Us and Them: What the British Think of The Americans; What The Americans Think of The British

This small book contains British cartoonist Paul Davis's sketches of random Britons and Americans that he met on the street, along with their (equally random) responses to his question "What do you think of the Americans/British?"

I had never heard of Paul Davis before perusing Us & Them, hardly surprising given that my knowledge of comics and graphic art is so limited, and this book certainly doesn't inspire me to discover more. While I find the premise appealing in the abstract, the execution just doesn't live up to my expectations.

The illustrations themselves were crude and unappealing, looking like nothing so much as a grade schooler's self-indulgent scribbling. As someone who is frequently drawn to the beautiful ugliness of the show more grotesque and the irregular (as witnessed by my love of the incomparable Gertrude Degenhardt), I do not require that art be "pretty." But if it lacks the power to move me, and displays no technical skill whatsoever, as is the case here, I fail to see the point of looking at it.

The responses that Davis recorded from his subjects were no more rewarding than his drawings, being neither especially funny nor particularly penetrating. The stereotypes of the oblivious American, ignorant of the wider world, and the judgmental Briton, wrapped in an impenetrable cloak of assumed superiority, are here for the browsing. We're more alike than we think, apparently, at least when it comes to lazy thinking and shallow analysis... but I didn't need to read Us & Them to discover that. show less