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An interview with Garry Trudeau'Doonesbury' at 30: 'There's no dull time' to be a cartoonist
(CNN) -- It's been 30 years since "Doonesbury" creator Garry Trudeau first began penning his satiric take on politics, media, and anything else that deserved a satiric take. And it appears that the illustrator, who has covered everything from President Nixon's Watergate to President Clinton's Whitewater and Monica-gate, is still going strong. To mark the 30th anniversary of "Doonesbury," his Internet distributor, uclick, redesigned his Web site, www.doonesbury.com. On the site, surfers can get their daily dose of "Doonesbury," access archived editions of the strip, engage in trivia, chat about politics, and play in an "arcade." The strip itself is still going strong in print, appearing in more than 1,400 newspapers. With the 2000 presidential campaign in its final days, Trudeau also found time for an e-mail interview with CNN.com, during which he discussed what it's like to have a 30-year-old comic strip, his primary motivation, "the anti-Doonesbury," and the future of his trade.
CNN: When "Doonesbury" came out, young baby boomers weren't supposed to trust anyone 30 and over, were they? Does that mean your comic strip can't be trusted now? Trudeau: Well, I'm not sure what it means to "trust" a comic strip, but I hope that longtime readers feel that I've mostly kept faith, that I've moved them to smile more often than not. The goals of satire are modest. CNN: How has your comic strip agenda changed from Day One to this day, over 30 years later? Trudeau: Obviously, I now value the medium as an opportunity to not only entertain people but to move them to thought and judgment, but I'm not sure Day One involved anything as grandiose as an agenda. An agenda suggests some kind of forethought and passion for advocacy, when mostly I was just setting down things that were happening around me. I wrote about communes because I knew people who lived in communes. And I wrote about politics because people my age had a life-and-death stake in political outcomes. It all seemed pretty straightforward. Even today, my primary motivation is the need to tell a story and meet a weekly deadline, and I'll write about anything that gets me there. There are many subjects I've wanted to address through the years -- an agenda to serve, if you will -- that failed to inspire a storyline. CNN: Has the potential of the Internet injected new life into your job? How has it improved the way you present your product? Trudeau: My "product," my core business, is still a two-dimensional line drawing that appears primarily in newspapers. Putting it on the Internet, whether on doonesbury.com or on-line versions of print newspapers, is only reproducing the strip, usually with a lamentable loss of resolution, on another platform.
Still, I find the Web incredibly compelling, and not just because it's impossible to ignore. I'm completely knocked out by the new tools that the digital age has provided cartoonists and animators. The motion-capture technology we're using on Uncle Duke's presidential campaign (see duke2000.com), is astonishing. Until a year ago, I didn't know real-time animation was even possible. But now, the low cost and ease of execution of digital puppeteering has caused me to wonder if this might not be the way we will experience comic strips in the future -- live, 3-D, in color, and as close to the news as the artist chooses. Although I personally love the little static line drawings I've spent my life sketching on rag paper (and can't foresee ever giving that up), I am skeptical that a generation that's grown up experiencing the world through screens will support comics as I've known them. At a college talk I gave earlier this year, several students told me that they only knew "Doonesbury" from the Web, and had never actually seen it in a newspaper.
CNN: The "Doonesbury" universe includes dozens of characters, some of whom pop up from time to time and some who seem like they're gone for good. Or are they? Do you want to keep all the characters, past and present, viable? Trudeau: Yes, I try to keep them all viable. I enjoy setting all the characters in motion, letting them wander through this perpetual fog of Dickensian coincidence, and making them collide in unpredictable ways. The best example of that is Kim, who appeared in the '70s as a war orphan airlifted out of Saigon, emerged again in the '80s as a talented Asian-American student, and then popped up a few years later as a coder and Mike's future wife. CNN: Your strip was really the first with a completely political sensibility ("Pogo" and "L'il Abner" notwithstanding). What are your thoughts on your "children," like "Mallard Fillmore" and "The Boondocks"? Trudeau: I have no useful opinion of "Mallard" because I see it so rarely, but I've been told it was marketed almost entirely as the anti-Doonesbury, to give comics pages "balance." It's an odd reason to buy something -- for what it is not, to mute criticism of something else you run. To me, the only question worth asking is, "Is it any good?" Also, I understand "Mallard" is relentlessly political. In that respect, I'm probably not holding up my end of the deal, as I often go months without writing about politics. "The Boondocks" is great. Not always fall-down funny, but it has a unique voice. Aaron (McGruder)'s taken the-personal-is-political to fascinating new heights.
CNN: Is it more fun to make fun of politics or culture (as in Mike and JJ's adventures in the art world several years ago, living on Avenue B)? Trudeau: The fun isn't categoric -- it's in the specific idea. I loved the challenge of writing about the East Village art scene in the '80s because it was a relatively obscure corner of the cultural universe (although its "stars" didn't know that). Being a generalist with a broad audience, I usually try to stay with things that are on the national radar screen, but sometimes I just follow my curiosity about a specific subject and hope the readers will trust me enough stick with it. CNN: Is this a fun time to be a cartoonist? Trudeau: If a cartoonist can look beyond his own nose, there's no dull time. There will always be a passing parade of fools or knaves or people just being themselves, and cartoonists will always be standing on the corners with their peashooters. Of course, sometimes the targets are grander than usual. Watergate was obviously a golden era for satire, in part because we were at the tail end of the age of innocence. Every day was a head-slapper -- we literally couldn't believe what we were reading.
Now, sadly, nothing shocks. I'm all for tolerance -- it's the social censure of people who behave badly I miss. Now we just put them on TV and make them famous. CNN: Do you think you could've made fun of Abraham Lincoln? In other words, are the current candidates better targets than previous presidents, or is every candidate a target simply because they stepped into the political ring? Trudeau: In many respects, the public adjudges a politician's vulnerability to ridicule. For criticism to resonate, the audience has to be complicitous -- it has to agree with your premise. This is what made Reagan so hard to take on. I personally found him a wonderful target, but he was so beloved that even the mildest criticism was considered mean-spirited, as being out of line. Cartoonists weren't the only ones thus defanged. The press at large, ever responsive to public sentiment, often dealt with Reagan on bended knee.
As for Abe Lincoln, it's easy to be awed by someone whose face is now chiseled into a mountain. I'm sure if I'd be writing about him in 1860, he would have seemed much smaller and his flaws more glaring. If I'd been working in New Orleans, where my family is originally from, regular attacks on Lincoln's character would have been my patriotic duty. Context is everything. CNN: Do you ever get tired of pointing out all the silly things in this world? Do you think people are listening, or just laughing? Trudeau: Get tired? Never. I have a very judgmental nature, and I'm grateful to have a socially useful outlet for it. As for what people get out of the strip, I would imagine it's all over the map. Some people write dissertations about Doonesbury; others line their parakeet cages with it. CNN: How long can you keep writing "Doonesbury?" Trudeau: There's no way of predicting when the wheels will start coming off, but I hope I'll have the wit to notice. If not, I'm sure there'll be no shortage of people to help me out. At the moment I have no plans for decommissioning the strip. CNN: What will you do when this election season is over? Trudeau: I'm voting and then leaving with my wife on vacation. I can't wait to be not thinking about rats, sighs, earth tones, and DUIs. RELATED STORIES: Site Seer: A user's guide to cyber comics RELATED SITES: Doonesbury |
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