188. Today in 1920s Turkey: 11 February 1926 (What Would Adam and Eve Think?)
Türkçe:
Dans Salonu Kapısında Adem ile Havva
Adem: Bak Havva, bizim zamanımızdaki elbise modası hala değişmemiş!
English:
Adam and Eve at the Doors of a Dance Hall
Adam: Look Eve, the dress fashions from our times have still not changed!
Comments:
This cartoon satirizes several cultural practices from 1920s Turkish “modern” life. Let’s see how text and image work together to make this happen:
Visually, we are greeted with a scene of two nudes, a male and a female, peering in on a modern dance hall to watch contemporary couples dance. The private parts of the nudes are tactfully concealed by the artist, Ramiz, who has rendered the man with his hands at his crotch and the woman with her long locks obscuring her own modesty.
If the nudity of the couple in the foreground is not indicator enough, the text above the cartoon affirms their identity as “Adam and Eve.” Notably, the two people show very different responses to the scene of dancing unfolding before them. Here, a wide-eyed Adam observes the many couples dancing with amazement and interest; while Eve, ashamed by the whole display, averts her gaze. The couples in the dance hall are all wearing form-fitted clothes as they dance hip-to-hip and chest-to-chest.
Finally, the text below delineates exactly what Adam (and Eve) find shocking about this scene. In fact, it is not the co-ed dance scene that they find surprising, but the style of clothes worn by these “moderns.” Indeed, herein lies the satire of the cartoon: Adam, in fact, perceives these people as being just like himself: nude. Here, he announces to Eve that thousands of years later, people are still nude! This, of course, is commentary on the tightness of the men’s clothes as well as the revealing nature of the women’s dresses (low-cut back, knee-high skirts). In this way, through exaggeration and reduction, the cartoon equates modern fashions with nudity. By comparing these fashions to those of Adam and Eve’s time, the cartoon flips modernity on its head and instead, equates it to civilizational primitivism. As such, the time-traveling duo becomes a trope through which to view the arbitrariness and meaninglessness of modernity’s most visible sign: fashion.
