassens said very well. Dying for ideas is stupid. But killing for ideas is even worse.
