Cartoons, Capitalism & Censorship: Alison Bechdel & Ann Telnaes on Politics in Art

26:28So, yeah, I think it's a valid threat. So, Allison, your book, Fun Home, has been targeted by various book bans because of its LGBTQ themes. I mean, completely in spent, the fictional Allison moderates a banned books panel and has a sister who's going, quote, full Hitler as a member of Liberty Moms, which is a very thinly veiled reference to parents' rights slash book banning group Moms for Liberty. Why do you think real-life conservative parents are so worried about books will turn their kids gay or what happens when gay kids can't read books, ultimately, that don't reflect on their experiences?

27:03They still become gay because I didn't read a lot of books that reflected on my experience. I know. They still, still. It's crazy. I don't know. I have a feeling, although I don't have proof for this, that that whole movement was not at all grassroots, but was engineered from the top down by someone somewhere. Because it's just ridiculous. But yeah, and I mean, it's ridiculous and it's very dangerous. They don't like books with LGBTQ characters. They don't like books with people of color who are protagonists. And of course, it's not the stories. it's the people themselves that they're trying to ban.

27:43That's the ultimate message. They don't want gay people around. They don't want to see adorable gay people, I guess, if you draw them. So it just feels incredibly clumsy and brutal and crazy. And are they that stupid or are they that deliberate and mean? I can't tell. Talk about the experience. I mean, it definitely feels like you were astroturfed, as they say. But did it have a real impact on your book sales? I don't think so. I mean, some people say, oh, well, at least you sold some books. But I don't think that has a huge impact on anyone, you know, getting censored here or there. It certainly puts you in the conversation.

28:26I feel like the book has gotten a lot more attention than it would have if no one was trying to ban it. But, Allison, just real quick, how did you feel personally? because I find book banning chilling. I think just because of the historical thing. I know. How did you feel personally when one of your books was being banned? Because... Yeah. I mean, I almost don't like to talk about it because I don't want to give anyone the satisfaction, but of course it's terribly painful. It's painful and it pisses me off. Like, my book is a memoir about my real life, and people describe it as pornographic. Like, you can't call my life pornographic.

29:12I mean, which is essentially what they're doing, and that's just, it just makes me crazy. especially because at least in one of these cases, the man who brought my book to the school board meeting with the giant blown up pictures of the one sex scene in the book was like arrested for child molestation a few weeks later. But when that happens to you, is it, I mean, have you ever met people who think that and talk to them? I haven't. And I, you know, if I had more time and more like personal strength, I would go there. Dave Eggers organized a trip to somewhere, South Dakota, somewhere where his book and my book were both being banned.

29:57And he said, do you want to go? Let's do it. And I just, I didn't, I didn't want to do it. I didn't want to put my resources into that, partly because I really didn't have time. But I didn't want to expose myself to that anger. And it was very impressed to me that he did it. You know, that was a wonderful, you know, ally kind of thing to do that he could as a white straight man. Like, I think in some ways it was easier for him to do. I don't know. Maybe not. But I was very grateful that he did that. And he had some very meaningful, interesting conversations with people. He probably did. He probably did.

30:32Have you tried that, Anne, with people who didn't like your drunk cartoons? Oh, yeah. I mean, just through email. You know, because, yeah, I actually have had good conversations with conservatives, but this is all prior MAGA stuff. You know, this was a while back. I mean, I, you know, and I have no problem. I think for me, it's just the time element. It's really kind of hard to put aside so much time when you're working to have these back and forth. Nowadays, I just get trolls. I get a ton of trolls. And they just say terrible things. They just say shitty stuff and they pop up once in a while.

31:08But the thing about Allison's experience, I think it's important on two different levels. One, obviously, the banning of the book, which I think is horrific historically, as we all know. Who else banned and burned books? But on another level, it's also an attack against free speech because you're silencing voices. You know, and if you're banning these books and nobody has exposure to a different opinion or, you know, just your fellow man that you know nothing about, fellow human being, excuse me, you know, then that's dangerous. That's dangerous on a lot of different levels. And I think the book banning is, I mean, I don't have children, so, you know, I'm not coming at it from that point of view.

31:57But, you know, I just don't understand how... It kind of goes back to the way I think about free speech. If you don't know what you're arguing about, then how can you argue? You know, it was like... Well, that's fair. I think they think that the exposure is the issue, right? The exposure to the idea. And it doesn't, of course, it doesn't keep them away. It doesn't. And it's the same thing with the Danish cartoonist. You know, there were no American newspapers, I think, except maybe one or two, that actually printed those cartoons that everybody was having a big old fit about. How do you discuss it?

