Life — December 29, 1921 — page 7: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

# Analysis of "A Completely Brand New Year" (Life Magazine, 1922) This satirical piece features a dialogue between Harris Fishbein and Max Blintz discussing New Year's Eve 1921 celebrations. The main cartoon depicts a chaotic party scene labeled "1922," showing revelers in festive disarray. The satire targets the extravagance of high-society New Year's parties. Fishbein and Blintz debate whether such celebrations constitute genuine change or merely cyclical excess. They reference specific luxuries (imported Muenchener beer, highballs, "Deutscheland Ueber Alles") to mock wealthy revelers' pretensions. The joke hinges on the irony that despite the passage of time and symbolic "brand new year," nothing fundamentally changes—the same people engage in identical behaviors annually. The cartoon's wild imagery emphasizes the chaos and predictability of elite celebration culture during the Jazz Age.