DEPARTMENT OF GRAPHIC DESIGN
FACULTY OF ART AND DESIGN
(PUNCAK ALAM CAMPUS)
ADE 491 CARTOON AND
CARICATURE STUDIES
ASSIGNMENT 1
NAME : NURUL AFIQAH HUSNA BINTI ROSLAN
MATRI NO. : 2019461968
LECTURER : PUAN JULIANA BINTI MANAN
CLASS : ADE232PAB
Zunar, A Political Cartoonist
The personal slogan of Zulkiflee Anwar Ulhaque, a Malaysian cartoonist who is
better known by his penname “Zunar,” is: “How can I be neutral? Even my pen has a
stand.” Zunar is best known for his provocative cartoons that lampoon issues of
high-level abuse of government power and corruption. Those familiar with Zunar’s
cartoons will categorise his style as political. What makes Zunar a political cartoonist?
A brief account of Zunar’s career development may give insights into his political
orientation.
Anwar, 56, a popular Malaysian cartoonist known by his pen name Zunar, has never
been neutral, often taking combative, critical stands that have earned him a spot in the
crosshairs of Malaysia’s powerful elite. Born in 1962 in Bukit Junun in Gurun, Kedah,
Zulkiflee bin S M Anwar Ulhaque was encouraged to pursue an educational path that
would guarantee him a job. In those days, education or teaching and the pure sciences
were two of the major courses that promised a better quality of life and job security to
modest income families. Zunar eventually studied in the science stream at UTM,
which provided him a job as a lab technician. Despite that, Zunar always had a
passion for cartoons. He published his first cartoon at the age of 12 for Bambino
magazine, then in Mingguan Perdana, Kisah Cinta, and Gila-Gila.
Zunar’s initial cartoon styles were less political due to the nature of his publishers and
audiences. In Gila-Gila (1983) (see fig. 1), Zunar had to accommodate teenagers’
interests, which required less politics and more humour. While working as lab
technician, he published his cartoon in Berita Harian (1993), entitled Papa, and News
Straits Times (NST). Eventually he was offered a permanent position as a political
cartoonist. What motivated him to focus on politics? Zunar could not give a straight
answer. “I like politics and to be involved in politics. It is about our own daily lives.”
His father, his family, the environment or his school setting never inspired him to
become a political cartoonist. Perhaps, he feels, it is a passion that was born from
within.
Through this political analysis, Zunar’s cartoons are direct, forward, contemporary,
issue oriented, non-historical, urbanised, satirical and political. Zunar’s bold portrayal
of Malaysian political issues of the present day ensures that his readers do not miss
his simple, direct, sarcastic, humorous yet critical messages.
Zunar took on hard issues and broke it down into simple storylines that most
Malaysians identified with. That’s their strength, and their vulnerability; and a
revealer of something deeper. He strove to make them less about politics and more
about issues that pervaded Malaysians generally. "I related corruption to people’s
daily life," he says firmly. "So they cannot say “corruption is a political issue” any
more. This is your issue. You’re ultimately paying for the corruption."
Zunar has never hesitated to attack corruption, government overreach, nepotism and
censorship. His work has been banned for threatening public order, he has been
arrested five times and slapped with sedition charges, attacked by protestors, and
hounded for his subversive cartoons on the malfeasance of the Najib Razak-led
government. In 2017, he even considered fleeing the country and taking political
asylum in the West, calling off the journey at the last minute. “It came to my mind
that if I go, I only save myself,” he said, on the sidelines of a conference in Addis
Ababa. “If I stay I will save my country.” For his doughty spirit and his commitment
to the good fight, he has won the Human Rights Watch Hellman/Hammett Award and
the International Press Freedom Award from the Committee to Protect Journalists.
This Malaysia’s top cartoonist made very clear objectives that he would touch the
mind with visual and snarky cartoons. His cartoon’s courting of controversy was
nevertheless a positive and democratizing force, one that rightfully made people in
power squirm by casting motives into sharp relief. He elevated humour to an art form,
using his pen to poke fun and make a powerful point while skilfully exposing the
absurdity of Malaysian politics.
