{"id":13505,"date":"2013-04-15T11:46:24","date_gmt":"2013-04-15T10:46:24","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.badreputation.org.uk\/?p=13505"},"modified":"2013-04-15T11:46:50","modified_gmt":"2013-04-15T10:46:50","slug":"images-of-an-iron-lady","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/badreputation.org.uk\/2013\/04\/15\/images-of-an-iron-lady\/","title":{"rendered":"Images of an Iron Lady"},"content":{"rendered":"

I can’t write a political or historical retrospective on Thatcher, on her life or her works. If I did, it might come out like\u00a0the Russell Brand piece<\/a>, only a bit more Northern, a bit more reflective on her impact on feminism.<\/p>\n

I’ve read and seen far too much already over the past few days, from endless eulogies in the papers through to angry words on the street and in the House of Commons.\u00a0The truth is I am genuinely shaken by it. Like the Queen Mother, she was one of those figures we all suspected might go on forever, and her shadow was long. With it gone, one of the touchpoints for my personal politics is gone.<\/p>\n

I started to think about how I might even begin to parse what has happened: I’m not sad, but I’ll admit I didn’t crack open the champagne personally; I merely drank someone else’s.So in a similar vein, I wanted to write not about her, but about representations of her.<\/p>\n

Maggie’s Farm<\/h2>\n

\"Cover<\/a><\/p>\n

I’m going to start with one of my favourite political cartoonists. Alongside his later portrayal of her puppeteering Tony Blair, comic artist\u00a0Steve Bell<\/a>\u00a0also focuses on her controlling authority. He wrote a series called Maggie’s Farm<\/strong> which depicted her\u00a0as completely insane – with trademark wonky eye and multiple exclamation points in her speech.<\/p>\n

The comics, which reference Dylan’s song of the same title (which was in itself used as a protest song against Thatcher) were\u00a0originally published in Time Out<\/strong> from 1979, and, to my eye, probably heavily influenced later depictions.<\/p>\n

Spitting Image<\/h2>\n

\"Spitting<\/a><\/p>\n

The first time I saw Spitting Image<\/strong> I was hooked, probably helped by the fact my parents told me I wasn’t allowed to watch it, and to this day I regret that it has gone off the air. Perhaps it’s because no satire is strong enough to be distinguished from the ridiculous facts of today’s government? Anyway, back to Thatcher.<\/p>\n

The depiction of her was grotesque, but no more so than that of any other puppet on the show. That said, it was the nature<\/em> of the grotesque that interested me.<\/p>\n