An unfriendly cartoon

Recently, in the media space in a rather gloomy, in order not to say the sinister context, the word "caricature" is pronounced. And this is no accident.

During my childhood, there were many children's books, films, theatrical productions, where the young hero suddenly fell into something suddenly revived.

Here, for example, the hero had a dream, where he found himself inside the grammar textbook, then in the middle of the rustling pages of an arithmetic problematic, then in the vast expanses of the contour map illiterately painted by him. These dreams were scary, but certainly instructive. Because the fate of the hero depended there on his correct or incorrect answer to certain challenges of the circumstances. Then he woke up - with a relief, but with firm determination to fix all his deuces right today. And then, of course, he took up the mind.

And in other didactically motivated fairy tales, for example, playing cards or chess figures came to life. Or something else.

And now - although you and I seem to be quite adults - we suddenly found ourselves in a world where they live around us, move, say something and make obvious carications, abundantly and sloppy pounding on our heads directly from the dusty pile of the old hem of satirical magazines, who had accumulated over the years until the time stored on the mezzanines or country vehicles.

They are funny, which is supposed to be caricatures. But they are enough, frankly, scary. No, these are not “funny pictures” at all, these are not at all funny pictures. Although they are certainly caricatures.

These caricatures in the great set and diversity appeared among us, they captured "bridges, mail and telegraph" and began to aggressively impose their ideas about the right and beautiful people to normal people.

They establish their caricature orders, they aggressively impose their caricature values, they make their caricature speeches with a serious look.

All that they say is an obvious parody: in the normal world, they never speak so seriously. They are embodied caricatures! Just look at them!

The first reaction to any of their body movements is, of course, laughter. Well, how else can a normal person react to all this? Of course, he laughs.

But this laughter does not turn out especially bold and contagious. He abruptly breaks off at the very beginning, as if in the middle of the common fun someone suddenly screams "Burn!" Or "Oh, I feel bad!" And suddenly it turns out that the truth is bad, that the truth is a fire.

They are cartoons, of course, but caricatures are not on paper, not on the page of the satirical magazine, not on the screen of the computer. It turns out that they are three -dimensional, that they are in the flesh, that they move, they say, eat and drink. Almost like us. But they are still carications. Caricatures on numerous and diverse, familiar to us from childhood, inhabitants of the htonic "dark kingdom".

This is a completely new breed of invaders. The tyrants and cannibals of previous eras were not caricatures. There were cartoons on them, but they themselves were not, no.

Hitler, for example, whose image of the generation of my older brother, who survived the war in childhood, remembered precisely in the caricature version, was not a caricature itself. He was a monster. And one of the ways to confront the monster, the symbolic neutralization of his murderous power at all times was his ritual ridicule.

And you try to sprane speech features, for example, Zhirinovsky. And you will try to draw a caricature of, for example, Milonov’s deputy or on a stylized Zalikhvatsky “Cossack”, densely decorated with a striped ribbon. After all, nothing will come of it. That is, approximately the same thing will come out as it is, only worse, more boring and, surprisingly, is vital.

Caricatures on them sometimes still appear. But they are not comparing with the original. They are usually not funny at all. Because drawing a caricature on a caricature, parodying a parody is a hopeless and meaningless business.

No, it is not in vain in recent years that the cartoons became objects of special aggressive attention of the diverse "caricature" International. Is this not a revenge, is it not "Oedipus" a riot of gloomy carications against their creators?

Do I have to be afraid of them? No need to be afraid of, I don’t need to. And beware - yes, it would be nice. Because, by virtue of their initially grotesque nature, they are always unpredictable in their gestures and actions.

Do I have to laugh at them? Is this laughter a sign of destructive frivolity?

It is necessary, of course.

Firstly, I'm not sure that frivolity is so bad. Yes, it is destructive, but it is also saving.

You need to laugh at least in order not to forget how the caricature differs from reality in order to maintain solid as a result of a difficult social, intellectual, moral, aesthetic experience of the idea of ​​norm and pathology as a result of a difficult social, intellectual, moral, aesthetic experience.

These ideas must be maintained not only for the sake of spiritual and intellectual health, but also because they will certainly need an uncertain, but indefinite future. I will definitely need it, I have no doubt.

Yes, they gained strength and in the near future to return to where they spilled out on our heads, do not intend to. But still it will have to.