Chris Madden Cartoons

A searchable archive for licensing

Dr Seuss racism allegation

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Dr Seuss racism allegation cartoon

A cartoon about the news that several Dr Seuss books are to be withdrawn due to claims of racism.

Dr Seuss Enterprises has decided that it will cease publication of six Dr Seuss books in order “to ensure Dr Seuss Enterprises’ catalog represents and supports all communities and families”.

A 2019 study, The Cat is Out of the Bag: Orientalism, Anti-Blackness, and White Supremacy in Dr. Seuss’s Children’s Books, stated that “white supremacy is seen through the centring of whiteness and white characters, who comprise 98 per cent of all characters”.
Drawn: March2 2021
Cartoon reference number: a906

Crossing bridges cartoon

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Crossing bridges cartoon

Crossing bridges cartoon

A cartoon from a series of ‘wellness’ cartoons featuring a life coach and spiritual advisor called Mrs Walton.
In this cartoon she is advising someone that “Just because there is a bridge it doesn’t mean that you have to cross it.”.

The cartoon is about the way that people’s lives and attitudes are channeled in particular directions by the structures imposed by their societies.
A cartoon about life coaches and lifestyle advice.
Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a903

Confirmation bias cartoon

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Confirmation bias cartoon

Confirmation bias cartoon

A cartoon from a series featuring a life coach and lifestyle advisor called Mrs Walton.
In the cartoon she. is advising someone to “Never believe anyone who you agree with.”

The cartoon is about the fact that people tend to seek out opinions that agree with their own, thus reinforcing rather than questioning their own opinions, a phenomenon called confirmation bias.
Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a902

Marriage advice cartoon

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Marriage advice cartoon

Marriage advice

A cartoon from a series of ‘wellness’ cartoons featuring a life coach and spiritual advisor called Mrs Walton.
The cartoon features marriage advice to young men. The type of young men that I’ve depicted is deliberate. Interprete it as you wish.
The life coach is saying “Never marry a woman whoitmore attractive than Scarlett Johansson or less attractive than Lily James”.

A cartoon about life coaches, lifestyle advice, marriage advice, therapy, relationship advice.
Drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a901

Shame on you – woke shaming cartoon

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Shame on you - woke shaming cartoon

Woke shaming cartoon

A cartoon about the tendency among some of the woke to attempt to humiliate and belittle those who think differently to them by ‘shaming’ them. The process of shaming is a convenient way to dismiss other points of view without engaging with it, and of dismissing the person whose view it is.

A cartoon about wokeness, tolerance, intolerence, shaming, shame culture. Published in the Critic magazine, June 2021.
Drawn: October 2020
Cartoon reference number: a900

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Ethnic diversity cartoon

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ethnic diversity cartoon

Diversity and inclusion cartoon.

The cartoon shows a lecture about the desirability of ethnic diversity. Almost the whole audience is white.

The inspiration for this cartoon came from the phrase that performers at some events use when describing the audience as ‘a sea of white faces’.
Of course the audience at some events may be predominantly white because that reflects the ethnic mix of the locality or because of the differing interests of different ethnic and cultural groups, however sometimes it is a result of issues around discrimination concerning opportunities and access, as is implied in this cartoon.
A cartoon about race, racism, bame issues, discrimination, unconscious discrimination, cultural discrimination, racial bias.
Drawn: 8th Sept 2020
Cartoon reference number: a843

Cartoon – what art is offensive?

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Offensive art cartoon

To what extent should art galleries reflect contemporary concerns?

A cartoon about changing the exhibits in art galleries and museums to reflect contemporary society and to avoid offence.

It’s quite common in art galleries that exhibit contemporary art for the art to reflect contemporary concerns (or at least the contemporary concerns that concern the art world).
This cartoon shows a historical artwork being judged by contemporary mores (or rather, the mores of a particular sector of society that embraces ‘woke’ values).
Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a841

Code switching cartoon

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Code switching cartoon

Code switching cartoon.

A cartoon about the concept of code switching.

