Life — December 15, 1927 — page 26: what you’re looking at

What you’re looking at

This comic strip satirizes auction house theatrics through a ventriloquist's performance. A showman auctioneer uses a ventriloquist dummy to artificially inflate bidding on increasingly absurd items: a nude statue, a bust, a cocktail shaker, and an Egyptian mummy case. Each time he presents an item, audience members' bids escalate ("One thousand!"), driven by the dummy's enthusiastic responses and the auctioneer's exaggerated sales patter. The joke mocks both auction house hype and bidders' susceptibility to manufactured excitement—the dummy's participation suggests the bidding is largely theatrical performance rather than genuine competitive interest. It's satire on commercial manipulation and crowd psychology in the pre-auction era.