Trojan War animated

By: Margaret Eaton

Posted: 9/14/05

Whether or not the Trojan War actually happened as Homer wrote down in his poems, it has inspired many books, movies and now cartoons with themes drawn from Homer's works.

Tom Sienkewicz, Monmouth College professor, was invited by Lee Brice and the history department to come to Western Illinois University and share his collection of cartoons - both humorous and political - with the students and community.

"This presentation tonight is part of the history department's continuing effort to highlight the importance of humanities in a well-rounded higher education," said Brice at the beginning of this 50-minute presentation.

Sienkewicz began with a series of cartoons about Leda, the woman Zeus fell in love with and disguised himself as a swan to be with.

"The humor of these cartoons works only when the viewer knows the story. I ask you to do more than chuckle at them. I ask you to consider and analyze what they are saying," Sienkewicz said.

He emphasized that Leda was the focus of almost all the cartoons and the very last cartoon of the series was the only one to mention Zeus. It also was the first of many political cartoons which used Trojan themes. This cartoon showed a group of small children sitting on the floor in front of a painting of Leda, the swan, and a small boy commenting, "So, Zeus was kind of like their President Bill Clinton?"

The next series of cartoons featured Helen of Troy and her fabled "face that launched a thousand ships.

"These cartoons are solely innocent puns and ship launching jokes with no political or social themes," said Sienkewicz of the series.

The next series, featuring Achilles and his weak ankles, was the first series to have many cartoons with a political slant. There were cartoons focusing on many prominent and not-so-prominent politicians of the 20th century including Adolf Hitler, Franklin Roosevelt, Ronald Reagan, and former President George Bush.

The cartoons of this series also focused on social issues. One example was a cartoon where Achilles is lying on the floor and two men are standing near him saying to each other, "What happened to Achilles?" "No flu shot," alluding to last year's shortage of flu vaccines.

The final series was the most expansive and covered the widest range of issues; it focused on the Trojan Horse. "The horse represents a gift, which is of course not a gift at all," Sienkewicz said. The treatments of the horse included variations on the animal, the situation and many other things. There were political themes and a somewhat strange social situation in which the Trojans are reluctant to admit the horse because it would lead to an awkward social debt to the Greeks. This series also is the only one of the set to have advertisements as part of the cartoons.

One of the most notable cartoons is a commentary on the arms race of the Cold War. It features a Trojan soldier going to his king and saying, "But how can we feel secure until we have our own wooden horse?"

There are many treatments which show the Trojan Horse as some kind of policy or political group trying to slip in through the gates of the other party's walls. There are also purely humorous treatments of the horse, two of which are by Far Side cartoonist Gary Larson. There was even a Trojan Horse cartoon from a daily newspaper in which it is not a horse that is offered, but the Trojan Judge. A wooden effigy of Justice John Roberts is wheeled up to Democratic gates while the Democratic soldiers look at each other confusedly.

"Getting all the cartoons into the PowerPoint presentation was definitely the hardest thing," Sienkewicz said when asked how hard compiling the clips was. He commented that he and his wife had been collecting them for some years and that some had been given to him by retiring classics and that a book and CD comprising all the cartoons ever having appeared in The New Yorker Magazine had proved an invaluable asset.

The sheer number and range of the cartoons was both surprising and amusing. The presentation included many well-known cartoon strips, such as Mother Goose and Grimm who did at least two treatments of the Helen legend, and of course The Far Side with its poor soldiers trapped in the horse and having to relieve themselves.

There were many modern translations of the cartoons which assumed the modern populace is familiar with Homer's characters and storylines.