Code switching in its current definition is the phenomenon of a person changing their behaviour in order to fit in with other people. It’s often used when people of a minority culture alter their behaviour in order to fit in with a majority culture.
Code switching is often interpreted as something that people shouldn’t really have to do, as it stops them being themselves.
This cartoon illustrates an example of when code switching would be a very good thing.
Code switching is in many ways a rebranding of the normal social activity of modifying one’s behaviour in different social settings. It is currently viewed by some people as a bad thing partly because of the current philosophy that you should “be yourself”.

Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a837

Code switching cartoon – from working class to a class at Oxbridge

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working class code switching cartoon

Code switching cartoon.

A cartoon about the concept of code switching.

The current usage of the term code switching refers to the action of people changing their behaviour when they are in different cultural settings, usually in order to blend in. In this sense it is most often used with reference to ethnic minority people who are interacting in predominantly white social groups.
The cartoon illustrates a relatively less well remarked upon example of code switching, which is when white working class people need to blend in with white people from higher social classes, here exemplified by the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. In education the working classes tend to have lower attainment levels than other classes as a result of social discrimination.

Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a836

You can be whoever you want to be – cartoon

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You can be whoever you want to be – cartoon

A flaw in the aspirational concept of “You can be whoever you want to be”.

The cartoon illustrates a problem with the currently popular encouragement to schoolchildren that when they grow up they can be whoever they want to be.
The aspirational, motivational expression makes the assumption that everyone will strive for a worthy goal. I don’t think this is necessarily the case.
In fact the concept gives people license to aim towards whatever they desire, which wouldn’t be a good thing.

Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a835

The blame game – cartoon

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I blame you cartoon

The blame game – cartoon.

A cartoon showing a protester with a banner proclaiming “I blame you”.

The cartoon is about people who need to place the blame for things on other people rather than on circumstances. This includes blaming people for their attitudes rather than analysing the circumstances that make people hold those attitudes.
A cartoon about protestors, political demonstrations, guilt.
Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a830b

Diversity cartoon – inclusion and employment policy

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workplace diversity inclusion cartoon

Diversity cartoon – inclusion in the workplace.

A cartoon about diversity and inclusion policy in employment and in recruitment.

The cartoon shows an interviewer in an organisation’s hr department interviewing a man. The interviewer is saying that her organisation promotes a policy of diversity and inclusion, however the policy doesn’t extend to the man being interviewed.
Diversity policies that are aimed at reducing discrimination tend to be targeted at race, gender and sexual orientation. This frequently puts white working class males at a disadvantage, partly because they do not belong to a recognised disadvantaged group under the UK government’s 2010 Equality Act and partly because they do not have enough points under the concept of intersectionality.
Drawn: 19th July 2020
Cartoon reference number: a821
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Cancel culture cartoon

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Woke cancel culture cartoon

A cartoon about cancel culture and historical thought crimes.

This cartoon is about the current (2020) phenomenon of cancel culture. This is the concept by which a person is ostracized or shunned if they are judged to hold unapproved views or have attitudes that run counter to those of the arbiters of what are acceptable views. It is a subsection of woke culture.

Cancel culture is responsible for such phenomena as no platforming, where people with proscribed views are denied the ability to put their views forward for debate, particularly in universities.
It is often applied to people based on attitudes that they held in the past. By this criterium practically everyone on the planet should be cancelled, which is one of the points of this cartoon. The saying “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone” comes to mind.
Cancel culture is often applied to historical figures from several centuries ago, particularly (at the moment) to those involved in some way in the transatlantic slave trade, and is manifested in the current campaigns to remove statues.
Cancel culture can be viewed as having a stifling effect on culture and debate, with its, to me, zealously censorious woke attitudes and its Orwellian implications.

Drawn: 7th July 2020

Cartoon reference: a815
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Blackface cartoon, Drag Race cartoon

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Racist & sexist demeaning caricatures cartoon

A cartoon about attitudes to blackface and to drag.

