In the June 3, 2020, edition of the Sydney newspaper, The Daily Telegraph, Warren Brown's cartoon entitled “Recession” was published on the main editorial page (Fig. 7.1). The trope is Welcome in the New Year, but this midyear message is bleak. The central figure is an unkempt man in pajamas, slippers, and dressing gown, representing readers confined to their homes by lockdown orders required to combat the pandemic, or, like many others, recently thrown into unemployment by its effects. He opens his door, not to a new-born baby in a ribboned bassinette, but to a Scrooge-like figure, dressed as an undertaker, who carries a wreath with the insignia “Recession.” Resigned to his fate, the man admits the deathly messenger to his bleak house, which symbolizes not only the actual home of the average Australian but also the national economy. Both are already ravaged by several forces, each of them out of control. They come from a distance, but are intensely present, obliterating all signs of domesticity. In the background, the fires that raged across millions of acres of bush land throughout the early months of the year, despite the best efforts of the (mostly volunteer) Rural Fire Services. The spiky blobs of the coronavirus float everywhere. Meanwhile, a masked housewife spills her hoarded reams of toilet paper, the US President Donald J. Trump holds up a Bible, and a police officer beats a looter. “Come on in,” the man says despairingly, “It wouldn't be 2020 without you […]”

Some of these elements reflect the ideological orientation of the newspaper: The central figure is white, male, working-class, oppressed, and resentful; a looter rather than a black man or a protestor is shown battling the police officer. Others are specific to Australia: the raging bushfires, although much of California was in flames by June, so global warming in general is also evoked. Everything depicted is instantly recognizable as a visual signifier of the forces that were most powerfully shaping 2020 in many places throughout the world and in the imaginaries of many of its peoples.