“The Brains” is one of Thomas Nast’s most well-known political cartoons. Thomas Nast is known as the Father of the American political cartoon. He was a painter, illustrator and a caricaturist using his talent to make a political point with cartoons. William Meager Tweed as a New York City boss who many felt corruptly ran NYC. Nast used caricature as a purposeful distortion or exaggeration of physical characteristics. To attach an enemy (in this case Nast believed Tweed was an enemy of political integrity) he made Tweed more obese than he actually was. He also dehumanized Tweed by replacing his head with a bag of money. The symbol of a bag of money in place of a head was genius on Nast’s part. The heavy bag of money, adorned with a singular $ (dollar sign) means 1.) money was all Tweed cared and thought about. 2.) Money dominated his brain-his thinking. 3. Attaining money was Tweed’s true identity. Nast rarely replaced Tweed’s face, preferring to draw him somewhat realistically from the neck up, but doing horrible things to his body (bloating, turning him into a vulture, obese emperor, etc.) He wanted the public to know what this man looked like. And in fact, when Tweed tried to escape prosecution by fleeing to Spain, he was recognized from the cartoons Nast drew and was returned to U.S. justice. So this cartoon is rare in the fact that Tweed’s face is not in the photo, yet everyone who read Harper’s Weekly magazine, knew exactly who the figure was. Nast was relentless in ridiculing Tweed, drawing over 200 images of Tweed (none of them flattering) and resulted in Tweed’s cohorts (known as “The Ring”) trying to bribe Nast to stop drawing the pictures. For more information visit my website www.thomasnastcartoons.com