This cartoon is about changing attitudes to race and gender in popular culture.
The cartoon shows someone watching the tv programme The Black and White Minstrel Show in the UK in 1975, and someone else watching RuPaul’s Drag Race in 2020.
The cartoon draws attention to the jolly, pantomime portrayal of black men in the first show and of women in the second, and tries to make the point that while the cartoonish portrayal of black men by white men in blackface is now deemed unacceptable, the caricaturing  by men dressed as over-sexualised female grotesques (similar to glamourised pantomime dames) is currently promoted in some parts of society as celebratory and ‘fun’.

The Black and White Minstrel Show was an extremely popular programme in the 1960s. I was a child at the time, and even I liked it, despite the fact that I was of an the age at which Top of the Pops was essential viewing. It was considered to be harmless family entertainment. The show was on the tv during a time of rapid social change, including a large increase in the black population of some parts of Britain, so by the mid 1970s the show was viewed in a different light and was finally discontinued because of its outdated attitudes.

RuPaul’s Drag Race is a contemporary (2020) manifestation of part of LGBTQ culture.

Drawn: 6th July 2020

Cartoon reference: a814
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Enlightenment entitlement cartoon

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Enlightenment entitlement cartoon

From the Enlightenment to entitlement – cartoon.

The cartoon shows a person in the Age of Enlightenment pondering on the fact that the earth revolves round the sun.
Another person, from the current Age of Entitlement meanwhile thinks that “The world revolves round me”.

A cartoon about the contemporary age of identity politics, entitlement and solipsism and self-centred world views.
Drawn: September 2020
Cartoon reference number: a852

Critical race theory and science in universities – cartoon

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culture wars cartoon universities race and science

Culture wars cartoon – race and science in universities.

Update:

I drew this cartoon in 2020. At the time I thought that the idea that CRT could be applied to scientific subjects such as mathematics or cosmology was so outlandish that a cartoon that suggested such a thing would be funny due to its sheer absurdity. It’s started to happen.

––––––––––––––––––––

Culture wars are raging in universities and academic institutions across the western world. They are raging elsewhere too, but the culture wars in, say, the Islamic world, are different to the ones in the west.
The west’s culture wars often circle around subjects such as race and gender and identity politics that exist within the ‘woke’ analysis of culture.

At the time of drawing this cartoon the subject of race is very much to the fore, with movements such as BLM (Black Lives Matter) having a very high profile.
In academia many subjects in the social sciences are currently analysed through the perspective of critical race theory (CRT).
This cartoon illustrates a tendency to apply critical race theory to subjects where it has no relevance or where its relevance is overstated.
Drawn: September 2020
Cartoon reference number: a849

The outcome of multiple conditions on opportunity – intersectionality illustration

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intersectionality cartoon

The outcome of multiple life conditions on opportunity and outcome – intersectionality cartoon

This illustration was drawn for Marxism Today magazine in the mid 1980s.
It features a machine into which babies enter at the top and adults leave at the bottom.
The machine represents the workings of society, with tubes and pipes representing functions such as education, class, race, gender etc.
The adults leaving the machine have all been filtered through the various parts of the machine to produce different types of people. The types of people are produced to suit the conditions and needs of society.
The illustration could be interpreted as being about what is now called intersectionality (although it was drawn in about 1984 or 1985, before the term intersectionality was coined in 1989 by professor Kimberlé Crenshaw).

Drawn: mid 1980s
Cartoon reference number: a845

intersectionality cartoon

A detail of the illustration

Hate crime cartoon or hate speech cartoon

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Hate speech cartoon - hate crime cartoon

Hate speech cartoon or hate crime cartoon.

A comment on the fact that the UK laws around hate crime and hate speech only apply to actions or comments directed at people because they are members of a number of five specific groups. Expressions of hatred on account of a person’s colour, race, nationality, ethnic or national origin, religion, gender identity, sexual orientation or disability are forbidden. Amongst other things the categories don’t include class, which I find intriguing, meaning that calling a working class person riff-raff is okay!

Drawn: August 2020
Cartoon reference number: a838

The “post truth” society

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Cartoon about ignoring the truth in favour of prejudice

Post truth cartoon or conspiracy theory cartoon.

