Criticism over Serena Williams cartoon

[mr friendly guy]

During Serena William's loss of Naomi Osaka, she went off against the umpires in what was a case of bad sportsmanship.

Australian cartoonist Mark Knight did a political cartoon satirising this, and now has been labelled as racist. I am going to post a link with him defending his stance with the cartoon. However, Williams lips look exaggerated, which may be a tactic for caricatures, however that type of "art" has been traditionally used to mock Africans. Its like he is skirting the line there. Another aspect which is more clear cut, is the flagrant racebending utilised. Naomi Osaka is drawn as a blonde white player. WTF? The name is obvious Japanese, and Osaka herself is of mixed heritage, with a Haitian father and she would be considered "black" in the US, and her skin is not lily white, nor does she have blond hair.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Osaka

Here is the artist defending himself with cartoon there
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-11/c ... n/10230044

Here is a critique of it
http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-09-11/s ... e/10230122

[Jub]

I don't even agree that it was especially bad sportsmanship. Tennis coaches give signals nearly every match and it doesn't get called, it would be like calling sign stealing in baseball or football. It doesn't happen and when it does it's usually either especially flagrant or gets questioned as to why that specific case of the violation was called. Then he called her for breaking a racket which should have been the first warning and took a point from her for verbally berating him over the first two calls. Other similar tirades haven't met with the same punishment so that's two iffy calls in the same match, the fact that she had two other warnings should never factor into a call especially one that would cost a point.

There's also Serena's history of having calls that should have gone her way go against her with one such example leading to the implementation of a video review of shots being in or out of play.

As for the cartoon, it's pretty bad. They drew Serena looking overweight, with exaggerated racial features, and extremely emphasized anger while also erasing Naomi almost completely and implying that the ref would ask another competitor to let her win. The same artist seems to have been close to the line with a few other cartoons and his other tennis cartoon of a male player didn't show nearly the same level of bad taste as this one did. It leaves a bad taste in my mouth and given how many cartoonists have awful opinions I'm not inclined to cut him any slack.

[Civil War Man]

I agree that the guy's decision to draw Osaka as a lily white blonde makes it obvious that his caricature of Williams was way more than just "oh editorial cartoonists just exaggerate features." The fact that he apparently has a history of it makes me even less charitable.

Personally, I think the most tragic part of this whole drama is that it destroys what should have been Osaka's moment of triumph. She was winning legitimately, but the judge's decision to get into a pissing match with Williams put an undeserved asterisk on that win.

[mr friendly guy]

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/worl ... acist.html

I post this purely to bring up other cartoons this artist has done

One is criticising minister banning Sky News (another affiliate of Murdoch) from train platforms with a bunch of African youths fighting in the background. Firstly, the African gang bit was over exaggerated. Second, the topic he was lambasting wasn't even about African gangs and he somehow didn't change those Africans to whites.

[Korto]

One is criticising minister banning Sky News (another affiliate of Murdoch) from train platforms with a bunch of African youths fighting in the background. Firstly, the African gang bit was over exaggerated. Second, the topic he was lambasting wasn't even about African gangs and he somehow didn't change those Africans to whites.

Oh, it's that guy. (Household name my arse. More like "Knight who?")

As for the cartoon, it's pretty bad. They drew Serena looking overweight, with exaggerated racial features, and extremely emphasized anger while also erasing Naomi almost completely and implying that the ref would ask another competitor to let her win.

The cartoon representation of Serena doesn't seem that bad. It's a caricature, after all, of course he extremely emphasised the anger. And have you seen Serena? She's not a waif, she's a solid girl, and the picture doesn't show her as being fat. The lips thing is a problem--her lips are nowhere near big enough to justify using them with all the negative history. Excluding the lips, I would consider the depiction of her as fair.

The other girl wasn't drawn well at all, but she wasn't part of his narrative so I doubt he cared.

He's just a racist fuck from a Murdoch paper, pushing a Murdoch line. This is hardly the most interesting thing in Australian news at the moment.

[Jub]

The cartoon representation of Serena doesn't seem that bad. It's a caricature, after all, of course he extremely emphasised the anger. And have you seen Serena? She's not a waif, she's a solid girl, and the picture doesn't show her as being fat.

Serena is solid but that art made her look more like Nia Jax (pictured below) than herself.

[Kane Starkiller]

Naomi Osaka is drawn as a blonde white player. WTF? The name is obvious Japanese, and Osaka herself is of mixed heritage, with a Haitian father and she would be considered "black" in the US, and her skin is not lily white, nor does she have blond hair.

Save the tweet as an image and open it in an editor. Take a sample of Serena's caricature (forhead for example) and drag it next to Naomi's face. It's pretty much the same brownish tone. Perhaps Serena's is a bit darker as it is in real life.
If you look at this article you can see that she does have a blond colored ponytail.

Holy shit I just went full Darkstar-look-at-the-Alderaan-band-of-brightness on that tweet.

But seriously I think that people seeing a white woman and a racist caricature is more like a Rorschach effect than anything else.

[Solauren]

Looking at the cartoon, Osaka is definitely a darker skin tone then the clearly white male judge.

As for how Ms. Williams is portrayed, probably was a bad choice.