For Zunar, the biggest enemy for him is not the law or a corrupt regime it is
self-censorship. When he draw, he does not care about the government, he cares about
what he must do now. If he thinks that if he draw and he will go to jail again, the he
cannot draw. Then he tries to be soft in his cartoon and that is the end of a political
cartoonist. However, he have to make sure the facts are correct. Since the Razak
government fell in May 2018 and an opposition coalition came in its place, some of
the pressures have eased on Kuala Lumpur-based Zunar. For one, a June 2016 travel
ban preventing him from leaving the country was lifted. The new government
dropped the nine sedition charges against him. He returned with a new exhibition in
May, in Penang, his first solo show since an earlier street exhibition was attacked in
2016. In April, a court ordered the government to pay him damages for a book ban.
The cartoonist wants the book to become a predecent to any future book bans. If
anyone do not agree with the content of the book, they do not read it. It is very simple
according to him. Banning was not new to Zunar, whose first published cartoon was
when he was 12 and whose first banned cartoon was for the school magazine when he
was 17. A short, jolly man, with grey hair, Zunar bristles with jokes, both on the page
and off. He has pithy responses and well-thought-out zingers to everything. To an
audience question on the future of cartoons, pat came the reply: “They have a great
future because people have become too lazy to read,” he said. “Nowadays there is a
lot of depression. Cartoons are a medicine for that.”
However punchlines notwithstanding, the art of constructing a cartoon is a
dead-serious business. For Zunar it is a four-stage process: ascertaining the facts on a
topic, deciding his stand, creating a direction for the cartoon and finally the joke.
“And the joke must not sacrifice the other three. It must be in line.” Regime change
notwithstanding, Zunar says his role as a political cartoonist for the most part is
unchanged: to criticise the government of the day. Still, Zunar’s critics believe he has
been going soft on the new regime, and has blunted the edge of his attacks. He admits
in some ways, his approach is different; the earlier mission was to oust the
government. “Last time the situation in the country was very bad. I needed to go
hard,” he said. “Earlier corruption was unacceptable… You need to understand that in
our 60-year history, this is the first time we changed the government. We can’t expect
changes in the economy as quickly.”
Zunar’s focus now is on helping rebuild the country through educational cartoons, and
he also plans to start a small academy for cartoonists. “You can’t learn to be a
cartoonist. But a cartoonist needs to learn,” he said. “Good cartooning is not about
how beautiful your drawing is. You need to learn everything; the law, current issues,
medical issues, diplomatic issues. Sometimes if the art is not so good it can be
acceptable if there is good content in it. Cartoonists need to learn more than art.”
Looking into Zunar’s method of approaching to produce cartoons, of inspiration and
deep thought, there is no topic taboo to him. Malaysians are wary of being critical, he
acknowledges. To him, people are afraid of losing their positions and scholarships. He
also thinks that people are loathe to join rallies and public demonstrations.
As Zunar maintains, this is precisely the role of the cartoonist. To capture a situation
with a simple drawing and the fewest words possible. His cartoons are rather about
what he thinks than what he sees. “My cartoons are simple,” he insists. “They don’t
have much details except for the subject I want to bring attention to.” He takes great
pains in thinking up subjects and issues to draw from. Many cartoonists find
inspiration from travelling and getting inspiration from being outside. Not Zunar. “I
don’t like travelling,” he confesses, saying he concedes to travelling only when he
needs to. “I travel within my mind,” he shares, admitting: “I think a lot.” He reveals
that he takes a long time, around eight to ten hours to come up with a cartoon.
The ideas come from everywhere — a steady diet of reading the papers, sourcing the
Internet, checking Twitter feeds, and even mundane events. Before drawing, he
gathers as much information as he can. “With the advent of the Internet, things are a
lot easier!” he exclaims. But that’s not enough. He’d contact the person in question, if
there were issues related to the people he knew. If there was a demonstration, he’d
want to be there. The media, he opines, can be skewed. “You can’t trust them 100 per
cent,” he remarks bluntly, insisting that he wants to “delve deeper into the truth.”
