Judge — January 22, 1921 — page 10: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# "The Sensitive Gentleman at the Movies" This is a sequential comic strip satirizing a prudish moviegoer reacting to newsreel footage of different world events. The man (likely representing Victorian sensibilities) becomes increasingly distressed by what he witnesses: 1. **Lenin and Trotsky dancing** in Soviet Russia 2. **Scantily-clad Venice bathing girls** in California 3. **Lloyd George and Aileen Riggin diving** in London (Riggin was a famous American Olympic swimmer) 4. **An Amazon hunter encountering a giant bacterium** The repeated "TCK" sound effects indicate his shocked tutting/disapproval. The joke satirizes how certain Americans viewed both Communist Russia and modern leisure activities (women in swimwear, diving) as equally scandalous and un-genteel. The absurd inclusion of the bacterium encounter suggests the comedian's exasperation with such prudishness—even a preposterous scientific scenario gets the same disapproving reaction.