1 Introduction John A. Lent Department of Broadcasting
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Introduction John A. Lent Department of Broadcasting, Telecommunications and Mass Media Temple University Southeast Asia has had a sprightly and rather long-lived tradition of cartooning and comic art. Satirical and political cartoons found their way into the magazines of the Philippines before the turn of the 20th century and into those of other parts of the region before World War II. Comic strips (the funnies) came along a bit later, predominantly as American and British imports, and comic books and humour magazines entered the media landscape at varying times depending on the country, but mainly in the past 20 years. The legacy of comic art has been enriched by claims that at least three national leaders of Southeast Asia were cartoonists, if only very briefly. In the Philippines, national hero Jose Rizal is credited with drawing the first cartoon, "The Monkey and the Tortoise", in 1886 (Africa, 1981:25; Bejo, 1987:180; Villarroel, 1986:16-17), and in Indonesia, Sukarno introduced the art form with a satirical cartoon in the mid-1930s that implored the Dutch to leave (Sudarta, 1992). King Rama VI of Thailand displayed his wit and drawing skill in what is considered that country's first instance of comic - art a caricature of a member of his Council of Ministers in the palace magazine, Dusit Samit (Gesmankit and Gesmankit, 1980:21). Comics and cartoons have attached themselves to, or been exploited by, all types of Southeast Asian institutions. They have been used to instruct, educate, advertise and promote, and carry out social conscientization and development programmes. Just by way of example, Malaysia's Creative Enterprises promoted poetry, moral lessons and stories of legendary Malay warriors through its Bambino comic magazine for years, while Thailand's Department of Non-Formal Education published comics to teach rural people everything from breastfeeding to workers' rights. All through the region, comics and cartoon characters selling a variety of products find their way onto billboards, television screens, and newspaper and magazine pages. In at least two countries, the McDonald's hamburger chain exploited famous cartoon characters by naming hamburgers after them - the "Kampung Burger", after Lat's "Kampung Boy" in Malaysia, and the "Kiasu Burger", after "Mr Kiasu", the comic character created by Johnny Lau and his Comix Factory team in Singapore. While some developmentalists in supranational and governmental agencies hesitated about the effectiveness of comic books in bringing about social change (Havet, 1987), those in the Philippines did not. In the process, the Philippines pioneered the extensive and varied use of comics for development in the 1960s. While the Population Center and governmental National Media Production Center published developmental komiks, built mainly around family planning themes, researchers at the University of the Philippines Institute of Mass Communications tested ways to use them and ascertain their effectiveness. The studies usually showed that developmental komiks did have an effect, thus spurring the publication of others 1 2 by agencies as disparate as the National Corporation of Electricity and the Communications Foundation of Asia. However, not all Southeast Asian cartoonists see their role as being that of agents of social change. Malaysia's Lat even doubts whether cartoons can be used effectively for political or social change; when asked, he seemed nonchalant about editors occasionally rejecting his works for political reasons, stating that they took care of "things so that nobody gets into trouble" (Lent, 1987:29). And the late Thomas Lionar, a top Indonesian caricaturist, has been quoted as saying that it was not right for his country's cartoonists to "always criticize, attack or offend". His view was that the cartoon world is a "playful" one in which ... A cartoon drawing should not be regarded seriously with a furrowed brow. Cartoons should not be viewed as being able to change the situation. The world will not cease to turn because of a cartoon. (Badrudin, 1991 :84) The role of cartoonists as agents of change or as government watchdogs, which Lionar railed against, is among the many Western phenomena that filtered in with colonialism and globalization. The British influence was strong in Malaysia, Singapore and Myanmar, while American styles predominated in the Philippines. According to Provencher (1993:18), the drawing style of Warta Jenaka cartoonists in the 1930s was very British. He related how Malay cartoonists learned to draw by imitating their colonial masters: Also, at the end of the 1930s, British cartoon newspapers for children, such as Beano, Beezer, Dandy and Topper, began to appear as scrap wrapping paper sold by weight in the markets, and although they were "used" and in English, they were appreciated by Malay children. Many Malay cartoonists recall that they began to learn how to draw cartoons by trying to copy the cartoons in these British humour newspapers for children. (Provencher, 1993:18) In Myanmar, the first published cartoon was drawn by a British railway official and appeared in the Christmas 1914 issue of The Rangoon Times, and when the first Burmese to publish cartoons, U Bagalay (Shwe Ta-Lay), did so, his work was in the English language. All cartoons and comics are now in Burmese, but some cartoonists have retained their local counterparts of Western characters such as "Tarzan" or "Sherlock Holmes" (Lent, 1995b:35-36). For obvious reasons, the impact of comics from the United States was most - profound in the Philippines. All aspects were affected from the naming of the characters and writing of plots to developing comic books (komiks). The first Philippine comic strip, Antonio Valasquez's "Kenkoy" in 1929, used American colloquialisms and idioms and featured a character described as "a ludicrous portrait of the Filipino of the time, pathetically trying but barely succeeding in keeping up with his American mentors" (Marcelo, 1980:18). Among rivals to "Kenkoy" in the 1930s were "Goyo and Kikay", a dead-ringer for "Maggie and Jiggs" in the United States, "Kulafu" and "Hagibis", characters resembling "Tarzan", and "Lucas Malakas", a local version of "Popeye" (see Roxas and Arevalo, 1985). In the post-World War II era, the first Filipino komiks appeared, modelled in format and content after the American ones left behind by the GIs. Eventually, komiks .