As a political cartoonist, Zunar’s can be said to use satire as a weapon. This can
further be explained by Zunar’s piece (see fig. 2) which a humongous pink gemstone
perches on a woman's finger, matched only in extravagance by her hair, which is half
the height of her body. A pendulous necklace and Hermès handbag hang from her
other arm. For Malaysians, the figure pictured is instantly recognizable as Rosmah
Mansor, wife of disgraced former Prime Minister Najib Razak and -- according to
prosecutors in the US and Malaysia -- a modern day Imelda Marcos who accrued
luxury goods worth millions of dollars using money embezzled from the state
investment fund, 1MDB.
Also instantly recognizable is the artist behind the picture, which has pride of place at
an exhibition in the country's capital, Kuala Lumpur. Political cartoonist Zulkiflee
Anwar, better known as Zunar, has spent most of the last decade lampooning Najib
and Rosmah, even as the risks for doing so grow ever greater. Zunar's work welcomes
visitors to "Democracy in Action," a recent exhibition that would have been
impossible to stage only a year ago. In one cartoon, a hand holding chopsticks marked
"China" reaches over to pluck Malaysia off a platter marked "1MDB scandal." (see fig.
3) In another, a huge diamond ring, a handbag and a bag of cash come together,
Transformers-style, to form an image of Rosmah.
That motto has been severely tested in recent times. Just last year, it seemed almost
certain that Zunar would end up in prison. A number of his books had been banned,
and while his work was still widely shared online, the artist faced multiple charges of
sedition and committing acts deemed "detrimental to parliamentary democracy."
Unknown assailants attacked him at a gallery show, police seized his works and he
was banned from leaving the country. Then, in a shock election result, a coalition of
opposition parties turfed Najib out of office, promising to clamp down on corruption
and reverse the country's turn toward authoritarianism. Now Zunar is watching as his
the political figures who were once his nemeses and muses face decades behind bars
themselves -- in part because artists like him helped bring attention to their alleged
corruption and disdain for the rule of law.
It is safe to say that using satire and humor is effective because it breaks the fear
barrier, Zunar claims. After a number of false starts, Zunar's career as a political
cartoonist was flagging when his nemesis emerged on the political scene in the 1990s.
In many ways, the artist's career trajectory rose in tandem with that of Najib Razak,
the son and nephew of former prime ministers who climbed quickly through the ranks
of the ruling Barisan Nasional coalition, initially as deputy prime minister and then to
the premiership itself in 2009. As Najib's star grew, so did the frustration of his critics.
Detractors delighted in seeing him brought back down to Earth by Zunar's
increasingly exaggerated, grotesque portrayals. More even than Najib however, Zunar
found his muse in Rosmah. He did, however, face more difficulty publishing cartoons
of her, versus those of the Prime Minister.
However, Zunar’s way of using satire and humor comes with a price. Doing so would
ultimately endanger his freedom, as Malaysia’s government took a hard authoritharian
turn in an attempt to stifle criticism. Even though so, the said cartoonist is the freedom
fighter based on his passion that is rooted in a desire to be free from suppression. At
one point, during the low period of his career, he felt there was no space for a political
cartoonist in Malaysia. He then worked in various places just to eke out a living.
Until the reformasi period in 1998, he drew his cartoons and photocopied leaflets and
distributed them to people. He visited Anwar in jail (Zunar told me that Anwar even
drew him during the visit), participated in the demonstrations and made banners. Like
scores of others in that period, he was even thrown into a lock-up for a week in
September 1999 for taking part in a demonstration. Upon his release, his talent was
discovered by Zulkifli Sulong, the editor of Harakah. He was asked to contribute
cartoons in February 1999 – cartoons were something of a novelty to Pas at that time.
Since then, his cartoons have been well received by publishers and readers alike.
More importantly, he is now free to draw – without being subjected to control.
Zunar has never bowed to acts of suppression. When his magazines were confiscated
in August 2008 by the Home Affairs Ministry for publishing without a permit, Zunar
fought for his right to continue to draw. Three months after the raids, Zunar and his
Gedung Kartun team bounced back to produce an 80-page book entitled Perak Darul
Kartun, focusing on the Perak political fiasco. Unlike magazines, under Malaysian
printing laws, books do not require permit but only an ISBN. Such politics of
suppression fails to annihilate his politicking for change.
