Taylor Ball, Brigham Young University
Through the power of the pen and caricatures, Thomas Nast brought down the politically corrupt regime of Boss Tweed in New York in the late nineteenth century. In our modern climate of political corruption and division, satire continues to effectually invite reform. This project uses the case study of Thomas Nast against Boss Tweed to study how modern late night TV hosts and political cartoonists criticize the administration of President Trump To understand Nast in his historical context, my research has focused primarily on two questions: how did Nast get to a position of influence? And what made him an effective influencer? This historical framework has then been examined with the theoretical frameworks of Walter Benjamin’s theory on the political value of mechanically reproduced material and Pierre Bourdieu’s theories of radical contextualism. This interdisciplinary method provides a unique analysis of which methods used by Nast are still being used today. The purpose of evaluating Nast’s effectiveness as a satirist is to see how similar tactics are being employed by modern satirists, and, more importantly, what methods were used by Nast that are not being used by modern satirists. I have limited my study of satirists to the political cartoons of the Wall Street Journal along with the television programming of Saturday Night Live, The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver. The reasons I decided to limit myself to these is because I esteem them to be the most comparable to Nast in our modern setting. They have also all been critical of Donald Trump in various ways. Part of the project will be exploring how Nast’s work is applicable in the new, postmodern cultural context with its new mediums of communication.