general

definition of caricature

The caricature is a portrait that exaggerates and distorts the physical aspects of a person for a humorous purpose, although and to a lesser extent, also, the task or activity that a person performs may be the object of the cartoon. For example, if it is an athlete, many cartoonists, in addition to exaggerating the physical features of this, usually add some element or present it in the context for which he became a recognized character.

The technique used by the cartoon will then be enlarge those most salient features of a person (lips, eyes, nose, sideburns, hair) and exaggerate them to the maximum to cause humor or the representation of some moral defect.

Although we mention sports, the world of politics or better, more precisely the members of that world, they are the ones that have received the most caricatures throughout the history of the world. The physical characteristics, decisions, behaviors and manners of a politician are the ones that have most often been subject to the caricature of graphic comedians, generally from newspapers. For example, a case that serves to represent what I am telling you is that of former Argentine president Fernando De la Rúa, who due to his known slowness and lukewarm decision-making, many times during his tenure, was represented by Argentine cartoonists exaggerating the features of their face and with the body of a turtle, in clear allusion and reference to that slowness.

But not everything is reduced to people with an important presence in political life, because as we said, athletes and other aspects such as situations, political, social and religious institutions, groups and social classes have also been cartoon meat.

In this last case that we mentioned in the previous paragraph and in some others that merited it, The cartoon, many times, in addition to its clear comic purpose, was more than anything encouraged by the latter, by the need to induce a social or political change, since sometimes humor, protected by that comic purpose, manages to say many more truths, even the harshest ones, because his shoulders are wider than any political column or editorial in a newspaper can bear.

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