Cartoonist illustrate cultual differences

Two cartoonists drew a crowd to the Annenberg Center's Harold Prince Theatre Monday for "Chalk Talk," a presentation on the differences between French and American culture as illustrated by cartoons. The University's French Institute for Culture and Technology sponsored the talk, which featured Philadelphia Daily News political cartoonist Signe Wilkinson and French cartoonist Clare Bret_cher. The symposium aimed to highlight the differences between American and French cartoonists while grasping the concepts of cartooning found "on both sides of the Atlantic," according to Chemistry Professor Barry Cooperman, director of the Institute. The program began with only a slight hitch. Wilkinson had planned to speak second, following Bret_cher, who, she said, is her idol. But Bret_cher arrived late and then proceeded to drop her slides all over the floor. In stepping to the podium first, Wilkinson jokingly insinuated Bret_cher was following both "typical French" and "typical female" custom. After graduating college, Wilkinson spent 10 years working for a slew of non-profit organizations. Finally, she landed a job drawing cartoons for the San Jose Mercury News. She has been the Daily News's cartoonist since the 1980s. "The great thing about cartooning is you cut drawings out of a magazine and put them in your portfolio, and the people who look at them don't know that only five or six people saw them [in print]," she said. The Philadelphia cartoonist called Monday's "Chalk Talk" particularly exciting because female cartoonists are quite rare. She added with a chuckle that the audience was probably "seeing about 98 percent of the female cartoonists in the world" during the program. Wilkinson recounted tales of cartoons that had gotten her into trouble, including those featuring her liberal-leaning views on crime, abortion, religion, race relations and lobbyists. "These cartoons are like little children," she said. "Once they stick a foot out your front door, they take on a life of their own." BretZcher painted quite a different picture of life as a cartoonist across the Atlantic Ocean. Relying occasionally on a translator -- only when she got tired of speaking English, she said -- BretZcher described the European cartoon style as much freer than in the U.S. But she said she still makes many sketches before she draws a final cartoon. Only after a series of these sketches are done will she add color. Wilkinson expressed some envy of the loftier status of European cartoons. "[European art] looks almost like animation," she said. "In the U.S., people do not treat cartooning like the arts." Bret_cher said that unlike Wilkinson, she does not feature political messages in her cartoons. Instead, she draws about subjects like sex, children and feminism. Bret_cher said she had the luxury of choosing her own topics because her editors at French newspapers gave her a full page and many fewer restrictions than Wilkinson, who had four small panels and harsher bosses. "There is some demented, twisted gene" that spurs some people to be cartoonists, Wilkinson concluded. Of the more than 50 people in attendance, most seemed to be well-acquainted with French culture before the program began. But others, like College freshman Elana Piller, attended "Chalk Talk" for academic purposes. Piller and two other members of her French 140 class are writing their own newspaper and plan to feature a review of the program.