Sunday Mailbag: Personal Limits?

Q: I have a question for you: Have your personal, political, or religious convictions ever prevented you from accepting a gig or gag? Or have you felt a need to interject and change things which don’t jibe well with your own ethical standpoints? I get that a job is a job, but when is enough enough?

A: I have turned down a few jobs because I didn’t want to “go there”, but to be honest I have not been put into that position very often. When Penthouse hired me to do illustration work I immediately told the art director there I would not do any pornographic work, even using a pseudonym. He had no problem with that, telling me had had a few illustrators that had the same limit and he would never ask me to do anything I wasn’t comfortable doing. The closest I got to doing anything with nudes in Penthouse was this illustration that accompanied an article on the psychology behind why so many men are obsessed with sex i.e. having “sex on the brain”:

I pitched a cartoony “Barbie doll” approach to the female figures and it did the narrative job without being overtly sexualized. It’s not that I’m a prude, but once you start doing that type of work it closes the doors on other work.

I have also turned down a few jobs that I felt promoted the use of illegal drugs. I’ve done a fair number of pieces where drugs are the main subject, but they have always been humorous pieces that make fun or satirize the subject rather than glamorize it. I would not do any work for big tobacco, even though that’s legal. I’d do work for alcohol companies as long as I don’t think the object of the piece is to promote underage use.

I’ve never been put in the position where I’ve had to turn down work over it, but I would never do work for anything that promotes racism or any kind of hate speech, outright falsehoods, or that promotes real violence or any kind of illegal activity. When you do work for satirical features you have to step back and take in what the real message is behind the piece. A satire can address a subject like racism without promoting it… in fact the whole idea of a satire is often to do the very opposite of promoting the subject. These things have to be considered on a case by case basis.

Other than that, I’m game!

Thanks to Matthew JLD Rice for the question. If you have a question you want answered for the mailbag about cartooning, illustration, MAD Magazine, caricature or similar, e-mail me and I’ll try and answer it here!