POST 1: A Cartoon

             

     This cartoon is by Chappatte, for the International Herald Tribune. There is no precise date, but it wouldn´t really have any relevance to the topic. This document tackles the issue of piracy and the disadvantages of the power of the internet, which is a current issue.

     

     In the background, we can spot a sign indicating that we are at the Cannes Film Festival, where a fan is asking a famous actor for his autograph. This fan seems very excited and thanks to the symbol on his T-shirt we can deduce that he is computer friendly. He is telling this actor about how much he loves his movies, and that he´s pirated all of them. They're standing on a big red carpet and the background is full of photographers, fans and police officers.

       This is a sort of caricatural cartoon,  stereotyping the Cannes Film Festival, in which one character is talking thanks to a balloon, this is happening in the foreground.

     The cartoonist is criticizing the power of internet, through the example of piracy. We could say he is satirizing a common situation considering that it´s quite a funny illustration. He aims to show through this cartoon, that piracy is a serious problem, because everyone does it and no one cares. It´s as if there was nothing wrong about stealing. Setting this in Cannes makes it even more poignant because we're at one of the most prestigious events of cinematography, where cinema is celebrated and rewarded as an art, and this fan has no problem affirming that he illegally downloaded movies, in front of the people who made them.

      The overall message is: piracy is bad, it is theft, yet everyone is pirating everything now, very casually, as if it were nothing.

      This isn't particularly sophisticated, but still has a strong message. It is quite convincing and thought-provoking but I still feel that it is not enough and will not prevent the fact that everyone is pirating nowadays. In some ways I feel like it's too late... It is quite clever and well thought-out but the younger generations don't really care, and have been brought up with this illegal system. I do agree with the cartoonist, and it´s quite a controversial issue, yet it will be extremely difficult to actually stop piracy, seeing as it has expanded so much.

     Every time I think of piracy, I think of this ad that was always shown before watching a movie on a DVD. It was all about how piracy is a crime, and how you wouldn't steal a car or a T.V. so why would steal just because it's on internet. However, recently I feel like they stopped using this ad on every DVD. Have they given up? Am I just imagining things and they're still showing it? And if they've stopped, why? I sincerely feel that nowadays, the  Internet has become such an important part of our lives that we don't really realise how powerful it actually is. People think that they can do anything on a computer, but in reality it's the same thing to steal a movie in a shop than on the internet.