Article

Two-Headed Space Alien Shrinks Labor Movement: Labor Cartoons (review)

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Abstract

Labor Studies Journal 29.4 (2005) 124-125 For the last thirty years the labor movement in America has been accused of having lost its radicalism, or, worse still, its sense of humor. Michael Moore has done a lot to change this perception, but so have two less celebrated humorist/cartoonists: Gary Huck and Mike Konopacki. In their most recent volume of cartoons, Two-headed Space Alien Shrinks Labor Movement, they assume (tongue-in-cheek) responsibility for the thirty percent decline in union membership that has plagued the labor movement over the last twenty years. Huck is the labor cartoonist for the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers, headquartered in Pittsburgh, PA, while Konopacki lives in Madison, Wisconsin. They joined forces to create their own syndication service for labor cartoons in 1983, and this is their fifth joint collection. The "alien" in the title provides a punny reference to the message Huck and Konopacki offer in their dedication: "To Wage Slaves everywhere and to their struggles to not become aliens in their own world." The pun is a staple feature of the political cartoon, and Huck and Konopacki sprinkle them liberally throughout their collection. Employees are frequently depicted as literally "screwed" (skewered by an industrial screw); a guillotine threatens to "behead" head start, and Bush tells us to accept our "Lott" in life (as in Trent). These cartoons, while relying on the lowly pun, have a kind of cornball humor that lingers. Huck and Konopacki offer a series of clever attacks on Bush (my favorite is a silhouette of Bush with a pretzel for brains). But they are at their best when they take on the working-class subject. A worker turns over a replica of the US Congressional building to find that it has been "Made in China": in another cartoon the "V" in "Slavery" has been replaced with the Nike swoosh, in a particularly emotional cartoon the Enron retirement plan is depicted as an electric cord in the shape of a noose; in another cartoon two cleaning women discuss their boss's "discriminating" taste: "Yeah, like race discrimination, sex discrimination, gay discrimination, etc." These cartoons remind us that there are 44 million Americans with no health insurance, that hundreds of workers die on the job every year, that organizing labor law is under attack, and that African Americans are more likely than whites in capital cases to receive the death penalty. Ironically, perhaps, few of the cartoons in this volume are supposed to make us laugh. Rather, Huck and Konopacki distill the news of the day, as well as important facts which go largely unreported, to create a handbook of pithy symbols through which to make sense of social injustice. Huck and Konopacki remind us that we must target global capitalism if we are to improve the lives of ordinary people. And, while they point out that their partnership spans the same years in which labor has so sharply declined, we (and they) know that their cartoons are not to blame. Quite the opposite: if the labor movement is going to survive it must use the tools of the master class—humor, symbol, and populist rhetoric. Huck and Konopacki are themselves modeling a kind of artistic solidarity, and their art points to a utopian future—a future in which workers are valued, war is not waged on the poor for oil, corporate interests do not trump the needs of humans, and social justice is meted out to all. This is a world worth drawing for, and worth fighting for.

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