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It was January 7, 2015. Two Islamist terrorists burst into the editorial office of the satirical newspaper Charlie Hebdo , notably killing the cartoonists Cabu, Charb, Tignous, Wolinski, and Honoré. If the emotion remains alive today, five years after "Charlie", where is the profession of press cartoonist?
In this cafe in the 11th arrondissement of Paris, a few hundred meters from 10 rue Nicolas-Appert which housed the editorial office of Charlie Hebdo , the designer Wozniak remembers this Wednesday, January 7, 2015. “ I was in Poland that day . I got a call from my daughter. When she calls me, it is either to pick up the grandchildren from school, or because there is something serious. She was in tears, she wanted to know if I was not with Cabu , he says. He was a close friend, very close. I traveled a lot four-five months before he left, we didn't really see each other. So today, I still can't quite figure out if he's there or not. "
Jacek Wozniak had met Cabu at " Le Canard ", as he says, he had never heard of it before. The Friday following this attack, he returned to France, then he took to the streets of Paris, like millions of French people who marched under the slogan " Je suis Charlie ".
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Being a journalist, artist and ... funny
It was however chance that led the Polish Wozniak to press cartoons and even more to the Duck in chains , where he has officiated since 1986. Fired from the Fine Arts in Krakow, the one who could have become "a grumpy painter", founded his own satirical newspaper, Wryj, and worked for a regional newspaper in Solidarnosc. This earned him to go to prison and go into exile in France ... " To be a cartoonist, you have to be both an artist and a journalist ," he believes. I am much less a journalist than an artist. What I mean by artist is that you have to be a drawing craftsman. There is no school to be a cartoonist. But you have to have a classic drawing culture. "
Unlike Cabu who knew " the names of the directors of cabinet of all the ministries ", Wozniak keeps his distance from political news. The metaphor for him is inherited from his youth in Communist Poland, where he bypassed censorship by using animals and symbols. Therefore, is the caricature necessarily " a punch in the face ", as Cavanna said? A simple matter of humor? " The interest of press cartoons is to analyze and give a point of view on information, to speak about it differently ", says Rodolphe Urbs, designer for the regional daily newspaper Sud-Ouest and for Le Canard enchaîné .
" I made my request for a press card after a journalist called me on January 7, 2015, saying to me:" We shot comics, what do you think? " I think I have rarely insulted someone so much on the phone. The friends of "Charlie" reduced to the rank of comedians, I found that badly placed. OK, what I do can make people laugh, I hope so, but I'm not Gad Elmaleh. Press cartoons are journalistic language , ”he continues.
If the Map Commission identified 18 reporters-designers holding the press card in 2019, this figure does not correspond to the reality of a profession that would actually have less than a hundred designers living on their pencils. Having started in the departmental weekly press 20 years ago, Urbs co-founded in Bordeaux, La Mauvais Réputation, a bookstore turned to marginal styles (thriller, erotic literature, fanzine, punk music ...), before getting the essentials of his income from press cartoons.
Controversies and threats on social networks
Even more since " Charlie ", the caricature has gained exposure thanks to social networks. But it has given way to the shitstorms , these endless smear campaigns. "The Internet has taken cartoonists from cartoonists to content editors like anyone commenting on the latest football match on Twitter ," says Patrick Kak, cartoonist for the business daily Opinion , and new president of the newspaper. Cartooning for Peace association. But the press cartoonist is not just anyone. Previously, a press cartoon was published, because a newspaper or a press editor validated it. There was a filter and a shared risk in the event of a scandal or even a trial. Now, that is no longer the case. With the Scorbut.eu site launched in 1998, Wozniak was among the first to venture onto the Internet, but has come back a little today.
The halting of the political drawing by the New York Times decided in June 2019, following the publication in its international edition of a drawing judged anti-Semitic representing the American president Donald Trump in blind led by a dog with the features Benyamin Netanyahu, then Prime Israeli Minister, has had an impact on the entire profession. The Swiss cartoonist Patrick Chappatte, collaborator of the newspaper, pointed in the rostrum published in the Swiss daily Le Temps - and relayed by Courrier international, in France - " the moralizing horde " which " gathers on social media and falls like a sudden thunderstorm over the newsrooms ”.
