What does this New Yorker cover mean (June 24, 1974)

February 12, 2019 8:06 AM

I was perplexed by this New Yorker cover. Dog and cat playing chess. Cat clearly winning -- or has already won. However both are apparently dozing. And they are sitting on a globe which suggests some geo-political connection. I cannot find an explanation in anything that was going on in June of '74. Can anyone explain this to me? Thanks
posted by jackmcc to Media & Arts (16 answers total)

I think this is a Nixon / Watergate related cover. This is supported by the Comment section in this issue being all about it.
posted by machinecraig at 8:20 AM on February 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

It may be worth noting that chess, especially in a USA-USSR connection, was very much in the air at the time. Bobby Fischer had famously won the world championship title from Boris Spassky in 1972, and in mid-1974 Anatoly Karpov and Viktor Korchnoi (both Russians) were preparing for their match to be held later that year to determine who would challenge Fischer for the title.

(In the end, Karpov beat Korchnoi, and after a long round of negotiations over the conditions of the title match Fischer resigned the title when he didn't get what he wanted, giving it by default to Karpov, who held it until 1985 when he lost it to Garry Kasparov.)
posted by dfan at 8:35 AM on February 12, 2019 [7 favorites]

Arguably, the cat looks like Senator Sam Ervin, who chaired the Senate Watergate Committee.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:35 AM on February 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

With that Sam Ervin resemblance/reference, the dog could be Nixon, who resigned on Aug. 9, 1974.

The vague "global playing field" / sitting on the globe could be a vague reference to the power of the President of the United States, though in this instance, he's losing this particular game.
posted by filthy light thief at 8:57 AM on February 12, 2019

While I think both the Nixon/Watergate and world chess allusions are likely, It's possible there's no explicit meaning. Assuming this is a representative sample, Andre Francois' New Yorker covers seem to be largely on the arty side of the New Yorker cover art-editorial cartoon spectrum, with cats and dogs as a minor recurring theme. His Punch cartoons don't seem editorial either.

Cat & Dog staring at each other through windows
Briefcase headed cat-thing
posted by zamboni at 9:12 AM on February 12, 2019 [6 favorites]

The bored cat knows he's going to win, while the blissfully unaware dog doesn't. Just as in life, all over the world.
posted by Right On Red at 10:01 AM on February 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

I believe the accepted term for a New Yorker cartoon that places the burden of comic interpretation on the reader and may not have an actual meaning is "vorstein."
posted by Smearcase at 11:29 AM on February 12, 2019 [4 favorites]

I was in high school during that time period, and the cat reminds me a lot of depictions of Bobby Fischer's behavior during his match with Spassky two years before. I can't find anything to back this up now, but I very clearly remember a comedy show depicting the match and having the character playing Fischer walking around and making a lot of noise during Spassky's turn while demanding absolute silence during his own and sitting in weird postures with legs spread out, etc. - it's the way the cat is sitting with his leg up that reminds me of it - it's really not a posture that says he's taking the match seriously or behaving with what's considered appropriate decorum. Fischer was really famous for his behavior not being in keeping with the traditions of the chess world. Another way to say it is that he was as famous outside the chess world for being bratty as he was for being a champion player (sort of like John McEnroe years later). That said, I think if this is "about" something (and I'm not sure it is) - it's more likely Watergate, with Nixon clearly "losing" at this point, but refusing to budge (which I would say is indicated by the dog's crossed arms).
So I don't know for sure, but I would guess that it's seeing Watergate through the FIscher/Spassky lens - it's not a comparison that holds up if you look at it too deeply though, since those who had cornered Nixon wouldn't be seen as bratty. As zamboni notes, the New Yorker covers weren't know for being deep and philosophical.
posted by FencingGal at 11:32 AM on February 12, 2019

It may be relevant that Richard Nixon had a dog named Checkers, a spaniel who looked not unlike the dog in the cartoon. The cat also looks like a caricature of someone, but it's hard to say exactly.

In 1974, SALT was due to expire in 1977 and attempts at renegotiation with the Russians had stalled. The Vladivostok Summit which resulted in SALT II would be held that November. I wonder if the cartoon might be alluding to that.
posted by Pallas Athena at 11:36 AM on February 12, 2019

Isn't New Yorker covers being topical at all fairly new? I don't know that they were never topical in the past, but before the last decade or two, they were usually just art. Sometimes comic, but rarely newsy.
posted by LizardBreath at 11:37 AM on February 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

> Isn't New Yorker covers being topical at all fairly new? I don't know that they were never topical in the past, but before the last decade or two, they were usually just art. Sometimes comic, but rarely newsy.

I've read several articles that assert this, but they all seem to do a lot of cherry-picking and contradiction. It's a post-9/11 trend. No, wait, it's a shift since the 1990s. Except for numerous earlier examples of sharp political cartoons on national issues, and the frequency of covers referencing NYC-specific cultural commentary, going back to the founding of the magazine. [In particular, I'm thinking of this opinion piece masquerading as a survey article from Artspace that contains numerous errors and fallacies.] Meanwhile, while the editorial direction of the magazine overall has cautiously evolved over the years and under different editors-in-chief, the tone has always remained a bit (or a lot) more prudish than what is typical across the rest of the industry.

So, it's easy to see a trend of greater political aggressiveness in current covers and view the past as being mostly just pretty or lightly comic covers, but this is at least partially confirmation bias because a) we're catching the contemporary references and have the context to see when the claws are sharp b) we're disregarding just how many gentler, non-satiric covers are published in between the attention-getting political cartoons. (You can get an idea of the variety, even without a subscription, by browsing the list of "cover story" articles which interview the cover artist.)

ALL OF THIS TO SAY that while The New Yorker has certainly ramped up their willingness to use cover illustrations as strong political commentary on topics of national interest, topical covers have always been fairly commonplace.

Also I agree that this cover is intended to be a Fischer/Spassky + Nixon mashup and that the intended political commentary may not be a super-specific message.
posted by desuetude at 1:59 PM on February 12, 2019 [2 favorites]

I think the cat actual represents then-Soviet premier secretary Brezhnev. This issue came out just before Nixon made a visit to Moscow for a summit that resulted in the signing of the Threshold Test Ban Treaty.

It would not surprise me to learn that, leading up to that summit, the New Yorker assumed Brezhnev was eating Nixon's lunch, diplomacy-wise.
posted by hanov3r at 2:56 PM on February 12, 2019 [1 favorite]

Cats vs. dogs is a very long-standing theme at the New Yorker.
posted by beagle at 3:10 PM on February 12, 2019

I think the cat actual represents then-Soviet premier secretary Brezhnev.

I had to do a GIS because I had forgotten what Brezhnev looked like, and holy crud! That is the most Brezhnev-looking cat I've ever seen.

And the dog does seem to have the hunched-over posture with which Nixon is often depicted.
posted by The Underpants Monster at 3:47 PM on February 12, 2019

A subscriber might be able to access the issue and read in the contents page the title of the cover, at least. That often un-perplexes ambiguous New Yorker covers for me.
posted by Chitownfats at 7:02 PM on February 12, 2019

I checked the New Yorker archive, and there's no title given for the piece. Perhaps they hadn't started giving titles at that point.
posted by Chrysostom at 8:05 PM on February 13, 2019