Judge, 1927-10-22 · page 10 of 36
Judge — October 22, 1927 — page 10: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
# "The Yellow Peril" — Judge Magazine Satire This article satirizes "Celebritis"—a fictional disease representing the obsessive public hunger for celebrity gossip and the celebrities' own narcissism. The title ironically invokes "Yellow Peril," a racist trope about Asian threat, to mock American anxieties being redirected toward frivolous celebrity culture instead. The satire targets: - **Actors** as "incurable" because they're inherently narcissistic - **Politicians** requiring "lockjaw serum" (enforced silence) - **New York, Washington, and Hollywood** as infection centers - The public's complicity: fans deliberately seeking the "disease" by reading gossip columns and attending theater lobbies The cartoon above (captioned "Barber—Ah! Been trying to shave yourself, Mr. Gillette?") appears unrelated—a simple joke about shaving mishaps. The piece mocks both celebrity culture's vapidity and Americans' willing participation in it, presented as medical pathology.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
JUDGE The Yellow Peril An Article by Doctor Al Gonquin, D.D.S., Ph.D. A peculiar disease is sweeping these United States and is threatening to en- gulf us in a national plague. It is called Celebritis, and while not at all serious, is very painful for those people in close proximity to the sufferer. The symptoms are a breaking out into print followed by a slight dizzy feel- ing and swelling of the head. Its course usually runs anywhere from a month to a year. In some cases the patient has been known to recover in a week. Many people get only slight nd a great number imagine they are afflicted when they haven't it at all. Doctor Aloysus P. Slob, the famous psychoanalyst, in his treatise on Celeb- ritis, states as follows: “Celebritis is in reality an offshoot of the drug habit, as the attendant dizzy feeling which fol- lows the first attack is so pleasant that y people deliberately try to con- t the dise: some even going so far as to commit murder, marry eral times, jump off bridges, swim channels, lose jewelry and other such naive acts.” Certain localities seem to be infested IE Wacker — Hey, Al, what do you see? Av Smitu— st side, West side, all around the town! more than others with the germ, as, for example, New York, Washington and Hollywood. The seriousness of the disease also depends a great deal on the type of person afflicted. Actors are considered incurable, as they are born with the germ. The following table lists a few cures that have proved effective. 1, If the patient is of the artistic, modernistic type, cut his hair and give him a good bath every day for at least a week, 2. Let nature its course. 3. If the sufferer is a professional athlete, introduce him to another athlete who is just a little bit better. He will recover very quickly. 4. In cases of politicians the only cure that has ever worked is to inject the patient with lockj 5. In many localities, band themselves together and prolong y serum, some sufferers the di interminably by meeting at luncheons, or on the pages of magazines, and in theater lobbies, where they go through a curious rite of pping each other on the back. There is absolutely no cure for cases such these, except by the lockjaw method. —Anne Tuoney comicbooks.com