frbd1-6, Exercise 3: Satire from Hara-Kiri to Charlie Hebdo

Model answer (check the details):

The tradition: Hara-Kiri (1960) was a coarse, irreverent monthly, "stupid and nasty", with cartoonists such as Reiser, Cabu and Wolinski. After a ban in 1970 its team relaunched as Charlie Hebdo, a weekly of cartoons and commentary that attacked politicians, the army, the churches and the far right. In January 2015 gunmen killed twelve people at its offices, among them several of its cartoonists.

Arguments for wide freedom: satire exists to mock the powerful and the sacred; the French tradition of anti-clerical and anti-authority cartooning is long; limits on mockery tend to protect the powerful; the violence of 2015 showed what is at stake.

Arguments for restraint: jokes aimed at minorities, or at the beliefs of people already facing prejudice, may hurt and reinforce hostility; free expression does not require every use of it to be wise; some critics argue that the magazine's targets and tone have not always been fair.

Neutral point: the attack was criminal and nothing in the debate about the cartoons excuses it. The argument about taste and limits is a separate one, and it runs in every country, including Britain and Germany (compare German Humour: Does Germany Have a Sense of Humour?, Chapter 9).

Care: facts and numbers should be checked against reliable archives, and the cartoons should be read in their original context.