Dreamland, by Petar Pismestrovic

Dreamland, by Petar Pismestrovic, published in 2005 in the Kleine Zeitung, Austria.

Petar Pismestrovic was born in Yugoslavia in 1951 and has been living in Austria since 1992. He works for the Austrian daily newspaper, the Kleine Zeitung, as a political cartoonist and caricaturist.

The cartoon is a collection of symbolic images of America…

It is dominated by the flag of the USA (the Stars and Stripes / the Star-Spangled Banner / Old Glory) which takes up the whole sky… High in the sky (against the flag) we can see the top of the Empire State Building, the symbol of all American skyscrapers, which was for years the world’s tallest building… Nearly as tall as the skyscrapers, John Wayne, an American film icon in his cowboy outfit, is standing on the right, pointing his gun to the sky as a sign of victory or as a warning…

On the left, just under the stars of the flag the monumental faces of four US presidents carved in the rock of Mount Rushmore dominate the slopes below…

Right in the middle of the cartoon Elvis Presley, one of the most famous rock’n’roll stars is shown during one of his concerts… He is easily recognizable because of his hairdo…

Under Mount Rushmore a Native American in his ancestral clothes / outfit and feather headdress (in full regalia), seems to be anxious and pondering, as if he were looking at something which might be dangerous… Next to him, Lady Liberty is not standing on her huge pedestal in New York Harbor but sitting at a table in the company of Uncle Sam and Mickey Mouse… Lady Liberty is drinking Coca-Cola out of a bottle and the three of them seem to be sharing McDonald’s French fries and a Big Mac… Uncle Sam is wearing his traditional clothes, which remind us of the Stars and Stripes, and is holding an Oscar statuette in his right hand… He has put his top hat on the back of his chair from which a holster and a gun are hanging… In the right-hand corner another film icon, Marilyn Monroe, is shown with her skirt lifted by the draught from an air vent of a subway station as she appeared in Billy Wilder’s film The Seven Year Itch (« Sept ans de réflexion »)…

The cartoonist chose these particular images because in his mind they symbolize America… The places, things and people seen in the cartoon are part and parcel / the embodiment of the American way of life… These images show: – the major symbols of the USA: the American flag, Lady Liberty, Uncle Sam… – some world famous sights of America: Mount Rushmore, the Empire State Building… – legendary characters and symbols of the entertainment industry : Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Mickey Mouse, Elvis Presley, the Oscar statuette… – typical American food and drink: McDonald’s and Coca-Cola…

These images are at the same time attractive, conventional, truthful and idealized images of Dreamland (which is the title of the cartoon) or Americana… They illustrate an America which is a land of plenty (Coca-Cola, McDonald’s), a land of freedom (Lady Liberty), a land of achievement (The Empire State Building, Mount Rushmore), a land of entertainment (Elvis Presley, Marilyn Monroe, John Wayne, Mickey Mouse) and also a superpower (Uncle Sam has got a gun, the symbol of his might and also of his right to bear arms)… It is the America that people outside the USA dream of, a land of opportunities, the land of the free and the home of the brave, with liberty and justice for all…

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