Drawing fire: online racket dismays cartoonist Mark Knight

The Herald Sun comes out swinging in defence of Mark Knight as the cartoonist’s Twitter account disappears amid threats to his family.

Mark Knight in his home studio yesterday: ‘It is a cartoon about behaviour on the tennis court, not about racial politics.’ Picture: Jake Nowakowski

It was meant as a joke, a depiction of Serena Williams, the greatest women’s tennis player the world has seen, chucking a tanty like a frustrated toddler in the middle of the US Open final.

Instead, Mark Knight’s now­ ­infamous cartoon has fuelled a global debate about race, power and privilege and led some artists to question whether anyone can caricature a black woman without being devoured by the social media mob.

Knight is dismayed at the response to a cartoon drawn, he says, without a thought given to racial or gender politics and aimed squarely at Williams’ behaviour on the US Open’s centre court, Arthur Ashe Stadium, in New York.

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EDITORIAL: Game, set and match Knight

Knight drew the cartoon on Sunday, after Williams’s ignominious loss to Naomi Osaka. For the next 24 hours, it was published by the Herald Sun without undue comment.

Then, as a combustive, politically charged debate about Williams, her centre court meltdown and whether sexism was to blame neared its climax, someone in the US clicked on to his work.

The result was a Twitter-borne tempest, with civil rights activist Jesse Jackson, Martin Luther King Jr’s daughter Bernice King, comedian Kathy Griffin, author JK Rowling and singer Nicki Minaj all condemning the ­Melbourne-based cartoonist.

By this morning Knight’s Twitter account had disappeared, amid threats to the cartoonist’s family on social media. Those attempting to access the @Knightcartoons twitter feed received the message “Sorry, that page doesn’t exist.” Twitter confirmed to Sky News that Knight had deactivated the account himself, saying: “No action at our end.”

Herald Sun editor Damon Johnston, who approved the cartoon, said Knight was a fine cartoonist and caricature was an important part of free speech.

“I thought it rightly mocked a champion for having a good old-fashioned dummy spit,’’ he said. “I don’t think people would find that ’toon offensive on any sensible viewing.’’

The newspaper came out in strong support of Knight on its front page today with the headline “Welcome to the PC world’’, featuring other examples of Knight’s cartoons.

Tomorrow's @theheraldsun front page tonight #auspol #springst pic.twitter.com/2nuLbKppku

— damon johnston (@damonheraldsun) September 11, 2018

By 3pm yesterday, more than four million people had engaged with Knight’s original tweet carrying the cartoon and the Herald Sun had taken the unusual step of posting an online editorial defending its daily cartoonist of the past 28 years.

Knight, a winner of four Walkley Awards for cartooning — Australia’s Pulitzer Prize equivalent, for our American readers — said his work had been misconstrued and its simple message lost.

“The cartoon was drawn quite innocently,’’ he told The Australian. “It is a cartoon about behaviour on the tennis court, not about racial politics.

“A couple of weeks ago I drew a cartoon about Aretha dying and I was being lauded across America. I was drawing cartoons condemning apartheid in South Africa before some of these people condemning me were even born.

“When we look at the world and its systematic default to outrage, maybe we can’t do these things any more. It would be a shame, though, for cartoonists to censor themselves at the behest of the outrage industry.’’

The National Association of Black Journalists says the cartoon “exudes racist, sexist caricatures’’ and that its depiction of Williams is “sambo-like’’. This is a reference to the racist drawings from America’s Jim Crow era, when black people were portrayed as childlike figures with shiny faces and inflated, ruby red lips.

In Knight’s cartoon, Williams is depicted with a broad nose, a big mouth and a mop of frizzy hair.

Knight said he portrayed her as he saw her, without malice or agenda. Peter Nicholson, an award-winning cartoonist with The Age, The Australian and the Australian Financial Review, dismissed as “ridiculous’’ any link to Jim Crow.

 

“It is an ugly moment for Serena and he is depicting that,’’ Nicholson said. “There is nothing racist in the idea. He is not picking on her because she is a black American. It is not a flattering cartoon but it is not a racist cartoon.’’

Cathy Wilcox, a cartoonist with The Age and The Sydney Morning Herald, agreed there was no racist message in the cartoon but was troubled by its imagery, which she said echoed racially loaded, historic caricatures. She said the response of black Americans offended by the cartoon should not be flippantly dismissed.

“It is really fraught depicting ethnic types,’’ Wilcox said. “Mark is a brilliant artist and he has got himself into trouble because he has gone all out in his caricature — a caricature which has tipped over into something that resembles historical stereotypes of black Americans. That is the issue.”

Daily Telegraph cartoonist Warren Brown said he was stunned, though not entirely surprised, by the strength of the negative reaction. He said the late Australian cartoonist Paul Rigby provoked a similar response with his caricatures of black Americans when he went to work for the New York Post in the 1970s.

Knight’s cartoon about Nick Kyrgios.

“I didn’t bat an eyelid when I saw the cartoon because I would have drawn a caricature the same, if not more exaggerated,’’ he said. “She is a very aggressive, formidable person and when she did her block, she was quite frightening.’’

Johannes Leak, a young cartoonist establishing his career, said the furore reminded him of the abuse heaped on his late father, Bill Leak, who was referred to the Human Rights Commission for a cartoon depicting social dysfunction within Aboriginal families.

“People have lost the ability to read a cartoon,’’ he said. “They look for anything that crosses some kind of line. They are basically insinuating that a white cartoonist can’t depict anybody with black skin.’’