32:31How do you sit there and argue what is appropriate and what isn't if you can't see them? You're talking about the cartoons that depicted Muhammad. Muhammad, yes, exactly. I think they just do that. I mean, I've had people, I do talk to these people all the time. They end up as fans. That's how I, I like get new fans because I talk to them. And I think they just desperately need to be talked to, you know, in some weird way. But I have a lot of kids. And I had one right-wing person saying to me, you people make gay people. I said, I make straight people. Like, I seem not unable to make gay people, but you make all the gay people, not me.

33:08Like, I can't, I can give them so many visits to, you know, Lucretia Mott's home, and it just doesn't work. And trust me, my ex-wife used to take them always to the suffragette museum, and they're very straight. no matter how much we try. We don't try at all. We don't care. But one of the things you were both inspired to make your art by your experience as women in a male-demonated society in the tech world, content moderation is supposed to make the internet and social media less toxic for women and minorities, but conservatives and the tech people themselves successfully undone all these efforts at content moderation.

33:42Talk about the important to balance free speech and the right to be free and harassment online because there is something to say as you just were noting, and let it all out. And Anne, you've written about how your Twitter feed was flooded with online harassment and death threats. And 2016, after the Post published a cartoon of yours criticizing Ted Cruz for having his young child read a political tech ad. So let's hear from you on this one. So first of all, I mean, I have, editorial cartoons are very used to getting criticism. I mean, it all started with, you know, letters, letters and calls to the editors.

34:13And then we went into emails. And, but boy, once we had the internet access, I have never received so much misogynistic crap as I have actually over that cartoon, the Ted Cruz cartoon. Having said that, I do think that it's better to let these idiots talk. When the Ted Cruz thing happened, I was still working for the post. I didn't respond. I see that differently now. I respond. I also let my readers respond. So I have found that all I do is I just repost what people are sending to me. And I say, have at it. And, you know, it's sort of like... That's great. Yeah, I think it's a very good way of doing it because I think that rather than trying to shut people up, because the one thing that I have a problem with about limiting content is who decides that?

35:10You know what I mean? It's like I did a long form piece about, you know, especially after Charlie Hebdo when the conversation went from, you know, just sweet Charlie to wait a minute, you know, they shouldn't be doing that. Those kind of cartoons. Who decides what is the red line? You know, so I guess I'm a little bit more on the side that let the idiots talk, but that doesn't mean you can't challenge them. As long as somebody isn't threatening to kill you, that's different. You start talking about killing me, then yes, you should be. Because it's happened, especially with cartoonists. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm kind of a bad.

35:51I mean, Alison, I don't know how you feel differently about that. Let me note, Alison has spent your alter ego worries about political violence and you yearn to learn how to shoot a gun or protect yourself from the Proud Boys. Censorship can come in many forms and fear is obviously one of them. Governments aren't the only ones that target artists, so do vigilantes. How do you think about censorship in that context? And how much do you personally worry about political violence? You may not be speaking through this person, but you kind of are in a way. I don't feel consumed by that anxiety, but certainly it's running in my background all the time.

36:29I mean, there's so many guns floating around this country, and who's got most of them? You know, it's a little frightening. But, you know, I miss the old internet. I had such a wonderful community of readers back in the, like the aughts when I had a blog, like a blog, and people would just log on and make comments. And I didn't have to moderate it because there was no trolls there. I mean, eventually they came and then I had to stop. And then everything got so shitty after Gamergate. And then I was really out. But I miss, you know, that good aspect of the internet, which is now a thing of the past.

37:11Absolutely. But why does this character want to shoot a gun? I mean, I have a lot of friends who, when I read it, I was like, I just had a friend send me a picture who was a liberal shooting an AK-47, it looked like. And I was like, oh, don't get a gun. Please don't get a gun. And at the same time, I thought about it. I'm like, oh. Well, I, you know, to research that scene, I tried shooting a gun. It's actually my partner's brother has a lot of guns, and he agreed to take me shooting and brought his Glock. And it was like, at first it was just this abstract idea, but then we were really doing it.

37:47We were going into this shooting range with all these guys, and then I was holding this lethal weapon, and it kicked like mad. I never felt anything like the jolt that went through my body, and it just scared the shit out of me. Like, I'm not messing with this. But I feel glad that I tried it, you know, just to get a sense of it. But, yeah, you study war, you get war. So I don't need to learn to shoot. You don't need to learn to shoot. So you didn't, it's not, the real Allison's not going to yearn to shoot a gun to protect yourself. No, but we do have a.22 for scaring the bears. FYI, it's here, sitting there.