The political cartoonist also is a loner or “individualistic” only as far as his passion is
not yet shared or articulated within the largerr structures of the Malaysian political
context. To create a culture of political cartoons, individual effort is not enough but
requires group work. His Gedung Kartun (see fig. 4) is evidence of his passion to
generate new young artists who can continue to draw and express their ideas through
cartoons.
Zunar’s un-individualistic attitude as an artist has made him a visionary. His hope is
to create a legacy of cartoons that can influence history and result in change in
Malaysian society – a path that will be continued and expanded among the younger
generation. As an artist, Zunar’s vision is not only to change society but to generate
new young artists who can create and shape history through their cartoons.
Zunar’s approach to work is quite systematic, going through the processes of research,
reflection and the finding of an idea; the formation of the concept; the determination
of the objective and methodology; the creation of the work; and finally, studying the
response of the audience, both from the readership and the government. This entire
process is built on careful research of the subject and characters, which is very
important to Zunar.
This political cartoonist also draws cartoons in order to educate society so that they
will be aware of wrongdoings by a government rife with corruption and abuse of
power. He emphasises that politics influence their life; and that they have to take
change into their own hands. This encourages him to constantly explore new
approaches so that his message reaches his readers. In works that focus on major
issues and characters, he inserts small characters that represent the audience, in order
to make them realise that they are the true victims of the situations depicted.
Just as he is detailed and systematic in his creative process, Zunar also adopts the
same attitude to overcome all the threats and obstacles he and his assistants had to
face as a result of his cartoons. Just as he prepared his cartoons carefully, he also
prepared his strategy and faced each arrest with calm, contacting his friends in the
media in order to publicize his arrests, especially through the internet and the social
media.
Zunar’s case shows the importance and power of the internet and social media to
influence the new political scenario in a global world, and in this country. Zunar’s
strategy can serve as a guide for any cartoonist, writer or artist facing similar threats
and situations. His works have given a new life to the tradition of political cartoons in
Malaysia. The same sharp criticism could be seen in the pre-independence era, when
cartoonists and the media opposed the colonial authorities.
In conclusion, Zunar has changed the landscape of Malaysian political cartoons,
which was mostly documentary and propagandist, to become a form of political
weapon and an effective medium of criticism. This has earned him global recognition
and has made him the most important political cartoonist of this century. Zunar insists
that his talent is not a gift, but a responsibility in order to rectify the wrongdoings
occurring in the country. He fights for justice for our country, not for himself. He
dismisses fear, because his responsibility as a cartoonist is to bring change in order to
improve things. His cartoons have not only revealed the unlawful activities of the
previous government, but they have also contributed to making society more aware of
critical political issues that have had a deep influence on our lives as citizens and
human beings.
Illustrations
Figure 1 shows a copy of Gila-Gila Magazine in 1983
Figure 2 shows a cartoon of former Malaysian first lady Rosmah Mansor by Zunar.
Figure 3 shows another piece by Zunar visualizing 1MDB scandal.
Figure 4 shows a magazine namely Gedung kartun by Zunar’s team.
References
Articles from website
1. https://aliran.com/2010-4/zunar-the-multifaceted-cartoonist/
2. https://www.malaysiakini.com/news/481241
3. https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/sunday-vibes/2019/12/551574/headline-hits-%E
2%80%94-nst-vibes-writers-share-their-favourite
4. https://www.nst.com.my/lifestyle/sunday-vibes/2019/12/549896/zunar-unrepentant
-cartoonist
E-Books
1. https://books.google.com.my/books?id=p63ZDwAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&
dq=the+biographical+of+malaysian+cartoonist+zunar&hl=en&sa=X&ved=2ahUKE
wiD35W1tNrsAhVJXSsKHawrDeoQ6AEwAHoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=the%20
biographical%20of%20malaysian%20cartoonist%20zunar&f=false
(Fight Through Cartoons: My story of harassment, intimidation & jail, by Zunar, 2019,
Marshall Cavendish International Asia Pte Ltd)
