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Yay, someone actually engaging with the French humour.
I think what you say is pretty fair, and I think it's why not everyone in France is necessarily a fan of Charlie Hebdo - some find it too provocative, too childish, too close to the bone. Maybe it is. Maybe they misjudged some of their cartoons. But in the same way that some English-language comedy will satirise a thing by pretending to be the thing, I think it's important to remember that Charlie Hebdo was often trying to skewer racism by taking the stupidities uttered by racist politicians to their point of illogicality, as a form of reductio ad absurdum. It's a strategy in which missteps are perhaps inevitable - look at Ricky Gervais and his 'mong' character.
I made the comparison recently - Cabu for the French was kinda like Tony Hart, if Tony Hart had a sideline in drawing controversial political cartoons for Viz. Like Chris Morris crossed with Tony Hart, drawing for Viz. Not some crackpot churning out racist propaganda by any means.
h2o-
But in the same way that some English-language comedy will satirise a thing by pretending to be the thing, I think it's important to remember that Charlie Hebdo was often trying to skewer racism by taking the stupidities uttered by racist politicians to their point of illogicality, as a form of reductio ad absurdum. It's a strategy in which missteps are perhaps inevitable - look at Ricky Gervais and his 'mong' character.
See also Al Murray's Pub Landlord and the weird dissonance of a few people laughing with the character in an auditorium full of people laughing at the character.
Emyr
Long post coming:
First, very good point. However, I've got a couple of things I'm uncertain about:
1) If I understand many of these types of claims, there's some sort of relativistic wall between France and the Anglo world which makes their sense of humour impenetrable (at times). Therefore, we shouldn't impose our own views on their art. It's no racist, we just don't get the humour.
Okay. But when it comes to minorities or other groups which are the targets in these types of pieces, it is acceptable to ignore cultural differences, and make use of one's own understanding of the world to criticize them? That is to say, they are not protected by this wall of incomprehensibility, and therefore, they can be criticized?
It seems to me if we can't call these types of comics racist, why can the French call religious groups nutters?
I'm not suggesting they shouldn't be able to publish these things (just as we should be able to judge the beliefs of religions). Instead, I'm suggesting that we should be able to pass judgment on the cartoons in Charlie, and that they are neither culturally incomprehensible, nor immune to criticism. Because:
2) I think you've made a really good point on drawing context into this. That it to say, I think you're absolutely right that there is a very strong argument that this can be viewed as not racist.
However, I don't think there's anything impenetrable about that particular cartoon to foreigners (if they're familiar with French politics and current affairs). Here's the joke: "The Front National are racist. Here's a fake ad for their racist party. It's a successful black woman drawn as a monkey. How outrageous is that? This is how the NF sees the world."
With the exception of actually including the racist image, it's not particularly different from any other satirical fake political ad you may find here. With one exception (and maybe this is where the French differ in this regard): the French seem less likely to blush at printing such things. However, that doesn't mean they don't think/know the image is racist. They very clearly do know that it's racist. Otherwise it wouldn't be satire and the image itself wouldn't have any meaning. But in the context of satire they think it's acceptable to publish racist images (just as in the context of satire, we think it's permissible to compare our leaders to Hitler. You wouldn't see the Germans doing that). None of this is impenetrable, however, and it is very much open to criticism. Culture or tradition does not excuse or offer immunity to criticism.
That's all to say, I'm not convinced by the "cultural differences" argument, and I think the article does a good job of raising some of those questions.