Chris Madden Cartoons

A searchable archive for licensing

Roald Dahl words changed

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Roald Dahl words altered cartoon

A cartoon about the changing of words in Roald Dahl books.

The cartoon illustrates the bowderising or censorship of the text of Roald Dahl children’s books. The changes include the removal of words such as ‘ugly’ and ‘fat’.
The changes are put down to the use of sensitivity readers who are employed to alter text to remove language that is judged to be inappropriate or problematic.

The action is viewed as being part of the woke phenomenon.
Drawn: February 2023
Cartoon reference number: a944

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Transgender toilets cartoon – XX chromosomes and XY chromosomes

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Transgender cartoon

A cartoon about the use of women’s toilets by transgender women.

The cartoon illustrates the issue that if transgender women are allowed to use women-only spaces, such as women’s toilets, refuges etc, there will be non spaces that are exclusively for biological women. Biological women are people who have two X chromosomes, while biological men have an X and a Y chromosome.

Drawn: 17th January 2023
Cartoon reference number: a942

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“On the right side of history” cartoon

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Right side of history - Taliban cartoon

A cartoon about the expression “On the right side of history”.

The cartoon hopefully points out the nonsense of the expression along with its preposterous self-regard by applying it to the Taliban, who I’m sure think that they are right.

In fact, beware those who have the over-confidecnceof thinking that they are “on the right side of history”!
Drawn: 27th December 2022
Cartoon reference number: a940

Decolonisation and repatriation of museum collections

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museum repatriation cartoon

A cartoon about the move to repatriate items from museum collections.

Cartoon about the growing demands for museums to reassess their collections in the light of issues around decolonisation, racism and other social justice tenets.
The cartoon specifically highlights the concept of guilt as directed towards museums and other cultural institutions in the West due to the perceived unique nature of the West’s history of imperialism and colonisation.
Here in the Uk the phenomenon can be observed inn the debates concerning the Elgin Marbles and Benin Bronzes in the British Museum and in the overall philosophy of the curators of the Pitt Rivers Museum in Oxford.

Drawn: 4th December 2022
Cartoon reference number: a936

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Unconscious prejudice cartoon

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Unconscious racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia cartoon

A cartoon about unconscious racism, sexism, homophobia or transphobia.

The cartoon shows a social gathering at which a person is wearing a T-shirt with the message:
“I’m one the lookout for unconscious racism, sexism, transphobia, homophobia”.
Everyone at the gathering is giving a wide berth to the T-shirt wearer.
As a result the T-shirt wearer is seeing the other people as racist, sexist, homophobic and transphobic.

One of the points of the cartoon is that if you look for something you may see it even of it isn’t there, especially if you are observing through the filter of ideology.
Another point of the cartoon is the divisive nature of excessive ideological zeal – in this case the way that the people at the gathering shy away from interacting with the T-shirt wearer for fear of being over-scrutinised.
Drawn: 8th January 2023
Cartoon reference number: a935

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Empowered by ideology – cartoon

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Empowered by ideology cartoon

A cartoon showing political activists or protesters who feel empowered and motivated by their ideology.

The cartoon is a comment on the way that people who hold ideological beliefs feel a sense of empowerment, motivation and identity (If you’ve ever been on a protest march you’ll know the feeling).

This can have the downside of blinding them to alternative ways of seeing the world.
Drawn: 28th December 2022
Cartoon reference number: a933

Return the Elgin Marbles – cartoon

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Return the Elgin Marbles (Parthenon Sculptures) cartoon

A cartoon about the campaign to return the Elgin Marbles, or Parthenon Sculptures, to Greece.

It’s argued that the Elgin Marbles or Parthenon Sculptures should be returned to Greece because of the much debated manner in which they were removed from Greece by Lord Elgin.

This cartoon points out that the Parthenon sculptures were created in the first place by a civilisation that was heavily reliant on slaves.
In the current political climate there have been many statues linked to slavery that have been pulled down.
The comment about returning the sculptures to the bottom of the Aegean is a reference to the throwing of a statue of Sir Edward Colton in to the sea in Bristol here in the UK
Drawn: 8th January 2023
Cartoon reference number: a934

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Art gallery self-censorship

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Art gallery self-censorship cartoon

A cartoon showing an art gallery removing ‘inappropriate’ art from its displays.

The cartoon comments on the way that in recent years art galleries have started to display works on an ever decreasing number of subjects and by an increasingly narrow range of types of artist (although in the past there were definitely too many works created by other types of artist).

The currently preferred themes for works are those associated with the social justice, or woke, movement – predominantly race, slavery, gender and sexuality.
The cartoon depicts the way in which artworks that are interpreted as going against the ethos of the social justice movement are being removed from galleries.
Drawn: 1st October 2020
Cartoon reference number: a932

Woke ‘useful idiots’

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woke allies and fellow travellers cartoon

A cartoon about woke fellow travellers.

The cartoon’s caption reads:
“Did you know that there’s a name for the well-meaning people who, in a misguided attempt to be tolerant and respectful, promote the authoritarian and censorious ambitions of the woke movement?
Sleepwokers.

