Colonel Blimp

{{short description|British cartoon character by cartoonist David Low}}

{{About|the cartoon character|the Powell-Pressburger film|The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp|other uses|Colonel Blimp (disambiguation)}}

File:Colonel Blimp cartoon.png

Colonel Blimp is a British cartoon character by cartoonist David Low. It was first drawn for Lord Beaverbrook's London Evening Standard in April 1934.{{cite web | url=https://research.kent.ac.uk/british-cartoon-archive/record/david-low/ | title=David Low }} Blimp is pompous, irascible, jingoistic, and stereotypically British. He is identifiable by his walrus moustache and the interjection "Gad, Sir!"

Low claimed that he developed the character after overhearing two military men in a Victorian-style Turkish bath declare that cavalry officers should be entitled to wear their spurs inside tanks.{{cite news| url=http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/1974819.stm | work=BBC News | title= Century's 'best cartoonist' on show | date= 8 May 2002 | author = Stone-Lee, Ollie | accessdate = 2010-03-28}} The character was named after the non-rigid airship and barrage balloon, which were known as blimps.

Character

Blimp issues proclamations from the bath, wrapped in his towel and brandishing some mundane weapon to emphasize his passion on some issue of current affairs. Red-faced with rage and emotion, he often makes confused pronouncements.{{Citation | publisher = Cartoons | place = UK | title = David Low biography | url = https://www.cartoons.ac.uk/cartoonist-biographies/k-l/DavidLow.html}}. Blimp's phrasing often includes direct contradiction, as though upon starting the sentence he did not know how the sentence was to end. His initial words were always a part of an emotional catchphrase. For instance: "Gad, Sir! Mr Lansbury is right. The League of Nations should insist on peace — except of course in the case of war.", or: "Gad, Sir! Lord Bunk is right. The government is marching over the edge of an abyss, and the nation must march solidly behind them." Blimp is usually depicted speaking to a cartoon version of David Low, the cartoon's creator, and Blimp's comments are not infrequently directed at the opinions of Lord Beaverbrook, the owner of the newspaper in which the cartoon appeared.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}{{cite web |last=Crouch |first=Tom |date=5 February 2012 |title=Blimp! |url=https://airandspace.si.edu/stories/editorial/blimp |access-date=7 December 2023 |website=National Air And Space Museum}}

Blimp was a satire on the reactionary opinions of the British establishment of the 1930s and 1940s. The cartoon was intended to criticise attitudes of isolationism, impatience with the concerns of common people, and a lack of enthusiasm for democracy. These were attitudes which Low, a New Zealander, considered as being common in British politics. Although Low described his character Blimp as "a symbol of stupidity", he lessened the insult to the British upper class by adding that "stupid people are quite nice".'The new pictures'. Time. (2 April 1945)

Legacy

The character has earned a legacy as a clichéd phrase – very reactionary opinions are characterised as "Colonel Blimp" statements.[https://web.archive.org/web/20170114232119/https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/blimp blimp], Oxford Living Dictionaries. Retrieved 28 May 2019.

Brigadier General Frank Crozier referred to Colonel Blimp in his anti-war book "The Men I Killed" (1937)https://dn790006.ca.archive.org/0/items/dli.ernet.2372/2372-The%20Men%20I%20Killed.pdf.

George Orwell and Tom Wintringham made especially extensive use of the term "Blimps" to refer to this type of military officer, Orwell in his articles{{cite journal | last = Orwell | first = George | quote = The Home Guard is (…) an astonishing phenomenon, a sort of People's Army officered by Blimps. | title = London Letter | journal = Partisan Review | date = 1941-04-15}} and Wintringham in his books How to Reform the Army and People's War. In his 1941 essay "The Lion and the Unicorn", Orwell referred to two important sub-sections of the middle class, one of which was the military and imperialistic middle class, nicknamed the Blimps, and characterised by the "half-pay (i.e retired) colonel with his bull neck and diminutive brain". He added that they had been losing their vitality during the past thirty years, "writhing impotently under the changes that were happening".Orwell, Sonia and Angus, Ian (eds.) The Collected Essays, Journalism and Letters of George Orwell Volume 2: My Country Right or Left, (London, Penguin)

