When political cartoonist and Australia native Pat Oliphant won the Pulitzer Prize for editorial cartooning in 1967 — just a few years after moving to the United States — he wasn’t pleased. He didn’t like the cartoon that won and, as such, didn’t enter the contest again and used his platform to criticize the Pulitzer Board.
Oliphant’s refusal to hold any person or institution beyond reproach can be seen in most if not all of the more than 10,000 cartoons he’s created over the course of a career spanning 10 presidents, by way of measure. A new documentary, “A Savage Art: The Life & Cartoons of Pat Oliphant,” captures the independent mind behind the work.
Pat Oliphant cartoons
The New York Times notes in its positive review of the recently opened film that even people unfamiliar with Oliphant’s name have probably seen his cartoons. But at least one person wasn’t as familiar with his work before he met Oliphant personally: Bill Banowsky, the documentary’s director. Both Banowsky and Oliphant, now 90 and suffering from macular degeneration and glaucoma, live in Santa Fe, New Mexico, which is how they met, after Banowsky and his wife moved to the city about 10 years ago.
“I didn’t really know a whole lot about his cartooning until I met him, and then we became fast friends after that,” Banowsky, who has a background as a film producer, lawyer and movie theater owner, told Source NM.
The film also delves into the history of political cartooning, and its intersection with politics and journalism. “A Savage Art” is currently playing in Santa Fe at Banowsky’s movie house, Sky Cinemas, and will be showing in theaters across the country starting Sept. 12 and into the fall. The following interview has been edited for concision and clarity.
Source: Were you a fan or buff of political cartoons in general before you met Pat Oliphant?
Bill Banowsky: Not particularly. I think I really kind of came to appreciate the importance of political cartooning as a form of satire, because I am very interested in politics and incredibly disturbed by what is happening in our political world. It’s more disturbing now than in my entire lifetime, and I’m somewhat obsessed about that. The work Pat did and the work great cartoonists are doing today to highlight the outrageous things our government is doing…is needed because the Democrats aren’t meeting the moment in the way that I think an opposition party could and should. So, having this additional line of defense, if you will, is important, and I’m glad that there’s still good work being done.
How did you approach profiling an artist you admire but also thinking about what his work represents?
Pat was not partisan. One of my favorite cartoons is shown in the very early part of the intro section, and it shows Alice in Wonderland and Humpty Dumpty —these two big Humpty Dumpties are identical. One has a T-shirt that says Democrat and one says Republican, and they’re just hugging each other. And this guy asks Alice, ‘Do you know who you’re going to vote for?’
I think that really represents Pat’s feeling about partisan politics. He was as brutal toward Bill Clinton as he was toward Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush. My feeling in terms of what we wanted to impart in this film is: He’s opposed to greed and to avarice and to overreach and to bad behavior, regardless of who it’s coming from.
Now, if he were working today, he would be working overtime, because we’ve never seen such greed and avarice and overreach and bad behavior as we’re seeing now. We are, I think, in uncharted waters. But if you look over the history of his work, going back from [Lyndon B. Johnson] to [Donald Trump], you’ll see that he wasn’t partisan. And he really just touched on Trump — he was losing his eyesight by the time Trump was elected the first time around. Some of the Trump cartoons we have in our film actually are from 2011/ 2012 and [Barack] Obama was president, but Trump was on the stage…and ever the fool. And so he did characterize him in some cartoons back then. But what I love about Pat is his integrity in his work. He called a spade a spade, and it didn’t matter whether it was a Democrat or Republican.
Do you think that approach would work in today’s environment?
No, I think he would be a little bit more brutal toward the Republicans in today’s environment. I don’t think there’s any question about it. He would also point out how feckless the Democrats are. And he did point out how they anointed Hillary Clinton. And then they just did it again with Joe Biden and then Kamala Harris. A lot of the problems we’re in right now are the results of the choices of the Democratic Party, and allowing those decisions to be made as they have against the will of the Bernie Sanders’ element of the Democratic Party.
Does the film, then, have a call to action?
I hope so. We want to be part of the resistance to all of the authoritarian impulses that are flowing through our society in our politics right now. We want to inspire people to say no. We want to inspire people to get their voice out in whatever ways they can to stand up to horrible behavior.
