Nick Bougas (born 1955) is an American documentary film director, illustrator and record producer. As a cartoonist, he has used the pen name A. Wyatt Mann to produce racist, antisemitic,
antifeminist
Antifeminism, also spelled anti-feminism, is opposition to some or all forms of feminism. In the late 19th century and early 20th century, antifeminists opposed particular policy proposals for women's rights, such as the right to vote, educat ...
and
homophobic
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, hatred or antipathy, m ...
cartoons.
Career
Bougas directed the
mondo film
Mondo films are a subgenre of exploitation films and documentary films. Many mondo films are made in a way to resemble a pseudo-documentary and usually depicting sensational topics, scenes, or situations. Common traits of mondo films include p ...
Church of Satan
The Church of Satan is a religious organization dedicated to the religion of LaVeyan Satanism as codified in '' The Satanic Bible''. The Church of Satan was established at the Black House in San Francisco, California, on Walpurgisnacht, A ...
founder Anton LaVey. The film was followed by ''Death Scenes 2'' in 1992, and ''Death Scenes 3'' in 1993.
In 1993, he directed the documentary '' Speak of the Devil: The Canon of Anton LaVey'', a profile of LaVey.
Bougas has directed several other films, such as the 1994 documentary '' The Goddess Bunny'', about disabled transgender
tap dancing
Tap dance is a form of dance characterized by using the sounds of tap shoes striking the floor as a form of percussion. Two major variations on tap dance exist: rhythm (jazz) tap and Broadway tap. Broadway tap focuses on dance; it is widely perfo ...
artist Sandie Crisp.
In 1998, Bougas released the album ''Celebrities... At Their Worst!'', a collection of comedic audio blunders by such celebrities as
Elvis Presley
Elvis Aaron Presley (January 8, 1935 – August 16, 1977), or simply Elvis, was an American singer and actor. Dubbed the "Honorific nicknames in popular music, King of Rock and Roll", he is regarded as Cultural impact of Elvis Presley, one ...
,
Casey Kasem
Kemal Amin "Casey" Kasem (April 27, 1932 – June 15, 2014) was an American disc jockey, actor, and radio personality, who created and hosted several radio countdown programs, notably ''American Top 40''. He was the first actor to voice No ...
,
Paul Anka
Paul Albert Anka (born July 30, 1941) is a Canadian-American singer, songwriter and actor. He is best known for his signature hit songs including " Diana", " Lonely Boy", " Put Your Head on My Shoulder", and "(You're) Having My Baby". Anka also ...
, and John Wayne.
As an illustrator, Bougas has worked with writer and publisher Jim Goad on such publications as ''
Answer Me!
''Answer Me!'' (typically rendered ''ANSWER Me!'') was a magazine edited by Jim Goad and Debbie Goad and published between 1991 and 1994. It focused on the social pathologies of interest to the Los Angeles–based couple.
''Answer Me!'' also f ...
''
A. Wyatt Mann
According to a 2015 '' BuzzFeed News'' report, Bougas used the pseudonym "A. Wyatt Mann", (phonetically: 'a white man') to produce overtly racist and antisemitic cartoons in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Besides black people and
Jews
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
, his cartoons occasionally targeted other minorities, including
gay people
This is a confirmed referenced overview list of notable gay, lesbian or bisexual people, who have either been open about their sexuality or for which reliable sources exist. The number of notables in the list is likely to be several times highe ...
and
feminists
Feminism is a range of socio-political movements and ideologies that aim to define and establish the political, economic, personal, and social equality of the sexes. Feminism incorporates the position that society prioritizes the male poi ...
. Many of them were published at the time by
white supremacist
White supremacy or white supremacism is the belief that white people are superior to those of other races and thus should dominate them. The belief favors the maintenance and defense of any power and privilege held by white people. White s ...
Tom Metzger
Thomas Linton Metzger (April 9, 1938 – November 4, 2020) was an American white supremacist, neo-Nazi skinhead leader and Klansman. He founded White Aryan Resistance (WAR), a neo-nazi organization, in 1983. He was a Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux ...
Adam Parfrey
Adam Parfrey (April 12, 1957 – May 10, 2018) was an American journalist, editor, and the publisher of Feral House books, whose work in all three capacities frequently centered on unusual, extreme, or "forbidden" areas of knowledge. A 2010 '' S ...
. Bougas has never publicly confirmed his authorship; however, his identity as Mann was confirmed by multiple people who worked with him at the time, and in captions of photos taken at various events.
The Mann cartoons have been widely reused as hateful
memes
A meme ( ) is an idea, behavior, or style that spreads by means of imitation from person to person within a culture and often carries symbolic meaning representing a particular phenomenon or theme. A meme acts as a unit for carrying cultural i ...
by white supremacists, various internet trolls, and later, the alt-right. One cartoon in particular, a stereotypical caricature of a Jewish person referred to as the "
Happy Merchant
The Happy Merchant is a common name for an image that depicts an Anti-Jewish caricature of a Jewish man. The Happy Merchant is common on imageboards such as 4chan or Reddit where it is frequently used in a hateful or disparaging context.
Hist ...
", became one of the most popular antisemitic images on the internet. It has been reused, modified and parodied multiple times, eventually becoming part of the visual language of websites such as
4chan
4chan is an anonymous English-language imageboard website. Launched by Christopher "moot" Poole in October 2003, the site hosts boards dedicated to a wide variety of topics, from anime and manga to video games, cooking, weapons, television, ...
.
Bougas' work as Mann has frequently been combined by Internet trolls with cartoons by political cartoonist
Discogs
Discogs (short for discographies) is a database of information about audio recordings, including commercial releases, promotional releases, and bootleg or off-label releases. While the site was originally created with a goal of becoming the ...