E. M. Forster used the term "Colonel Blimp" to describe British people who expressed disdain for Indian culture."Indian culture wouldn’t appeal to Colonel Blimp, I imagine, and indeed I can almost hear that estimable gentlemen saying, "Indian culture? Gad, sir, nothing but a few old curios."" E.M. Forster, BBC Radio Talk, 18 July 1943. Reprinted in P. N. Furbank (ed.), The BBC talks of E.M. Forster, 1929-1960 : a selected edition. University of Missouri Press, Columbia, 2008 {{ISBN|9780826218001}} (p. 232) Herbert Read also used the term to describe people who were strongly hostile to modern art."It is when caricature is carried to the pitch and organization of a composition in oils, or a piece of sculpture, then the people begin to revolt. "I call it disgusting!" fumed the particular Colonel Blimp who passed me on the staircase at a Rouault exhibition." Herbert Read, The Meaning of Art. London, Faber & Faber, 1951. (p.163) The history book Roads to Ruin: The Shocking History of Social Reform (1950) by E. S. Turner was ironically dedicated to "Colonel Blimp", and reprinted a Low cartoon of Blimp next to the dedication: Turner's book described traditionalist politicians who opposed humanitarian reforms as "Colonel Blimp figures".Alexander, J. A. "The Time Is Never Ripe (Review of Roads to Ruin)", The Herald, Melbourne, Saturday 27th Jan 1951 (pg. 10).

The term "Blimp" continues to be referenced from time to time. In a 1994 article published in The New York Review of Books, John Banville recalled a televised exchange between an elderly lady and Kingsley Amis as "an endearing moment, in which one glimpsed the warm and funny man that Amis used to be before he decided, some time in the 1960s, to turn himself into a literary Colonel Blimp".{{cite news|first=John|last=Banville|authorlink=John Banville|url=https://www.nybooks.com/articles/1994/06/09/a-real-funny-guy/|title=A Real Funny Guy|work=The New York Review of Books|date=9 June 1994|volume=41|issue=11}} In a 2006 book, historian Christopher Clark used the term "blimpish" to characterise the Prussian Field Marshal von Mollendorf (1724–1816), who distinguished himself as an officer in the Seven Years' War but whose conservatism and opposition to military reform were considered to have contributed to Prussia's defeat in the Battle of Jena in 1806.Christopher Clark, Iron Kingdom. The Rise and Downfall of Prussia, 1600–1947, London: Penguin, 2006, pp. 124–25 In his review of Garner's Modern American Usage, David Foster Wallace referred to the "Colonel Blimp's rage" of prescriptivist journalists like William Safire.{{cite magazine | last = Wallace | first = David Foster | quote = ...certain journalists whose bemused irony often masks a Colonel Blimp's rage | title = Tense Present: Democracy, English, and the Wars over Usage | magazine = Harper's Magazine | date = April 2001}}

The graphic novel series The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, which depicts numerous literary characters interacting with each other, includes Horatio Blimp as an overconfident major of the British army who commands the initial strike against the Martians of H. G. Wells' The War of the Worlds.{{citation needed|date=October 2016}}

Film

In 1943, Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger wrote, produced, and directed the motion picture The Life and Death of Colonel Blimp (1943). Filmed during wartime, the movie portrayed the life of an admirable British officer named Clive Candy. The story encouraged the audience to accept that although the officer was honorable, with time his opinions had become outdated, and that winning a modern war required irregular means. The British film featured Roger Livesey in the title role, Deborah Kerr, and Anton Walbrook. The "Blimp" character was not actually called "Blimp" other than in the title, nor did he die.