Can’t believe this comic is always on point. It feels so modern with the situations it shows each time, and yet it’s 100+ years old.
To me, it’s a good reminder not to paint the past with too broad of a brush. People are people.
People who post these are being very selective. Some of them hold up, some of them not so much. Here’s a book:
The Outbursts of Everett True (1907)
Page 42 and 100 are good examples.
Some of them hold up, some of them not so much.
As does any work over time.
There’s, however, a difference in a depiction that was common at the time, versus outright racism. I mean, people still read about and rave over Lovecraft’s work and he was so racist that the other racists of his time used to tell him to chill.
You take the good with the bad in things from another time. Enjoy what you can in the good and learn from the bad.
Wild that there was a point in history you could get close enough to a zoo critter to hand feed (or harass) it. World really was a simpler place in those days.
A zoo used to be little more than animals in cages put on display for public viewing. The idea is a modernization of the menageries that used to be kept by nobility, and the first public zoos were just these menageries opened to the public:
Until the early 19th century, the function of the zoo was often to symbolize royal power, like King Louis XIV’s menagerie at Versailles. Major cities in Europe set up zoos in the 19th century, usually using London and Paris as models. The transition was made from princely menageries designed to entertain high society with strange novelties into public zoological gardens. (ref)
Depends on the animal. I know a decent zoo that has just simple waist-high walls around the porcupines and raccoon dogs for example.
They have space, but they can get pretty close. I guess a complete idiot with a cane could probably harass them, until someone stops them like “what the hell, asshole”. Or you know, until Everett True comes and causes permanent spine damage to them.
Obviously animals like bears, apes and big felines can’t get that close to people.
True to himself.
OO-OO-OOOCK!!!
Man’s getting railed (figuratively and literally)