Wednesday evening brought more than 50 people together for a portion of laughter mixed with a serious conversation about politics and cartoons – the professional life of Pulitzer Prize-winning editorial cartoonist Doug Marlette.
Along with presenting some of his most memorable and influential cartoons, Marlette shared his experience working for editorial departments in news media across the country.
“When you express opinion visually, some (sides of the issue) are lost,” Marlette said.
He added that primitive illustrations usually leave room for interpretation and sometimes offend viewers. Marlette said he has had to run apologies for some of his published cartoons.
Depending on the issues in some cartoons, Marlette said he has received both negative and positive feedback over the years.
An example of one of his most influential cartoons was one from 1986 that featured a crying eagle looking up at the dark sky, in response to that year’s NASA space shuttle explosion. The cartoonist said he designed the illustration in 45 minutes for a special edition of the Charlotte Observer.
Doug Marlette, originally from North Carolina, has worked for publications including The Charlotte Observer, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and New York Newsday. Marlette’s editorial cartoons cover a wide range of political, sports and education issues. Marlette received the 1988 Pulitzer Prize, the National Headliners Award for Consistently Outstanding Editorial Cartoons three times, the Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Award for editorial cartooning twice, first prize in the John Fischetti Memorial Cartoon Competition twice and a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. The cartoonist is a 2002 inductee of the North Carolina Journalism Hall of Fame.
Marlette, a self-proclaimed “equal-opportunity offender,” is famous for a number of controversial cartoons, which he has published over the years. Some of his most controversial drawings are “What would Mohammed drive” and “Anne Frank.”
Marlette’s archive includes the famous comic strip Kudzu about rural Southerners, which has been published in U.S. and foreign newspapers. Marlette started the strip in 1981 and later, in 1998, worked with The Red Clay Ramblers to produce its musical adaptation, “Kudzu, a Southern Musical.”
In 1991 Marlette published “In Your Face: a Cartoonist at Work,” a book of his personal expression of the cartooning process.
Marlette was a distinguished visiting professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2001 and Gaylord distinguished visiting lecturer at the University of Oklahoma in 2006.
For more information about Doug Marlette, go to http://www.dougmarlette.com/
Marlette said hundreds of people wrote letters to the paper to give thanks for the cartoon and request reprints. The editors decided to reprint copies of the image and have it available for people to pick up. More than 1,000 copies were printed and distributed in days.
“I’ve never seen that kind of reaction,” Marlette said. “It went on for weeks.”
On the other end of the spectrum, Marlette said he even has received death threats for some of his work, such as “What would Mohammed Drive.” The cartoonist said people generally appreciate their own rights and not the rights of others.
“No one believes in free speech for (someone) other than themselves,” he said. “We are all alike in this sense.”
In response to the feedback he has received, Marlette said he has seen all kinds of comments from a number of different people and organizations.
“All I’m saying is, I’ve experienced it from all across the border,” he said.
The event, which was the 21st Annual James Branch Cabell Lecture, was sponsored by the VCU Libraries, the Friends of the Library and the James Branch Cabell Library Associates.