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In Absentia? Gay-Themed Cartoons in The New Yorker

Filed under: Looked Into Tagged: Bob Mankoff, cartoons, gay, Mad, Playboy, Punch, William Haefeli

Pollux writes:

At his blog Streetlaughter, British writer Matthew Davis takes an interesting look at the absence of gay-themed subject matter in The New Yorker's cartoon section until the early 1990s.

As Davis points out (with visual examples),

Bear in mind that "Private Eye" and "Playboy" had been publishing gay cartoons since the beginning of the '60s, and even "Punch" and "Mad", with their particular audiences, had followed suit by the end of the '60s, while "National Lampoon" had started in 1970 and never blanched at any gay gag.... The gay cartoonist William Haefeli, who has since produced a significant percentage of "The New Yorker"'s gay gags, with a career of twenty years in almost every major magazine, didn't begin appearing in "The New Yorker" until 1998 with the appointment of a new cartoons editor, Bob Mankoff.

He asks an important and relevant question: Why were gay themes seemingly "comedically unprintable" in The New Yorker's cartoon section until just over fifteen years ago? Unless you know of other examples; if you do, let us know.

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