A pun on the word sleepwalkers.
The term useful idiot refers to naive followers of a political cause who aren’t fully aware of the harmful nature of the cause. It is often associated with the followers of communism the mid twentieth century.
Drawn: December 2022
Cartoon reference number: a930

Ban humour!

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woke humor ban cartoon

A cartoon about censorship and proscriptions on humour.

The cartoon reflects an aspect of the “hate speech” laws (which state that anything that may cause offence is prohibited).
Humour by its very nature frequently sets up a tension that may be misinterpreted by the more earnest and humourless amongst us (he says, patronisingly), opening it up to be a target for censorship.

A cartoon about censorship, censoriousness, woke earnestness.
Drawn: September 2022
Cartoon reference number: a999

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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

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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Critical Race Theory cartoon – crt applied to a snowman

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Critical Race Theory cartoon

Critical Race Theory cartoon.

Critical Race Theory (CRT) applied to a snowman.

A person is asking why the snowman is white.  One of the points of the cartoon is that once a social theory has been formulated (any theory, not just crt) it is often used to interpret matters to which it does not apply.
Drawn: December 2020
Cartoon reference number: a886

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Eton public school and its traditions cartoon

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Eton tradition cartoon

Modernising Eton cartoon.

A cartoon about attempts to modernise the attitudes at Eton College by the current head master, Simon Henderson,
His resolve has led to the sacking of Eton master Will Knowland on the grounds that a lecture that he prepared on the subject of patriarchy was deemed to be objectionable.

Part of the irony of the situation is that Eton is a hugely influential boys-only school steeped in out-dated tradition. If any part of the British education system can be accused of promoting the patriarchy this is it.
A cartoon about patriarchy, tradition, misogyny, free speech, progressive views and political correctness.
Drawn: Dec 2020
Cartoon reference number: a884

Eton sacking cartoon

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Eton cartoon

Eton sacking cartoon.

A cartoon about the modernising of the attitudes at Eton College, which has led to the sacking of Eton master Will Knowland following a lecture that he prepared about patriarchy and related subjects which was deemed to be objectionable.

The current head master of Eton is Simon Henderson, who has resolved to make the attitudes within the school more in line with current trends.
Part of the irony of the situation is that Eton is a hugely influential boys-only school. If any part of the British education system can be accused of promoting the patriarchy this is it.
A cartoon about patriarchy, tradition, misogyny, free speech, progressive views and political correctness.
Drawn: Dec 2020
Cartoon reference number: a883

Chess cartoon. Each side playing with a mixture of black and white chess pieces

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chess cartoon

A cartoon about chess in which the black and white chess pieces are mixed.

In the layout of the chess board depicted the black and white chess pieces don’t occupy opposite ends of the board, but are mixed equally at each end.

The mixing of the black and white chess pieces symbolises the mixing of different types of people (not necessarily linked to race) rather than the polarising effect of each colour of piece congregating at one end.
As a result of the mixing of the pieces, with each ‘side’ in the chess game being made up of the two colours, it’s impossible for the two sides to engage in ‘battle’.

Drawn: December 2020
Cartoon reference number: a881

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

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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Offensive and approved terms in politically correct and woke language – cartoon

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politically correct and woke language crime cartoon

A cartoon about the concept that the use of any term that is not politically correct or woke-approved to define race or gender is offensive.
Language crime cartoon

This cartoon is about the tendency within woke culture for the use of unapproved terms to describe people, especially in the spheres of race and gender politics, to be viewed as offensive and open to condemnation, even if used innocently.
The terms that are approved and disapproved sometimes change quite regularly, so it can be hard to keep up.
Notice that I’m not giving any examples of approved or disapproved terms here, in case I inadvertently get it wrong. Also, as the cartoon states, to merely mention a disapproved term as an example is viewed as offensive itself.
At the time of drawing this cartoon the tendency to police language for political purity seems to be on the rise, however it’s been there for as long as I remember. In fact I drew my first cartoon about it in the 1980s.
A cartoon about woke language, political correctness, linguistic purity, Orwellian language, political purity.

Drawn:16th June 2020
Cartoon reference number: a807
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Racial politics, slavery and statue toppling – cartoon

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black lives matter blm statue toppling cartoon

The politics of race and the toppling of statues.

This cartoon illustrates the way that the current (2020) wave of protests and campaigns to remove statues on the grounds that the people depicted had links with the slave trade oversimplifies history, reducing it to a single issue, racism.

The cartoon makes use of two meanings of ‘black and white’ – one being the polarisation or over-simplification of things into binary issues and the other being the categorisation of people as racially being black or white.
The removal of statues is part of the campaign by Black Lives Matter and other groups such as the Rhodes Must Fall campaign.
Drawn: 11th July 2020
Cartoon reference number: a819
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Philip Guston kkk controversy – art gallery self-censorship cartoon

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Guston kkk censorship controversy cartoon

Philip Guston kkk paintings in gallery self-censorship controversy.

The cartoon depicts Guston’s Klansman paintings being removed from an exhibition.

