Wife Beater's License
From Doug Pappas' Roadsidephotos:
From the 1940s through the 1960s, every tourist trap had a rack of postcards. Every postcard rack displayed views of the local attractions and a selection of comic cards. Some of those comic cards seem to have come from another world.
In the world of comic postcards, all women start as man-crazy airheads, then become either stern, overweight battle-axe wives or desperate "old maids." Southerners are hillbillies with outhouses and moonshine stills; after their annual bath, they mate with their kinfolk. African-Americans are shuffling, bug-eyed, thick-lipped caricatures. Someone could write a dissertation, or at least a master's thesis, about the audience to which these cards were marketed.
But not me. I'll just present a sample of the way women, Southerners and blacks were depicted in comic postcards. (I know many of these images are offensive. That's why they're here.) I've also assembled a few military postcards from World War II, and some British comic postcards with a different sensibility. Enjoy!
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