38:28Just anyone, just so you know. We'll be back in a minute.

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40:16See you next time. in their Shop Apotheker app. Let's end up talking about something that is a bit more uplifting than gun shooting, the art itself. Every episode, we get an expert to send us a question, so let's hear yours. Hey, it's Hannah Rosen from Radio Atlantic of The Atlantic Magazine. Hi, Alison. Hi, Anne. So this is a switch places kind of question. Alison, to you, is there any public official, politician, someone out there who you look at and you're like, oh, I would love to draw that person. I have the exact image in my head of how I would do it. And then Anne, to you, I have the opposite question, which is, do you ever think, oh, I'm going to do a kind of graphic memoir now, now that my life has taken this turn, that's really internal and about my life and my experiences and draw something in that style?

41:16That's my question. Thank you, Anna. Allison, you first. Well, I'm going to have to go with Christy Noem after hearing Amp's story about her face. You know, I think this whole, like, Republican ultra-femininity is such an interesting trend, and it would be fun to try and find a way to represent that, that sort of showed through it, you know? What would be the image in your head, how you would do it? Where would you start with part of the face? I guess it would have to be the hair, which will be challenging for me because I have a hard time drawing long hair, but I will learn to do it. Why do you have a hard time drawing long hair?

41:55Because it moves and stuff. Like, it takes a shape that's different from the head. I don't know. Yeah. So the hair. You'd start with the hair. The extensions. Let me correct you. Thank you, Anne. All right. What about you, Anne? Yes, I have actually thought about it. But editorial cartoons don't tend to do personal stuff in their work, obviously, because we're dealing with policies and, you know, political issues. But, you know, I've lived long enough now that maybe I would. I mean, it's, I have to say, I'm very, I admire the fact that Alison can do these long form. I mean, that's a lot of work, you know.

42:34I mean, years sometimes people take. But, yeah, I've thought about it. I mean, I've created before during COVID, I created an idea for a COVID-related but human story as an animated short, which, of course, nobody was interested in because nobody wanted to talk about COVID. But yeah, I do try to, I would like to do some more personal work. Unfortunately, I was going to do that full time until Trump became president again. And then I thought I have to do this again. So it might just take a little longer. And you feel like you have to do this now, the Trump stuff. I do. I do. I feel like as an editor of cartoonists, I can't just stop.

43:14Right. He definitely has a lot of content. He gives you a lot of content every week. All right. Let's see if it's been different. You guys have been great asking each other questions, actually. You're both experts in your field. Allison, I'd love to hear what question you might have for Anne. I feel like we've already asked all my questions. I have something that we could discuss a little. Okay. Anne, let's hear your question for Allison. Okay, because since you do create such personal art, how do you feel about AI and art? Because it's all about you, right? It's not the, it has to be your experience.

43:53It has to be how you feel, how, you know, what you've done in your life. It's not just about prompts, right? So tell me what you think about AI. Just to follow gender of AI is making it easier for someone with no artistic ability to draw, etc. And some of it's called AI slop, but it's going to get better. Allison? Yeah. It's funny because I actually am teaching comics right now, and I have to put my little statement on my class website about plagiarism and stuff. And now I have to say, please don't use AI to make your drawings. I mean, AI can't yet draw in their sketchbooks that I'm aware of but they can certainly use AI to generate sketches that they can then draw from and I just feel like that is, you know, maybe fun to play with a little bit but do not become reliant on it because you'll just lose that neural capacity to make drawings once you start relying on the computer just as you can lose it for finding your way in the world if you only use a GPS.

44:57Yeah. Yeah. I just gave my sons a map lesson. Oh, awesome. Yeah. It's so important. People are losing whole quadrants of their brains. So would you read a graphic novel or editorial cartoon from someone who used AI to make drawings and couldn't actually draw themselves if they were expressive? I would look at it, but I can't imagine it would be expressive, you know, because it's got to express one person's self, and it wouldn't be doing that. And it's not just the whole personal part of, you know, your work. It's also, you know, art is something that you have to learn. I mean, you have to learn.