Truth and facts being ignored in favour of emotional or prejudiced viewpoints.

The concept of ignoring the facts when reaching a decision about something, and letting the heart rather than the head rule, seems to be a phenomenon that’s on the rise. It has recently been labelled ‘post truth’.
In the cartoon I’ve linked it to the phenomenon of conspiracy theories, which are frequently used as a way of justifying irrational or unproven ideas.
The rise of post truth tendencies is said to be linked to people’s increasing use of social media via phones and electronic media and the tendency for internet algorithms to send people only information that they already agree with – however the tendency has always been there in the way that people purchase newspapers that agree with their political and other views.
It may also be linked to the current mistrust of experts.
Cartoon reference number: a756

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Museums and art galleries removing art and exhibits due to student grievance – cartoon

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student protest cartoon

A cartoon about hypercritical student attitudes demanding the removal (deaccessioning) of artworks from galleries.

A cartoon about woke culture and the trend for students’ grievances and dissatisfactions to be translated into action, such as in the form no platforming or the demands for statues of out-of-favour people to be removed.

The action is often seen by some as self-righteous, self-indulgent, censorious and intolerant (ironically, as the students often think that they are acting for the greater benefit of others).
The cartoon shows the danger of the students adopting a feeling of over-entitlement and thus taking their attitudes out into the wider world beyond their colleges.
The inspiration for this image was a news story about students disapproving of a sculpture by Henry Moore, and demanding that it wasn’t displayed on their university campus.

The cartoon was drawn in 2016, but it seems even more relevant in 2020 with the woke culture on the ascendency. There are lots of statue removing campaigns going on at the moment (August, 2020) and there’s a bit of a campaign to have a mural by Rex Whistler in Tate Britain removed because a detail of it depicts a black person in chains.
In 2018 a painting, Hylas and the Nymphs by J W Waterhouse, was removed temporarily from Manchester Art Gallery as part of an art event by Sonia Boyce as a comment on what some people view as inappropriate art for the modern age.

Drawn: 2016

Cartoon reference: a734
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Vinyl records – a fashionable music format for the 21st century.

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music formats - vinyl - hipsters

A hipster explaining to his father that modern young people listen to music on vinyl – as though it’s a new format that older people wouldn’t understand.

This cartoon is about the way that young people often feel superior to older people because older people aren’t necessarily up to date with technology.

The cartoon is about the psychology of youth – about the way that young people often fail to appreciate the fact that their modern world was created by people who went before them.
The fact that the music format being used is an old fashioned or retro format, while the young person in the cartoon still feels superior to the man who grew up with the technology, is part of the joke about youth setting itself up as superior to age.
The young person in the cartoon is a hipster – a youth sub-culture of the 2010s.
It’s a cartoon about the generation gap.
Cartoon reference number: a728

Cultural infantilisation cartoon

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Infantilisation cartoon

A cartoon about infantilization in modern society.

An animal hat worn by an adult.

A cartoon showing an adult wearing a hat with an animal face on it. These hats were originally designed for small children, however there was a tendency for these animal hats to be adopted by young (and not so young) adults in the 2010s, usually female.
The person is reading a sociology book that is a critique of the trend towards the infantilisation of culture.
Cartoon drawn: 2016
Cartoon reference number: a733

A chess board as a metaphor for conflict resolution – cartoon

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Chess as a metaphor for conflict resolution

A chessboard on which the chess pieces are not only black and white but are also shades of grey.

The idea of the cartoon is that conflict occurs when things are seen in black and white or when people are polarised in outlook. With shades of gray or nuances of opinion conflict is less likely – specifically as on the chessboard in the illustration.
This is not a metaphor about race or racial prejudice, although metaphorical links can be made.

The cartoon is a comment on the fact that people tend to analyse things in black and white, as “either/or” or in binary.
Cartoon drawn: 2012
Cartoon reference number: a701

The psychology of consumerism and special offers – cartoon

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cartoon - a misleading special offer in a supermarket

A joke showing people being deceived by a special offer in a shop.

