Kari Suomalainen

-Kuinka toiset jaksaa ja viitsii?
-Why do they bother? Where do they find the energy?
[The paper reads: "Massacre At Algeria" and "Indonesia Mobilizes"]

Kari Suomalainen (1920-1999) was a political cartoonist for the prestigious Helsingin Sanomat 1950-1991. He affected very strongly on the way different political parties were seen in Finland, and was an important opinion former.
Soviet Union tried to silence him several times as he poked on politically raw things.

His humour was based in stereotypes and making what seemed high and mighty into something small and ordinary; showing president Kekkonen (usually deciphered as a demi-god) as a normal (if demanding) man, the parties as avatars instead of people who got changed every four years and observing news through a small and old-fashioned village somewhere far from everywhere. Local news from Helsinki were often observed by two "men of the streets", who had been unable to fit back into civilian life after Continuation War, and had so become urban tramps. Sometimes he inserted himself into the commentary, as a small black wearing man wearing a ridiculous hat.

He continued on the paper long after his retirement age, and quit only after being forced to do so after several pictures that were too far out of line with paper's policy.
After the fall of the Soviet Union, when Finland was starting a new era in it's history without pressure from East, Kari critized very strongly on the decision to open doors to immigrants and war refugees, Somalis in particular (he drew them in a fashion that left little doubt of his opinions concerning blacks in general and Somalis in particular).

Kari continued publishing his pictures in local papers, but he was getting old which showed in his hand and in the jokes; the pictures weren't as funny as they used to. His views on subjects got more old-fashioned, to the point of bigotry. The avatars to which he based his humour on started to look old-fashioned, even antic (the tramps, the village stuck in the rural -40s). Those he tried to update ended up looking cluttered and forced (the political parties).

Kari's moral stance was firmly set on the early 50s, which shows ever more unfavorably as the decades went by. From there, he saw the country chance from a war-wrecked nation with GDP of average Third World country into one of the richest in the world.

-More important than riches is the quality of life, clean air, unpolluted water and beautiful scenery.
-If it's all right, I'll take that in money.




-You can no longer travel safely in this city.




-Hey guys, who was the one who first proposed consumer-protection law which says that bad promises are punishable by law?
[From left: Vennamo [?] who proposed the law and then the parties; Social Democrats, Rural Party (later Centre-Party, later Finnish Centre), Communists (later Left Alliance), Liberal Democrats (later dead), Swedish Party, Coalition (moderate right) and a cop carrying a box marked "Election promises". The size of the parties is relative to their (historical, exgenerated) power in the parliament. ]

I own several collections of Kari's work. Half the fun in them is seeing how the seeds of today (like the Green Party) slowly enter into the picture and how Kari tries to make fun of them, sometimes good naturedly, but often grumpily. And then the retrospect fun on his argument about "modern music" on 60s; Bach is still as popular now as he was centuries ago, but who will remember Beatles in the 1990s?

But after all is said and done, Kari was a person who was a master of his craft. After him, Helsingin Sanomat has been unable to secure a person to fill his place whose work is worth reading.