Judge, 1925-02-07 · page 28 of 36
Judge — February 7, 1925 — page 28: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page is primarily **advertising and light commentary**, not political satire. The dominant content includes: **The Cartoons/Images:** - Left: A cheerful caricature promoting a mail-order cartooning course ($100/week earnings promised) - Right: Four stylized female figures labeled "At the Artists' Ball" - prize winners for costume originality, drawn in the period's fashion-illustration style **The Editorial Content:** A humorous essay titled "When I Get Started on Opera" mocks opera's pretentiousness and inaccessibility to ordinary audiences. The author quotes a book critiquing opera's overwrought conventions—particularly the absurdity of an opera character saying "My father! breathes Aida, for the enlightenment of the audience only." The piece satirizes how wealthy Metropolitan Opera patrons cope by retreating to private boxes with comfortable furniture, essentially ignoring the performance itself. **The Point:** This is social satire targeting elitist opera culture and advertising-driven self-improvement schemes, typical of Judge's early 20th-century humor targeting middle-class aspirations and cultural pretension.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
$100 a Week in this Fascinating Business EARS big money as of were Easy to Learn CARTOONING at home in Spare Time Regardless of how little cartooning now position i ness. This the simplest f method began t they were hal easy hours. freed foss, and $3,000 to $15,000 a year work that is play! Send for FREE BOOK is remarkable 1 Se: hington Schoo! WASHINGTON SCHOOL OF CARTOONING Room 482C, 1113-15th St... N. W., Washington, D. C. Please send me, without obligation, your Free Bc on Cartooning and full details of your home study meth of teaching Cartooning Name (Print Name Plainly) Address City State. (it under 16, please give age...) AT THE ARTIS’ BALL The four prize winners for originality of costume. When I Get Started on Opera— (Continued from page 12) understood all evening was Samson's pulling the props out from under the unty courthouse. The author of the book has a sense of humor. which is a rare thing among opera enthusiasts, and. she meets us civilians on our own ground. In commenting on the courthouse incident I have just mentioned, she says: “To us it seems quite a perilous occasion for the cast, but one is re- assured quite soon if one waits to applaud, for the singers will bow without any casualties among the ranks.” Reassured is hardly the word, either. Disappointed, is what I would have written. \ further evidence of the author's humane point of view is to be found on page 7. In speaking of Aida, she says s a slight concession to the libretto, she usually employs a cocoa-colored face powder. Happily the days of long brown arm tights have departed, lo! these many years, from popular usage among the prin- cipals, but one may in a later act = - —— YS FREE TRIAL ‘on instrument of clean or get ont of order. pean ere MONEY BACK IF NOT SATISFIED Writes with ink free and easy as a lead pencil. withe $ Out a isa, ship or blur. Ite tte of igh actoalylesprones Yoo'll never ones fountes in pon once 900 try ai 3 complica Senne s per = SEND NO MONEY. SELF FILLER GREATEST VALUE EVER OFFERED un iy cniform flow hand writing. soil hands, "t blot, eerateh, leak, or 0! Makes 3 or 4 Carbon Copies with Srigtoal tot ‘Aarone ca teeraes. behold them in all their glory upon the limbs of the chorus ladies when impersonating the Ethiopian prison- ers. This is talking about opera to us in our own language, and opera mis- sionaries would gain many more con- verts from our ranks if they would thus show that they love and under- stand us and were not out merely to sav e our souls. Again quoting from the book **My father! breathes Alda, for the enlightenment of the audience only.” This heterodox admission of the funny side of opera is indeed first aid to the opera goer, the first aid of this exact sort that he has ever had. The book is well named. When we saw “Samson and Delilah” we sat in one of the front boxes in’ the circle. It is in these boxes that the chief supporters of the Metropolitan Opera House sit and suffer. And I discovered their solution for grand opera. Their solution is exactly that which L have suggested whenever [ have been asked to deliver my talk on “Grand Opera and Its Antidotes.” They just listen to the good parts of it. Back of each of these boxes is a little private room. These rooms are each furnished by the sub- scribers. They have mfortable chairs, couches, and probably poker outfits, books, ether sets, and, for all I know, kitchenettes and baths. (If one of the millionaires hit sud- den reverses and had nothing left but his Metropolitan season tickets, he could do light housekeeping in one of these rooms and get through the winter quite comfortably. If you (Continued on page 31) diamond horseshoe comicbooks.com