Did you come from Japan?

As someone who is not at all interested in politics, and even less so in political cartoons, I had a very difficult task ahead of me regarding the choosing of my subject. Having had somewhat followed the recent disaster in Japan, I decided to analyze a cartoon which would be related to its consequences.

“Doubt”, a cartoon by Luojie from China, published online at www.politicalcartoons.com, addresses bans by different countries on food imports from Japan. It shows the Disney character Snow White being given an apple by her evil stepmother who is disguised as an old woman. The twist is obvious, while the old witch has skin that is green – a sign of something that is unnatural, Snow White is holding in her hand an issue of a newspaper which has “Japan nuclear radiation” written on its front page. Furthermore, she is holding a magnifying glass and asking the old witch where she is from.

The cartoonist’s idea was executed so as to resonate with a very wide and general audience. The animated characters are well known to all of us, and upon inspecting his other works, I have found that Loujie most often relies on well known concepts or sayings in his cartoons.

This cartoon can be seen in two ways. One of them, the more obvious one, is the author’s ironic take on the paranoia that has overwhelmed the Western world where extensive inspections of imported products from Japan are made. This is most obvious from the way in which the author chooses to alter the well known Disney imagery – adding the newspaper, the magnifying glass and last but not least, painting the old witch’s skin green.

However, one must also take into account the reason why this exact animated movie was chosen by the author. Its mocking and ironic tone does make a point, but one must also consider the fact that the apple in the fairy tale was indeed poisoned. This poses a question to which the readers must find the answer on their own: Is the whole deal blown out of proportion or do we need to consider every aspect of the story, even those which are not reported to us by our governments?

As already mentioned, by choosing a well known scene, Luojie manages to reach out to a wide audience, appealing to that which they are on familiar terms with in order to awaken their interest in the topic which may seem completely alien to them. For one must always keep in mind that what we eat is what we are. And if reports of radiation levels change on a daily basis, as they do at the moment without any explanation, it is our obligation to ourselves to seriously consider all the circumstances surrounding that which we consume.