C4 EZ RE THE WASHINGTON POST.MONDAY, AUGUST 26 , 2019
tranced by digital vistas, orbs,
infinite roads and a nonstop
laser light show that aimed to
induce altered states.
Parker and his backing band
jammed through much of 2015’s
“Currents” and the highlights of
2012’s “Lonerism,” his falsetto
ringing out like a lost Bee Gee. In
kind, the show opened with a
double dose of disco: the nearly
eight-minute long “Let It Hap-
pen,” about lying back and ac-
cepting the inevitable, and the
sun-kissed “Patience,” about los-
ing track of time, that great force
which “takes from everyone.”
The latter shimmers and stomps,
perhaps hinting at the direction
of the band’s forthcoming al-
bum.
For an act so fixated on chemi-
cal enhancement, though, Tame
Impala is precise in its explora-
tions of the pocket, including the
blues-rock homage of “Led Zep-
pelin,” the glam groove of “El-
ephant,” the Pink Floydian slip of
“Feels Like We Only Go Back-
wards” and the yacht-rock rever-
ie of the band’s latest single,
“Borderline.”
Lyrically, “Borderline” begins
to glimpse the outer limits of a
stoned-and-dosed existence.
“Caught between the tides of
pain and rapture,” Parker won-
ders, “Will I be known and loved?
Is there one that I trust?” as he
starts to “sober up.”
That turn was an exciting one
during a show that often leaves
the audience comfortably
numb, with Tame Impala as the
melodic background music of
adventures of the mind. For all
the psychedelic flirtations,
there was something staid
about the show, like listening to
prog-rock in a planetarium, or
buying a tie-dye shirt at Urban
Outfitters.
What would happen if Parker
really turned on, tuned in and
dropped out, and took his show
to mind-expanding — not just
narcotizing — heights? In “Once
Upon a Time,” Brad Pitt’s charac-
ter smokes an acid-dipped ciga-
rette and alters history in a burst
of violent glory. Tame Impala
could use a hit of the same — not
to get violent, but to get really
freaking weird.
[email protected]IMPALA FROM C1Television
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and Camila Cabello. Missy Elliott receives the Video Vanguard Award.
BY MICHAEL CAVNA
Pia Guerra is one of the most
poignant political cartoonists
working today, yet she wasn’t
even creating such art full time
before President Trump.
For two decades, the Canadian
American cartoonist was best
known for her comic books, in-
cluding the acclaimed graphic-
novel epic she co-created, “Y: The
Last Man.” But that was before
her single-panel takes on the
White House, human rights and
mass shootings began to go viral.
In the wake of this month’s El
Paso shooting, Guerra rendered a
wordless cartoon in which the
viewer is placed behind a
crouched Walmart worker. The
art, which has the emotional im-
mediacy of live news footage, was
soon shared extensively on social
media — more than a year after
her moving tribute cartoon of
slain Marjory Stoneman Douglas
High School coach and security
guard Aaron Feis, titled “Hero’s
Welcome,” was widely retweeted.
Now, when human tragedy
makes international news, Guer-
ra is a go-to visual commentator
for many readers.
“Pia was already a great car-
toonist,” says editor-cartoonist
Matt Bors, who publishes Guer-
ra’s work on the website the Nib,
“and with her shift into political
work, [she] instantly became one
of the top editorial cartoonists in
the field.”
Partly because she comes out of
the world of comic books, Guerra
composes political cartoons free
of labels, instead often relying on
the power of scene and the pathos
best communicated by the hu-
man face. Such visual traits nota-
bly come through when the Van-
couver-based artist is depicting
children in border cages, or as the
victims of violence.
“With kids, you don’t want to
put them at arm’s length — you
have to get down to the essence of
the basic emotions involved: fear,
sadness, terror, innocence,”
Guerra tells The Washington
Post. “Find the simple heart of it,
and you will pull in the viewer
and connect with their empathy.”
Guerra takes a focused ap-
proach to her cartoons on gun
violence. “I want to focus on the
things that this violence takes
away: the faces, the love that isn’t
there anymore,” she says. “I want
people to feel that absence and
get angry, because it’s so easy to
have this fog just roll in and buryall these victims as the next
shooting happens, and the next
one.”
Guerra has a gifted eye forcomposition and visual contrast,
but her editorial cartoons often
resonate with an emotional un-
dercurrent that helps them popoff the page. And she has no
problem feeling impassioned
about the state and stakes of
American politics.
“One good thing from the
Trump era,” Bors says, “is that
artists like Pia have been motivat-
ed to do more political work, and
we’re all better off for it.”
The Hoboken, N.J.-born car-
toonist grew up in a fairly politi-
cally minded household, with her
family moving to Canada when
she was 5 to be closer to her
father’s parents and sister, who
were recent refugees from Chile.
Guerra drew editorial cartoons
for her high school newspaper,
but she never felt as if they quite
worked like the professional car-
toons she saw in big papers. “I’d
try to caricature a politician or an
event,” she says, “and it just
wouldn’t land.”
Everything changed for her,
she says, once Trump was elected.
In the introduction to “Me the
People,” her 2018 collection of
editorial cartoons, she wrote that
the result left her reeling like an
electoral 9/11.
“Trump happened and I found
I suddenly had all this anger to
work with — like every day, it
seemed — so I started drawing
more and more,” says the Eisner
Award-winning cartoonist
(“Doctor Who,” “Black Canary”).
“The images just kept coming
and I kept posting them.
“It felt good to get these
thoughts out there, [and] even
better when people told me they
felt better sharing them,” Guerra
continues. “I wasn’t sure if this
was a career shift or not.”
It still felt more like a side
project until the month of
Trump’s inauguration, when she
headed to Washington.
“My sister and I went to the
Women’s March [and] I made up
a sign from my ‘Liar Liar’ Trump
cartoon, and the response was
amazing,” she says. “Every 10 feet,
people would stop us and men-
tion the sign, take a photo or just
have a good laugh.
“It was such a good day, and by
the end we were in Lafayette
Square, resting on a bench when
a man came up to us and asked
about the sign. We got into a
conversation about editorial car-
toons.”
The man said he had worked
with the legendary Washington
Post cartoonist Herblock years
before on a video animation proj-
ect.
“I had totally forgotten we
were in the city where he worked
for so many years, and we geeked
out on his work for a while, and
finally he said, ‘I hope you do
more of this, you’ve really got a
handle on it’ — and that’s when I
decided: Okay, this isn’t a side
project anymore.”
[email protected]Cartoonist
sketches a
new path in
Trump era
CARTOONS BY PIA GUERRA
Pia Guerra’s political commentary on events such as mass shootings and human rights has gone viral.A nostalgic
night leaves
audience
numb