Lodi Marasescu was 18 years old when, on January 7, 2015, two hooded men entered the headquarters of Charlie Hebdo. The Kouachi brothers then prepare to take twelve lives, including those of eight members of the editorial staff of the satirical weekly. Traumatizing France, the attack immediately provoked in the young man an irrepressible need to draw. “I wanted to do like them, to take a stand through drawing and derision,” he remembers.
This January 7 determined its future. After studying literature, Lodi decided to become a press cartoonist. Since then, the election of Donald Trump and the Olympic Games have paid the price for his lively and straightforward line. A singular choice for his generation, less receptive than their elders to current sketches (read the benchmarks). One of its variations divides it in particular: the caricature, or the “charge” according to the Latin etymology of the term, which, by definition, ridicules its model.
Confusion between satire and mockery
And yet, Lodi draws. Admiring the gang Charlie, In 2021, he won the Charlie Prize with a drawing inspired by the historic visit of Pope Francis to Iraq and his meeting with Ayatollah Ali Sistani. However, understanding his generation’s disenchantment with caricature, the young man offers a sympathetic analysis. “It is not so simple to distinguishbetween satire and mockery in a drawing on a single panel, especially when we have the feeling that it is attacking us or targeting our friends”, he explains.
With the Dessinez Create Liberté association, he visits middle or high school classes to “give students tools for understanding press cartoons, showing that it is above all a tool of democracy.We are also there, as mediators, to help distance ourselves from drawing.»
The confusion is expressed especially when the satire touches on religion, according to sociologist Olivier Galland, a specialist in issues related to youth. “During our study of 6,000 adolescents, we found that religion is now considered a marker of identity,” explains the researcher, author with Anne Muxel of Radical Temptation. Survey of high school students (PUF, 2018).
“The belief in a God has become so intimate that it can no longer be shaken,” adds Gérard Biard, editor-in-chief of Charlie Hebdo. However, among those under 25 there is no “the desire to prohibit caricature or limit freedom of expression”, notes Olivier Galland, who rather sees “the expression of a feeling of generational solidarity, which is perhaps the product of greater social diversity”.
Understand the complexity of press design
Marame Kane, press cartoonist and project manager for the Cartooning For Peace network, regularly experiences tension. Recently, a drawing by the journalist Coco, published in Liberation on the occasion of the start of Ramadan, aroused excitement among some of the students in the fourth grade class with which she was speaking. It showed an emaciated Gazan child running after rats and cockroaches among the ruins and being reprimanded by his mother telling him to wait until sunset.
“For some, it was a lack of respect towards Muslims, she says. As is often the case, this allowed us to debate. I deciphered the drawing with the students, to also show them what Coco was denouncing: the famine and the despair caused by the conflict. My objective was to make them understand that news drawings and caricatures serve above all to denounce and provoke a reaction but also that we have the right not to like them, without falling into hatred. »
For the jurist and historian of the law of freedoms François Saint-Bonnet, the reluctance of the younger generations is above all a difficulty in “to distinguish between the religious idea and the believers”. “The law protects the latter but not the former, since an idea, even that of a God, cannot bring a complaint,” he recalls. A teacher at Panthéon-Assas University, he notes a propensity to perceive more “what is naughty than what is funny, caustic” in topical cartoons, especially among his younger students.
A journalistic genre born to disturb
A sensitivity linked to the era? Not only that. “This journalistic genre has always been disturbing,” recalls journalist Fabienne Dhugues, author of Who wants the death of press cartoons? (Eyrolles, 2022). Disturbing is even the vocation of caricature, which has always flourished during periods of protest and crisis: during the French Revolution, the July Monarchy, the Dreyfus affair or even social movements and students of the 1960s.
Its nature destined it to the margins of the media landscape, at least until January 7, which gave Charlie Hebdo unprecedented visibility. « Charlie has become a symbol and the press cartoon a foot soldier of the Republic, we scrutinize him, we wait for him around the corner”, analysis Fabienne Dhugues.
Another notable change modifies the perception of the press cartoon. For a long time this one could not be seen “only by an informed readership and voluntarily exposing themselves to it by going to newsstands”, recalls historian Christian Delporte. But today, it reaches the public via social networks, where especially the most spicy ones stand out and thus reach young Internet users.
A new framework which does not allow context, although necessary. “This type has difficulty living alone, underlines Fabienne Dhugues. It is inherently attached to an editorial line, to articles, to news. » “A tacit agreement is supposed to exist with the reader, who knows where he is going depending on whether he buys Charlie, The Chained Duck or Telerama », adds independent press cartoonist Thibaut Soulcié.
Laugh differently at the news
The essence of the caricature lies in a complicity between its author and his audience, nourished by common references whose absence can give rise to misunderstandings. Reason why it is essential to “question yourself and update your references to maintain a common language which allows us to laugh together”, insists Thibaut Soulcié, nevertheless embarrassed by the comments “moral, who decide what is done or not done”.
Losing ground on paper, current affairs satire is flourishing in other forms on social networks. “Memes are a good example of this”enthuses the journalist, referring to these endlessly diverted images or videos, which take advantage of events to make fun of them. “A hybrid format which is similar to that of press cartoons”he summarizes.
At the same time, social networks are giving rise to a new generation of designers. Some, including Lodi, came together within the Marge collective, supported by the Dessinez Create Liberté association, to bring topical drawing to life in a digital context, outside its birthplace of paper. “In our drawings, we never deny ourselves a subject and we remember that, if we come close to the limit, it is because a priori we are on the right end,” he said with a mischievous smile. Young people have not yet put an end to the caricature.
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Respecting sensitivities, a priority for 46% of those under 25
According to figures from the 2025 Media Trust Barometer of The CrossVerian-La Poste, the entirety of which will be made public on January 14, 44% of those under 35 (43% of 25-34 year olds and 46% of 18-24 year olds) believe that it is “essential to respect individuals and their sensitivities, even if this may restrict freedom of expression and the right to caricature.” An opinion shared by 33% of respondents.
The same 18-24 year olds are 48% thinking that he is “essential to guarantee freedom of expression and the right to caricature, even if this may offend certain people or certain groups.” The proportion of respondents who position themselves in this way increases for each age group, and reaches 66% among those over 50.
According to a study carried out in September 2020 by Ifop in partnership with Charlie Hebdo, 47% of French people under 25 said they understood “outrage over the publication of caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad”compared to 23% of those over 35 and 29% of respondents.