45:34If you really do want to draw well and compose well, it's something you learn in school. I mean, we had, at CalArts, we had basic classes even before they let us animate a thing, you know, and that was before computers. You know, I see now them putting people on computers, you know, in their first year, which I think is crazy because you have to learn the fundamentals, frankly, in order to do anything like that. And I'm with Alison. I think you're kind of losing. I mean, doing art is a constant thing. You have to keep working at it. I mean, I still take life drawing classes because I want to keep my skills up.

46:11Wow. That's impressive. Well, it's just, it's so invigorating. I love it. I mean, I'm just, I think it's great. Well, it shows in your work, and the figures are so amazing, yeah. Well, it's the love of drawing. You want to do a really good drawing. Yeah, if you don't want to do the drawing, you shouldn't be a cartoonist. Exactly. And have you ever asked AI to generate a Telna's cartoon? No, but I've seen them. And it's like, really? That's not my story. Really? Tell me, what did you see? What did they do? Oh, it was like, you know, obviously what the AI used was the fact that in my earlier work, I used a pen and brush.

46:53I'm sorry, a brush and ink. So it's very clean lines, kind of Hirschfeld-like, you know, that was my earlier work. So what they did is they created this piece of art that had very clean lines and, you know, women that were like profile and black and white. And I'm like, well, not even close. So, yeah, it's just, and it's lazy. It's cheating. I always say it's theft when you're using AI because it's coming from somewhere. It's coming from another artist. Right. Somewhere. Have you seen yours, Allison? No, I have never asked that question, and I don't think I ever will. No, then I'll do it for you.

47:33I did it. I actually did it one year when I was writing my book, and it was terrible. And I then did it for the paperback, and it was so much better. And it was quite close, I would have to say. I think text is easier, right, in some ways. And that leaves me to two more questions. I would love to talk about some of the artistic choices you're making. For example, why you switched to digital drawings halfway through the book, Allison, or why you used watercolors to draw Trump, Ann. Ann, you go first, and then Allison. Yeah, like I said, in my earlier work, when I first started editorial cartooning, I was using a brush and ink.

48:07And the reason for that was because I started out doing cartoons, cross-hatching like every other single editorial cartoonist did in the old days. And I realized I couldn't do them fast. And you have to work fast. You know, Allison mentioned that you're always, you got to do these things fast. Every day you got to do a new one. And I discovered, well, you know, I knew how to use a brush and ink because I had done licensing art for Warner Brothers, as a matter of fact. And I was really good at it and fast. So that's why I used that. So that's where the look came, right? But once Trump got into office, I just, I don't know.

48:42I had to change. I had been doing a little digital color because of the animated pieces. You know, I still drew by hand the line art and scan it in. But, you know, because there's so many drawings in animation, I use digital color, which I use it pretty sparingly. So it's not like oversaturated. But yeah, so I just thought, you know, just the way he's behaving and the way his administration is going, I needed to just kind of scribble it out. So I switched. I went to Prisma Pencil, which is a very soft pencil you can grip. And watercolors was so immediate. And I don't know how to use watercolors, frankly.

49:23And it'll just go off on its own. So you can't control it very well. So it just seemed to be the right way to do Trump. Watercolors. So funny. It's such an interesting choice. But go ahead. Are you saying you use the pencils, like watercolor pencils or actual watercolors? No, no. I used for my line, instead of the brush and ink, I used a Prismacolor black, soft pencil, so scribbles. Not a one line all the time, right? And then for the color, I just went to real watercolors. so I don't even do except for scanning it in to get it ready to go and correct spelling mistakes which I always seem to be doing then that's all I do on the computer now.

50:02What about you Allison? Well I as you say I did make a very big switch from drawing on paper with a steel nib to drawing digitally. Tip of the nib right what do you say? Yeah that's right yes I would often give tips of the nib to people who like gave me ideas. Now I guess I can't do that tip of the stylus I guess doesn't have quite the same ring. But yes, halfway through this, my newest book spent, I was falling behind in my deadline. And I realized how much faster digital drawing could be where I'm making my sketches on a tablet. And I could use it to layer stuff, bring in drawing references, do it all in one place instead of having to scan things and resize them all the time.

50:46It was so much faster, but lacks the beautiful line quality that I used to have. Now I just have this kind of, you can see it if you look closely in the book. We go from a nice, very smooth line to a kind of rough, crappy looking line. Didn't notice. Yeah, most people won't notice. And Anne, actually, this is the thing I was going to say to you. I I feel like our actual drawings often don't get a lot of attention. It's the content that people always are responding to. There's often not much of an aesthetic discussion of our drawings. I mean, I find that in my stuff. I don't know if you feel that too.

