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Cartoonist König: "Without self-irony I would be with a psychiatrist"
Photo: Marcus Simaitis
SPIEGEL:
Herr König, who can laugh at whom?
König:
Everyone should laugh at everyone, including themselves. I am suspicious of anyone who forbids them.
SPIEGEL:
Do you have no bite inhibitions on certain topics?
To person
Ralf König,
60, once made the gay lifestyle fit for the mainstream with bestsellers "The Moving Man".
The book was filmed with Til Schweiger.
In the nineties, the Bavarian State Youth Welfare Office wanted the king's book "Bullenklöten!"
Put on the index, the accusation: socio-ethical disorientation through a "world of thoughts centered on sexual pleasure".
In the noughties, König took on Islamists: The cover of "Jinn Jinn" showed a gay man in pink sandals stepping on a Muslim's beard.
König:
No, no inhibitions, then I could give up drawing comics.
I know that the vast majority of my readers are gifted with humor.
And I have a gut feeling for what works and what doesn't.
What doesn't work, I probably don't even think of.
SPIEGEL:
Queer feminist activists saw things differently last year.
They accused you of some of your character representations being racist, transphobic, hostile to fat.
König:
I accept when people get upset because they see or want to see something that I didn't mean at all.
To be considerate would be to put the pen aside.
If I have the impression that the outraged hardly know who I am and what I stand for, namely that everyone should be who they are, with all quirks and sexual preferences, as long as they don't harm anyone, I don't find the criticism either very well founded.
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