Political Caricature And Its Censorship In France During The July Dynasty

Political caricature are used to satirizing political affairs with a excellent approach.In France,where the political atmosphere changed frequently in the 19 th century,political caricature were extremely active on the stage of political commentary and public opinion.After the July Revolution,due to many factors,press has achieved great development in France.The enthusiasm left by the July Revolution,the development of culture,and the “laissez-faire” attitude of the new regime in treating the press have led to “the upsurge of caricature” in France.In the first five years of the July Dynasty,opposition newspapers launched a "disrespectful movement" against the new regime,taking turns against the royal family and major political figures.The caricaturists lead by Charles Philipon used the caricature to join the trend of commenting on politics and attacking the government.The political caricaturists of this period reached a high level in art level and publishing density.At the same time,the Republican movement has flourished.Philipon and other caricaturists were also influenced by republicanism,which led to political caricature taking a strong republicanism color after 1833.Although the government did not implement a pre-censorship system for caricature from 1830 to 1835,the government still used the post-publication punitive mechanism to file a large number of lawsuits against political caricature.However,since the principles of freedom of the press were established after the July Revolution,there was a great tension in the post-publication censorship mechanism,which failed to prevent the prosperity of political caricature.With the stabilizing of the financial bourgeois regime,the government suppressed the most threatening opposition force,the Republican Party,and later used the murder against the King to launch a repressive press law in 1835,to liquidate the opposition press.The decree also re-established the censure for image publishing.Under the influence of this decree,it is difficult for the opposition newspapers to survive.Since the publication of caricature has to be filtered by censors,social caricature have replaced political caricature as the mainstream of caricature publishing.However,the social caricature of this period have a strong political color,and the creative attempts of political caricature have not completely disappeared.