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BOOK
REVIEW
A romp through a troubled
world
One Hand, Two
Fingers by Gavin Coates
Reviewed by David Simmons
One
of the joys of journalism is that we get to work
with so many people who are very good at things we
ourselves are hopeless at. A modern newspaper or
high-quality website such as Asia Times Online is,
in the journalistic cliche, a "daily miracle" in
which 
myriad disparate talents come together to
make a whole, seamless entity.
"A picture
is worth a thousand words" works both ways in
journalism; sometimes the thousand words are more
appropriate than the picture, sometimes
vice-versa, and often both work together to tell
the whole story. Most often the pictures are
photographs, but they are predated by the art of
hand-drawn - and, today, computer-aided -
illustrations. In the cartoon format, these works
of art often stand alone, illustrating a news
event and commenting upon it simultaneously. As a
bonus, they make us laugh - or cry.
Before
proceeding, full disclosure is in order: The
creator of the reviewed work, Gavin Coates, and
the reviewer have been colleagues and friends for
years, both at Asia Times Online and previously at
the Hong Kong iMail (since re-renamed The
Standard). So if you are seeking that mythical
journalistic entity called "objectivity", you
might be disappointed. Yet such might be
appropriate in the given situation; Standard
editor-in-chief Mark Clifford, in an article
introducing the chapter of One Hand, Two
Fingers titled "An American Dream", warns,
"These drawings are not meant to be balanced." (p
122)
Coates is based in Hong Kong, and
most of his published work has been for The
Standard in its various iterations. His foray into
an international audience was made through Asia
Times Online. Some of his best ATol work is
reproduced in One Hand, Two Fingers, but it
has to be said that the book is necessarily Hong
Kong-centric for the most part.
Still, there is much in the
book to appeal to the observer of Asian events, as
Hong Kong - and, of course, Greater China, which
by extension figures prominently in One
Hand
- is at the center of much
of what has been happening in Asia over the past
several years. In his introduction to the chapter
"Flagrant Harbor", longtime Hong Kong journalist
Steve Vines writes, "Gavin could easily be
dismissed as a Hong Kong hater, but only by those
who fail to understand that his criticisms of the
SAR [Special Administrative Region] are based on a
true affection for the place that has been his
home for so many years. His sense of irritation is
towards those who show contempt for the people of
Hong Kong and try to make the SAR into little more
than a second-rate Chinese city." (p 19)
While Coates' favorite pastime of brutally
lampooning the parade of characters who pretend to
rule Hong Kong may be lost on readers who are not
intimately familiar with the territory, many will
appreciate the chapter "The East Was Red", which
examines mainland China's "economic miracle".
The story of China's economic
transformation and "opening up" is complex and
will be grist for debate for many years to come,
regardless of whether China becomes the successor
to the American superpower, as many predict, or
crashes to Earth in a gigantic fireball, as others
forecast. These complexities are illustrated
accurately in Coates' cartoons, as in the one
depicting a chief executive remarking to a
colleague, "China? China is still way behind,"
while an enormous panda glowers through a window
behind him; (p 96) or when the golden stars of the
Chinese flag peel away to reveal dollar signs
underneath. (p 101) A personal favorite: the great
hammer and sickle looming on the wall of a
Communist Party congress is rearranged to form a
dollar sign. (p 90) Another: A communist cadre's
eyes pop out as he watches a stripper peel off her
five-starred G-string and it wafts to the floor.
(p 101)
Coates' caricatures are invariably
unflattering, and unforgiving in the villainous
scenarios into which they are placed. In his
Author's Note at the beginning of the book, Coates
writes, "Having gone through the process of
reviewing more than 1,000 cartoons for this book
[more than 250 made the cut], it is obvious to me
that readers might think I hate [Hong Kong Chief
Executive] Tung [Chee-hwa], China, [President
George W] Bush and the USA. I plead not guilty - a
tough call in the case of Bush, I know!" (p 9) Yet
on that point, Standard editor Clifford seems
unconvinced. Introducing the chapter "An American
Dream?", Clifford writes, "I disagree with quite a
few of these cartoons. It's moral equivalence of a
very dangerous sort to compare Saddam [Hussein] to
Bush." (p 122)
Like most of us journalists
who were on duty that day, Coates was profoundly
affected by the events of September 11, 2001, and
the perceived excesses of the consequent "war on
terror". Three days after September 11 there
appeared in the iMail a scene from hell: the Grim
Reaper and the Devil clinking wine glasses as they
watched the burning World Trade Center on
television. (p 124) By September 21, the nature of
the "war on terror" was already making itself
clear: The iMail cartoon on that day depicted Bush
firing a shoulder-launched missile at Osama bin
Laden; the missile, labeled "Revenge", flies over
bin Laden's head and carries on around the planet
Earth, and back toward Bush himself. (p 125)
Though clearly disturbed by the one-sidedness of
many of Coates' drawings on this subject, Clifford
writes: "But these are the reality of the world in
which we live, a world in which a country that
prides itself on its moral superiority is engaged
in a misguided crusade to remake the Middle East."
(p 123)
That One Hand, Two Fingers
is published by the Civic Exchange, the
public-policy think-tank run by former Hong Kong
legislator Christine Loh, is a reflection of
Coates' long-held passion for democracy in the
SAR. This too is a prominent feature of the book -
the snail's-pace progress toward full democracy in
Hong Kong. A favorite panel, in the subsection
titled "Democracy Inaction", depicts Chief
Executive Tung and his second-in-command, Donald
Tsang. "Does anybody actually understand this
electoral system, Donald?" asks Tung. "Certainly
not, sir!" replies Tsang. "It was designed with
utmost care!" (p 61)
Hong Kongophiles will
appreciate the introductions to each chapter
penned by SAR luminaries. Loh herself wrote the
preface, and art critic John Russell Taylor
provides a chapter titled "Down With Them All: A
Random History of Political Caricature".
As journalists, we all want our work to
stand the test of time; usually it does no such
thing, as one "daily miracle" gives way to the
next. The best cartoons are timeless, as
meaningful years later as on the day they were
drawn, and in fact can find new relevance as
events progress, or regress. In March 2003, Asia
Times Online ran a Coates cartoon on the six-party
talks on North Korea's nuclear program. Freelance
writer Stuart Wolfendale describes the cartoon: "A
crazed Kim Jong-il stabs a missile head into a
bird of peace, watched by an angry impotent
Chinese panda, an even more useless Uncle Sam, a
horrified tiny South Korea and a completely
quiescent Japan. The blood runs everywhere." (p
152) The cartoon is reproduced (p156) in the final
chapter of One Hand, Two Fingers, "The
Devolution of Man".
"By lampooning and
poking fun," writes Coates, "my aim is to get the
individual readers to think over the issues in
their own minds and come to their own conclusions.
My hope is that by attacking injustice, hypocrisy,
denial and delinquency, we may keep these demons
at bay." (p 9)
One Hand, Two
Fingers by
Gavin Coates. Hong Kong: Civic Exchange, 2004; 174
pages. Price US$19. Available for purchase online.
David Simmons is an Asia Times
Online staffer based in Thailand.
(Copyright 2005 Asia Times Online Ltd. All
rights reserved. Please contact us for information
on sales, syndication and republishing.) |
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