The 23 times slams champion Serena Williams has been the cynosure of all eyes in the recent times. Williams had a heated argument with the chair umpire Carlos Ramos in the final of the US Open on Saturday. Meanwhile, a cartoon made by Mark Knight for the Australia media, Herald is doing the rounds.
Knight has made a cartoon in which Serena Williams is having a tantrum over the point. On the other hand, the chair umpire is telling Naomi Osaka, “Can you please let her win”. Thus, the cartoonist was criticised all over the world by famous personalities. In fact, he was also lamented by famous Harry Potter writer J.K Rowling.
Experts hit out at Mark Knight.
On the other hand, Mark Knight is upset by the controversy and believes people are making up the stuff.
“I’m upset that people are offended, but I’m not going to take the cartoon down,” he said. “I can’t undraw the cartoon. I think people have just misinterpreted. Maybe there’s a different understanding of cartooning in Australia to America … It was a cartoon based on her tantrum on the day and that’s all it was,” he went on to add while speaking to the ABC.
Knight said that he receiving an unfair criticism from the fans.
“I tried to reply to these people but they just don’t listen,” he said. “On any given day you are a hero and on any given day you are a pariah. And you just have to live with it.”
Famous British author J.K Rowling tweeted, “Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop.”
This is how the big names reacted to the cartoonist.
The saddest part about Mark Knight’s cartoon depiction of Serena Williams and Naomi Osaka, is that he believes that he has done nothing wrong and that everyone is overreacting and does not understand the art of caricature. Racist bigotry at its finest.
— NUFF (@nuffsaidny) September 10, 2018
https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/1039182400201351173
Well done on reducing one of the greatest sportswomen alive to racist and sexist tropes and turning a second great sportswoman into a faceless prop. https://t.co/YOxVMuTXEC
— J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) September 10, 2018
https://twitter.com/Knightcartoons/status/1039056385462349825
So unfortunate that this is your response; and without consideration for the painful historical context of such imagery and how it can support biases and racism today. Why wouldn’t a human being care about that?
— Be A King (@BerniceKing) September 11, 2018