The customers see a sign with the special offer of “Two for the price of Three’ and they automatically think that this is a good deal due to the way that the offer is framed (interpreting it in the same way as “Two for the price of three”).
A cartoon about consumerism,marketing, persuasion, selling, manipulation, misleading offers.

Drawn: 2009
Cartoon reference number: a697

Family relationships cartoon

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cartoon - a youth waiting for his mother at an airport

Cartoon of a young man waiting for his mother at an airport arrivals gate.
He is holding a notice saying “Mum”.

A cartoon about child-parent relationships.

Cartoon drawn: 2001
Cartoon reference number: a696

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Cartoon about celebrities (and audiences) getting old.

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cartoon - celebrity looking old

Cartoon of an elderly man commenting that a celebrity is looking old.

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The man is remembering what the celebrity looked like when the man himself was younger, and is forgetting that he is the same age as the celebrity.

The celebrity in the cartoon is Harrison Ford.
A cartoon about aging, denial, youth.
Cartoon reference number: h695
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Man’s relationship with cars

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car as a protective shell - cartoon

Cartoon – a car as a protective shell or carapace.

An image illustrating the psychology of motoring and the human relationship with cars
A cartoon about cars, car use, traffic, psychology.
Original version drawn: 1990
Cartoon reference number: a680

Cartoon about art and gender – sculpture depicting traditional gender roles of men and women

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feminist art cartoon - gender in art

go to art cartoon book

Cartoon showing a controversial depiction of men and women in contemporary art

Cartoon depiction of gender in modern art.
Sculpture titled “Man and Woman” where the woman is a washing-up brush and the man is a hammer.

The cartoon is an illustration of the standard’ male and female gender roles, where men perform hard physical tasks and women perform domestic chores such as washing up.
Part of the joke in the cartoon is that the concept of the male and female roles depicted in the sculpture are extremely conservative, so this particular work of art is controversial because of its conservatism rather than because of radicalism (which is the usual reason why modern art is controversial).
Of course the art work may be a piece of feminist art which is pointing out and questioning the standard gender roles in society. Feminism and art are meant to be the two themes of the cartoon.
I particularly like the fact that the hammer representing masculinity is hard while the washing-up brush representing femininity is soft. Very much caricatures or cliches of gender characteristics.
The sculpture depicted owes something to Marcel Duchamp, Dada and the use of ‘ready-mades’ in works of art.
Cartoon created: 2011
Cartoon reference number: a156

Neurological or genetic causes of criminality – cartoon

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neurological or genetic causes of criminality - cartoon

Medicalisation of deviant behaviour cartoon
Neurological origins of behavioural traits
Neurocriminology and its implications

 

A cartoon about the possibility that criminal behaviour or deviant behaviour may sometimes (or often) have its roots in a person’s biology.
The idea that personality may be determined by biology is one aspect of the nature v nurture debate, and has implications for the concept of free will

An illustration about the medicalization of behaviour. This may include behavioural syndromes ranging from psychopathic tendencies and deviance to conditions such as hyperactivity, ADHD (attention deficit-hyperactivity disorder), rebelliousness or non-conformity.

The cartoon illustrates the tendency of criminal lawyers to sometimes claim, for instance, that particular parts of dna or neurological makeup are responsible for criminal behaviour – thus removing responsibility from the person and placing it on the person’s dna or neurology.
The subject of neurological origins for criminal behaviour is dealt with in the book The Anatomy of Violence by Adrian Raine

The cartoon was first published in Philosophy Now magazine
Cartoon reference number: a607

Team building cartoon – “There’s no ‘I’ in ‘team'”

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no i in team

Teamwork or management cartoon
There’s No ‘I’ in ‘team’

An illustration about group psychology and team dynamics.
It suggests that while a group or team may be important, it’s also important not to suppress the individual too much (as individuals are usually more creative than groups)

This cartoon is suitable for publications about motivation, or in presentations about group dynamics or by motivational speakers.
It’s also a image about questioning authority, questioning established viewpoints and about individualism
Date drawn: 2013
Cartoon reference number: a588