A cartoon about the controversy over the proposed postponement of a Philip Guston exhibition containing some of his Ku Klux Klan paintings. The exhibition was set to be staged in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., Tate Modern in London, the Museum of Fine Arts Boston, and the Museum of Fine Arts Houston.
The decision to postpone the exhibition due to the current social climate is interpreted by some as being an act of self-censorship.
Drawn: 4th October 2020
Cartoon reference number: a856

Sugar and slavery cartoon

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Sugar and slavery cartoon

Sugar and its historic links to slavery.

The cartoon shows someone boycotting the use of sugar because of its historical links to the slave trade.

It’s also a cartoon about people who posture and who take extreme positions on issues.
Drawn: September 2020
Cartoon reference number: a854

Anti-enlightenment cartoon – the Endarkenment

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Anti-enlightenment cartoon – the endarkenment

From the Enlightenment to the Endarkenment – cartoon.

When I drew this cartoon I was very pleased when the term “The Endarkenment” came into my head as an original thought. I looked it up later and found that it’s been thought of before, to describe the same phenomenon.
I use it as a term for the current trend towards anti-rational thought, which includes anti-scientific, anti-historical and anti-establishment thought (I like to think I’m a bit anti-establishment myself, but definitely not anti-scientific or anti-historical).

The statue that is being toppled in the Endarkenment frame of the cartoon is based on the current phenomenon of the iconoclastic toppling of statues of establishment figures who are possibly linked to the slave trade (Many of them are, but the action is largely motivated by emotion, with little regard for historical context).

Drawn: September 2020
Cartoon reference number: a851

Decolonising the National Trust cartoon

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stately homes links to slavery cartoon

Stately homes and their links to slavery cartoon.
Decolonisation of the National Trust.

At the present moment (2020) the subject of racism and slavery is very high on the cultural/political agenda of some sections of society, as evidenced by the rise of the Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement.
Large sections of the establishment cultural landscape are being reanalysed in the light of race, slavery and colonialisation.

This cartoon is about the fact that recently the National Trust (the custodian of many stately homes in Britain) has started to redisplay the contents of some of its properties in the light of historical links to slavery, coupled with the news that the trust is thinking of concentrating its future efforts on its work that isn’t linked to historical buildings (The National Trust was partly created specifically to care for these buildings).
The cartoon shows a scenario in which stately homes are actually destroyed because of their links to slavery (links which may or may not be quite tenuous or may have been quite normal for the times), much in the way that parts of the contemporary anti-racist movement has toppled statues of establishment figures who had links to slavery.
Will future generations thank them, or will it be viewed as a form of vandalistic iconoclasm?
Drawn: September 2020
Cartoon reference number: a850

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

Historical crimes against contemporary social values – wokeness cartoon

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politically correct and woke culture cartoon

Being accused of historical crimes against contemporary social values.

This cartoon is about the tendency within parts of contemporary culture, especially woke culture, to criticise people for attitudes that they held in the past that are now thought of (within those parts of contemporary culture) to be reprehensible.
These attitudes may be ones that are generally agreed to be outdated or they may be ones that are
A cartoon about wokeness, political correctness, moral purity, Orwellian attitudes, political purity, social values, contemporary mores, intolerance, tolerance, thought crime.

Drawn:1st Aug 2020
Cartoon reference number: a827
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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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The campaign to remove statues – white male privilege – cartoon

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Remove statues campaign cartoon

A cartoon inspired by the campaigns to remove statues of slave traders and imperialists from the public sphere (in 2015).

This cartoon is about the tendency for social grievances around issues such as race and gender to be directed towards people of higher privilege, so in western society almost all grievances are ultimately directed towards white men. Specifically middle-aged or old white men, as young people often have grievances directed towards older people (middle-aged men tend to be commoner targets than older men as they are often in higher positions of power or authority).

The cartoon was drawn in 2015, five years before the toppling of the statue of Edward Colston in Bristol in 2020. I expect the campaigns and protests to remove statues of other controversial figures such as Cecil Rhodes at Oriel College, Oxford University (Rhodes Must Fall) will now be given new momentum.

Drawn: 2015
Cartoon reference number: a805
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Culturally determined world views – cartoon

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culturally based science cartoon

A cartoon about culturally determined world views
The idea that different cultures will use whatever methods are at their disposal to reinforce their established philosophy of how the world works.

An observation about theological determinism, cultural bias in science, cognitive dissonance, pseudoscience

The cartoon shows a nonspecific non-western culture planning to build their own large hadron collider (LHC) to obtain results that are consistent with their cultural heritage.
It is an illustration about the misrepresentation of science or the lack of use of the scientific method.

Update: The cartoon was drawn in 2010, however it is possibly more relevant now, in 2023, with the rise of anticolonialism and antiscience thinking (which is the concept that science is a white, western construct). For instance I’ve just read an article by Richard Dawkins about the fact that in New Zealand the government is currently instigating a scheme in which science in schools will have to be taught with the Maori ‘Ways of Knowing’ (Matauranga Maori) having equal standing with ‘western’ science (The Spectator, March 2023).

Cartoon first published: November 2010, BBC Knowledge magazine
Cartoon reference number: a534
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