The caricature, in the graphic journalism of the new century

Abstract

This work is part of an investigation that aims to study the current forms of caricature in those texts designed by the humorist Nik (Cristian Dzwanik) for the newspaper La Nación de Argentina, in the period 2000 - 2001.

Such study is based on a historical-journalistic investigation that accounts for the socio-cultural conditions, political struggles and the participation of social subjects in current Argentine history.

The cartoon appears in graphic journalism in the nineteenth century applied to the criticism of social institutions, characters and events of political and cultural life.

Following the Spanish model, in Argentina there are a whole series of newspapers and magazines of a humorous-satirical nature that make caricature - at a time when the illiterate or alluvial popular masses were still the majority - their main way of showing vices social for the purposes of political opposition.

After more than a century, despite censorship and prohibitions, political humor flourishes in the times of democratic governments and takes on new forms. This graphic modality has been transformed in its techniques - adopting new graphic modalities as the empire of audiovisual culture - but it continues to be at the service of the opposing and ridiculing discourses of the politicians of the day. It shows policies of discourse subject to the necessary inversion of official policies.

In this communication we study current forms of caricature in texts in which the classic modes of caricature drawing are used (the deformation of facial features, the reduction of the body, the inclusion of an object that characterizes the character by itself), the traditional appeal to the comparison with animals and collage in which drawing, photography (photomontage) and computerized tricks of easily recognizable characters are superimposed.