51:30I occasionally have people who obviously geeky readers that kind of notice certain things. The one thing that I've noticed always, it seems like my worst drawings are always the one that go viral. It's never that beautiful drawing you're talking about that goes viral. It's always those horrendous sketches of tech titans on their knee. But you did depict them rather well, I have to tell you. You really did. If they had given me a chance to do the final. Oh, it wasn't the final. Oh, I didn't realize. No, no, no. No, that's only a rough that goes to the editor for approval to go to final. Well, I will tell you, what a putz move on his part.

52:12Allison, I'm sorry, you were finishing up with digital. So you like doing it this way, correct? I kind of do. I mean, you can say you don't like the typewriter anymore and you like the computer. Yeah, you don't have to grapple with gravity or humidity, all the things that are constantly affecting the drawing process. but there's slightly less soul in it, you know. I'd like to find some kind of compromise between maybe digital sketching and then actual drawing with a pen again, but I haven't figured that out yet. Well, neither of you churned your butter anymore, so it's okay. So last question, spent ends, and a spoiler for listeners, I'm about to say how it ends, with Allison emerging from her existential crisis and realizing you have to live one day at a time and that a community is still what really matters and your work is non-narrative.

53:01It has no end. And as a journalist covering Trump, you never know what fresh horror awaits you every day. So where are your heads right now? How do you feel about the ability of America's artists in general and yourselves in particular to chronicle and examine our current reality? Anne, you start and then Alison finish up. Where's my head? Just above water, I suppose. You know, I'm just hanging on. I did that in this first administration. And this one seems a little bit more urgent, obviously, because of the democracy issue. I'm just kind of just plowing ahead and trying to keep up. I think editorial cartoonists are just doing that, frankly.

53:41I don't think anybody has a plan. And you just take what happens every day. We have to. That's what we deal with every day. Right. Is there anything that animates you right now, in particular, of all the various horrors that he unleashes? Oh, you know, I think because we're artists, this whole cultural Smithsonian Kennedy Center stuff, this is so horrifying to me. It's like, it's the same level as book banning. It's like, I mean, I've read, I've gone back and read a lot about, you know, the Nazis and how they control the German people. And, you know, that's what they did. They took over things and I see it.

54:20And the depictions of Jewish people as animals and stuff was all artistic because Hitler himself was an artist. Yeah, not just that, but also just the whole, you know, the degenerative art stuff. You know, there were all kinds of people, artists that were banned and forced to leave and arrested because of just different art. You know, just doing it differently than what they saw as German proper art. And I just am horrified by this because it's continuing. I mean, it's hilarious on one level because his style and his tastes are basically low-level Las Vegas. But, you know, it's horrifying on another level.

55:02A friend of mine was just joking that next Barron Trump will be appointed to the Pulitzer Committee. I mean, I think you're absolutely right. I think this idea of, you know, slavery being not as bad, you know, or maybe how bad, don't focus too much on how bad slavery was. It's sort of, it's a shocking thing for him to have written, but not because it's him, right? On some level. Well, I personally miss the quick turnaround time that I had when I used to write biweekly comics or still nothing like a daily thing. When I could really comment on what was happening, I don't have the chops to do that anymore, but I would like to continue this world that I've set up and spent.

55:51I'd love to do a sequel and show all these characters living through this current moment. I was trying to think could I put it out serially in little segments maybe that's a possibility but so far I think I'm just going to try to tell another long story I really appreciate it I love your interaction together too I knew this would work out it was so fun and I'm so happy I got to meet you I'm really glad to meet you I hope we can talk again soon that would be great Anyway, you're both doing a great service. Absolutely. Even though you think you're, you know, I think you do know, but you won't, you do.

56:31Just so you know, I'm telling you that. Thank you, Cara. Thanks for having us. All right. Thank you.

56:41On with Cara Swisher is produced by Christian Castor-Russell, Kateri Yoakum, Michelle Eloy, Megan Burney, and Kaylin Lynch. Nishat Kirwa is Vox Media's executive producer of podcasts. Special thanks to Bradley Sylvester. Our engineers are Rick Kwan and Fernando Arruda, and our theme music is by Trackademics. If you're already following the show, Alison doesn't need to buy a gun. If not, get ready for Anne's version of Kristi Noem. Go wherever you listen to podcasts, search for On with Kara Swisher, and hit follow. Thanks for listening to On with Kara Swisher from Podium Media, New York Magazine, the Vox Media Podcast Network, and us.

57:17We'll be back on Thursday with more.

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