Flirting with Apocalypse - Part 1: Christmas

I have recently been commissioned by the British Cartoon Archive to produce a series of teaching and learning aids using their digital collections (as an appendage to the JISC funded CARD project). These aids will take the form of groups of cartoons selected, interpreted and given scholarly context by me, and will be made live on the BCA website in the coming months.
This morning I've been working on a group entitled 'Flirting with Apocalypse', which plans to go beyond the 20th century symbol of doomsday, the atomic bomb, and explore through cartoons man's relationship with what Al Gore famously called 'our only home'. Themes such as rural erosion, consumerism, oil spills, green politics and natural disasters will be covered, with the aim of offering students a starting point towardss thinking about how man's construction of their world (not only physically, but also mentally) impacts upon the environment we all inhabit.

Over the coming weeks I plan to share some preliminary findings here. And today I offer some thoughts Christmas:

        Michael Heath, The Independent (7 Dec 1998) PC5102

        http://www.cartoons.ac.uk/record/PC5102

Christmas is, despite its spiritual origins, the modern symbol of reckless and conspicuous consumption. Moreover its centrality to annual trade cycles and its use to gauge such virtual signifiers as 'economic growth' and 'consumer confidence' demonstrate the exploitative mentality of big business.

Heath's bold, brash style may make for an obvious critique of consumerism (notably how Christmas as greed subverts its selfless origins), but subtle witty commentaries remain present. Note, for example, the few figures picked out of this otherwise faceless parade. Towards the bottom right two middle-aged businessmen, frustrated and anxious, make their way from the busy high street. Nearby a well dressed female raises her voice to a crying child. Behind them small groups, including women sporting what resemble fine ushanka hats, browse the shop windows. These well-to-do types represent the chaos, the hysteria, the madness of the 'SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! SPEND! SPEND!' mentality, and they contrast starkly with the less orthodox figures who stand bemused, and speak for the cartoonist/left-leaning Independent reader, in the bottom left-hand corner. This couple are not exempt from critique, they after all carry a gaudily wrapped gift, yet they cut through the masquerade and see Christmas as it really is. The signs reading 'BE GREEDY IT'S COOL' and 'GET LEGLESS THIS CHRISTMAS' are then what they project onto the scene - once the glitzy mask, under considerable strain, has cracked, this Christian festival is revealed to them as in reality a hyper-consumerist Vanity Fair.