Judge — January 13, 1923 — page 16: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This page promotes a Czechoslovak play by the Kapek brothers using insect characters as social satire. The production features actor Robert Edeson as "the Vagrant" alongside dancing moths and various insect characters representing human types. The satire is explicit: insects symbolize different social classes and archetypes—"the social butterfly, the parasitic Bolshevik, the cloak and suit-making beetle, the bohemian cricket." The Bolshevik reference dates this to the post-1917 Red Scare era when American publications frequently portrayed communists as dangerous outsiders. The final joke suggests the play's power: a businessman who watches it will find it difficult to look a beetle in the eye afterward—implying the production successfully makes audiences recognize their own shallow materialism and social pretension reflected in these insect metaphors. It's sophisticated theatrical satire attacking both capitalism and Bolshevism through allegory.