Cartoon Analyse ”British Brain”

The cartoon “Brain of Britain“ shows a cross section of a British Brain and it deals with stereotypes. It is splitted in two pictures. In the bigger picture we can see an elderly man. He has a moustache and he is looking on the left side. The special thing in this picture is, that his brain is a cross section and lines point on certain parts and name its function. Normally we see a described brain in anatomy. In the smaller picture there is a bowler (melone hut  habs nachgeschlagen) and on that bowler point also lines with description. A bowler is a typical symbol for Great Britain, the famous actor Charlie Chaplin wearied it. He was in Great Britain born. The cartoon refers to British stereotypes and the person is presented in a negative light, because his brain consists just of stereotypes for example the beer on the left hand. It is a prejudice that British drink beer and make party all time, when they are on holidays. Stereotypes lend people to make predictions about other people’s behavior. Another stereotype in this cartoon is the mistrust of Europe.

I think this stereotype has a true core, because the British Prime Minister David Cameron wants that Great Britain leave the European Union. But David Cameron is not the whole British population and there are some British who want to stay in the European Union. In the second picture we can find the prejudice “It rains whole time in Great Britain” and the bowler protects the British from rain. I think it’s difficult to talk about weather, because it changes. The person in the cartoon had a recognition centre for Royals. I think this stereotype has also a true core, because the majority of British are proud of Queen Elisabeth, Prince William and Kate.

But there is also a minority, which criticize the representative monarchy and the Royal family. In General stereotypes allow people to quickly process new information about an event or a person, but they cause people to exaggerate differences between groups.In my opinion the cartoon is effective, because we can find a lot of stereotypes and the cartoonist shows them in an ironic, funny and exaggerating way. I think the cartoonist had to learn about the human brain.