Journalist Fabienne Desseux, who made 14 French designers speak of their profession for her book Traits engaged (1), is also concerned about this trend. “ We want to say to people: let them do their job! Today, everyone will fall on them depending on their chapel: feminists, " yellow vests " , vegans ... Everyone is so tense about their fight that it becomes complicated for designers. If you want to make an inclusive drawing, this is not the essence of the press cartoon , ”she notes.
"My limit is 8:30 pm"
Did Charlie Hebdo's attack put barriers in people's minds? Did it promote self-censorship? Urbs considers that its editorial staff run the main risks in the event of publication. He assures that his only limit is hourly: " it's 8:30 pm ". He who was the target of ad nominem attacks on sites accusing him of “ Christianophobia ”, and said he was “ no more tender ” towards Catholics than Muslims.
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" What characterizes press cartoons in France is that they have always been much more tolerated ," says historian Christian Delporte, professor at Versailles Saint-Quentin University. The degree of impertinence has always been much higher, especially compared to Anglo-Saxon countries. Especially since the 1970s-80s, the politicians who sued designers like those of Charlie Hebdo , were all dismissed by the 17th chamber of the Paris Tribunal, which is the place for press trials. From this point of view, there was a French exception. But be careful, the lukewarmness of the newspapers risks softening this sharp edge that French caricature has had since its origins. The cases of Charlie Hebdo , still under police protection, and Plantu, also under police escort, are very specific.
If we have not found another Cabu, a new generation from the comic strip has arrived in the columns of the Duck chained to take over. Among them, Romain Dutreix (2), 44, who drew for a long time in Fluide Glacial and quickly caught the news. The concern of this child prodigy, for whom drawing is a serious matter, with a mechanics of laughter and a perfection of drawing? Let us " recognize " his caricatures and find his characters, a bit like in " a theater of socks ". When he was called on the phone, he had found " his Balkany " without difficulty and stalled a little on " his Trump ". Casually, this childish game is also the daily life of a cartoonist.
(1) Fabienne Desseux, Traits Engagés Press cartoonists talk about their profession , Iconovox Editions, 2019.
(2) Romain Dutreix is also the cartoonist of the comic strip, co-written with Toma Bletner: Press review Little history of satirical and non-conformist newspapers , Fluide Glacial, 2016.
Caricature in the world: very disparate realities
Difficult to make a global inventory of caricature in the world. Each zone and even each country enjoys a context - political, media, social, religious ... - which impacts the work of designers, generally on the front line with regard to freedom of expression. The Cartooning for Peace association, which was created by Plantu in 2006, organizes numerous conferences, workshops in schools and meetings. It also publishes a Practical Guide for the protection of cartoonists and provides assistance to some of them, threatened by censorship.
“ In this area, you have a colossal gap between Western models of democracy, where we have real freedom of expression and the rest of the world. In the West, we are not going to end up in prison for mocking the leaders. You can even do almost anything you want when you take on the powerful. Charlie's case is really special. In the rest of the world, attacking a leader or an economic power can have consequences ranging from recurrent threats to assassination. In several cases, we helped the exile of designers, ”observes Patrick Kak, its new president.
Cartooning for Peace brings together around 200 cartoonists from 70 countries around the world. Among its members, Lassane Zohoré, editor of the Ivorian newspaper Gbich! Launched in 1999 in Abidjan, the satirical weekly copies nearly 10,000 copies. The 2002-2003 crisis and the partition of Côte d'Ivoire that followed, reduced a readership equally distributed between Togo and Benin. Today, Gbich! even produces cartoons on YouTube, The Band at Gbich . However, he faced a real problem: renewing his writing with a new generation of designers. In Ivory Coast as in France, the profession remains very little feminized.