Caricature: When laughter erases the face

Source: The face that must not be killed

"The face is that which cannot be killed, or at least that whose meaning is: 'You shall not murder'... The face speaks to me and invites me to a relation that has no common measure with power."

(Emmanuel Levinas, "Ethics and Infinity", 1982)

Explanation: The ethics of the gaze: Levinas and the face as a moral imperative

Emmanuel Levinas grounds ethics in the "face." The face is not merely a biological feature, but the revelation of the "Other" and the infinite. The face is vulnerable and exposed, and it bears the moral command. Any attempt to draw, fix, or define the face is therefore a form of violence, reducing moral infinity into a finite, rigid mold.

Perspective: From rats to cockroaches: When caricature becomes a weapon

Before the crematoria of Auschwitz, there were the caricatures of Der Stürmer turning Jews into rats. In Rwanda, radio stations and newspapers called the Tutsis "cockroaches" months before the machetes were drawn. In Jim Crow America, the caricature of "Sambo" legitimized slavery and segregation. During World War II, Americans drew the Japanese as fanged vampires to justify the internment camps.

The dilemma surrounding Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical magazine that published caricatures of Muhammad and was attacked by Muslims, is precisely this: Does freedom of expression permit erasing the face of the other? Are there limits to caricature? Is caricature meant to hurt or to heal, to laugh at you or with you? Levinas demands that we tremble before turning a subject into an object—an act through which the command "You shall not murder" is erased from their face.

Going Deeper: Satanic laughter: Baudelaire on the comedy of the fall

Charles Baudelaire, the nineteenth-century poet and critic, wrote that "the comic is one of the clearest satanic marks in man" (from his 1855 essay "On the Essence of Laughter"). Laughter appears only in a flawed world. It springs from the encounter between human beings and imperfection, ugliness, or error. Laughter is therefore "satanic" in the sense that it bears witness to the fact that man is no longer a pure, elevated creature, but one who has fallen into a world of matter and contradiction.

Culture: Shylock cries: 'Hath not a Jew eyes?'

In Shakespeare's play The Merchant of Venice, Shylock is a classic antisemitic caricature: Jewish, a usurer, miserly, bloodthirsty (demanding his "pound of flesh"). Everyone in Venice sees him as a monster, not a man.

Yet then comes the breaking point, where the caricature stands up and demands its face back. In one of the most famous monologues in theater, Shylock cries Levinas's cry:

"Hath not a Jew eyes? Hath not a Jew hands, organs, dimensions, senses, affections, passions?... If you prick us, do we not bleed? If you tickle us, do we not laugh?"

Shakespeare (perhaps unintentionally) shows us the moment when the "Other" tries to tear off the ridiculous mask and force the audience to see him as human. The tragedy is that even after this monologue, Christian society chooses to shove him back into the caricature box and destroy him.