Sunday, November 06, 2011

Unintendend Caricature

My Fellow Comedists,

A few weeks back we talked about what makes in impersonation funny. The theory I proposed involved creating an icon of the target, a simplified version that stresses certain properties and then verbally and visually recreating that icon. A similar type of humorous act is drawing a caricature. But what happens when the caricature is unintended? I came across this drawing the other week:If I had sat for a caricature, that is most likely what it would have looked like. But it isn't me (to the best of my knowledge). It is a representation of an icon, not the icon of a particular individual, but of an archetype. You can't draw dog with drawing a specific dog. Here, you can't draw a liberal without drawing a specific liberal. And the archetypal image in this artist's head just happens to look a lot like me. Is there extra humor in the "found art" sense that it seems to be a caricature of me, but isn't? In any meaningful way, can it be said that it is a caricature of me?

Live, love, and laugh,

Irreverend Steve