What children really make of Trump
When he asked a primary school class to draw Donald Trump, cartoonist Bob Moran was blown away
When I was invited to spend an afternoon at my children’s primary school in Somerset to give a talk to pupils about my job, I was more than a little apprehensive. As a political cartoonist, it can be tricky getting adults to understand exactly what I do and how I do it. How much interest could I expect from 9 to 11 year olds?
My confidence was quickly shaken when I held up a copy of the Daily Telegraph and asked how many of their parents read a paper. Of course, most of the class were familiar with newspapers, but not in the unswipeable form I was showing them.
It was interesting to see which political characters the pupils could identify. As far as domestic politics was concerned, most of them could recognise Theresa May and Boris Johnson but struggled to name any more. However, there was one exception. One politician really stood out for all them — Donald Trump.
What fascinated me wasn’t just how much the pupils knew about Trump, but the energy and enthusiasm with which they described him. There was no real sense of derision or criticism; it was more as if they were discussing a character from a favourite television programme or Disney film.
When I asked them to point out Trump’s distinguishing characteristics, every hand in the class shot up. They provided the full smorgasbord of Trump features: “He’s got massive, weird hair that looks like a wig.” “Really, really orange skin.” “His tie is always too long.” “Loves tweeting.” And the essential: “He gets upset because people say he’s got small hands but he thinks they’re really massive.”
They clearly found him funny, chuckling as they reeled off the catchphrases: “We’re going to build a wall”, “Make America Great Again”, “fake news”. They knew about the diminutive sidekick, Kim Jong Un. They imitated his odd hand gestures.
As I demonstrated how to draw Trump on the classroom’s whiteboard, I explained that he’s not the easiest politician to get right. His hair, for example, is big and bonkers. But if you make it too big, it looks wrong. It also regularly changes colour. On one occasion it might appear blond, another time white. Sometimes it has a gingery pink hue.
He doesn’t have a big nose. His eyebrows are bushy, but lightly coloured. His ears are quite large but
They clearly found him funny, chuckling as they reeled off catchphrases.
hidden under that famous hair. His mouth is a difficult combination of pouting lips and saggy jowls.
My biggest concern was sending out the wrong message. There’s no getting away from the fact that mockery is central to the ethos of political cartooning and kindness towards other people is central to the ethos of primary school education. This conflict of interests is what led to me getting into a lot of trouble when I was at school myself with cartooning retaliation.
It was a long time before anyone explained to me that making somebody look ridiculous isn’t the point. You also have to try to say something about who they are and what they’re doing. Make an intelligent and valid criticism. For example, if I’m going to portray Angela Merkel as portly and miserable-looking, I need to also make sure that what the cartoon is really highlighting is her political position, not her appearance.
It was also important for me to get across to the children that the people worthy of such criticism aren’t your peers or teachers, but those in positions of great power. I am also a firm believer that the best satire comes with an underlying trace of respect for the subject, or at the very least, the office they occupy. It’s a fairly weighty concept to explain to years five and six, but they seemed to really understand.
When it was time for the children to create their own Trump cartoons, the results were fantastic. Not only fired up by the cartoon proportions of the leader of the Free World, they came up with their own speech bubbles, thought of some brilliant gags and produced some quite wonderful depictions.
I was pleasantly surprised by how engaged and creative they all were. Young people draw with frantic energy and without inhibition. It’s a magic that grown-up artists constantly try to recapture, and fail.
I’m not sure how many future cartoonists I inspired in that classroom, but they certainly all inspired me. As they passed around the orange, yellow and red pencils and ran out of space for tie length and bottom size, I wondered what Trump himself would make of their creations. I expect he would declare them fake news. Very poor likenesses. Sad!
But since that afternoon, several parents have approached me at the school gates and said: “Are you the cartoonist who taught them how to draw
Donald Trump? Because now he’s all they want to talk about.”
Naturally, I told them
I was sorry.