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Wednesday 18 November 2015

The End Result of a Warped Mind

This, alas, was my entry for this week's caption competition. There really is no excuse for it and I can only apologize.
Now, regarding the fact that this came about via two pencil sketches - one of which was scanned in for inking - you may have some difficulty in believing what I am about to say.
This cartoon started off as a depiction of Rene Descartes and his dictum; cogito ergo sum. Descartes posited that the senses could not be trusted, so how do we know that we exist at all? He boiled it down to I think, therefore I am. I was thinking along the lines of God disproving, in a very personal manner to Descartes,that his thinking was flawed. Two obstacles stood in the way of me depicting this. Firstly, I would have to draw a cartoon that was recognizably Descartes short of having a huge arrow pointing to him with the appended legend: This is Rene Descartes. Not good art. Secondly, I wasn't clever enough to think of a situation that would highlight Descartes' flawed deconstruction of the self (flawed for the puposes of the cartoon). Okay, so what if I had Descartes writing C.E.S. on a piece of paper, but - in a thought bubble - thinking of bare, naked ladies. His angry wife- hands on hips - would be angrily declaring that that wasn't what he was  thinking ( the philosophy bit - not the bare, naked ladies). As a cartoon, I still think (ho ho!) that it could work, but it would still depend on the viewer recognizing Descartes for who he was.
Fatefully, I took the dog for a walk and began cogitating as I perambulated. I say fatefully, because the result of that walk was the cartoon above. Being of unsound mind, sex reared its ugly glans and ... well, you know the rest.
The guns ( I almost typed weapons, but I think I'm in enough trouble as it is) are a straight lift from Frank Hampson's Dan Dare. You see, nothing is sacred!
How many points did I get? A rather telling zero.