nsfw tag just for good measure. I had shared this strip in the comments of a post a few weeks ago, so if it seems familiar, that’s probably why. Additional context: the flask looking thing in the 3rd panel is a Hungarian decanter, so I believe the joke is about their preference for alcohol.
As always, stay tuned here on !comicstrips@lemmy.world for a slow trickle out of Jucika comics, but if you want to find more, here’s a good post with a large collection that /u/JohnnyEnzyme@piefed.social posted last year: https://piefed.social/post/1258520.
You know, when I first started reading the strips, I got this idea in my head that Jucika was a decidedly clever, progressive comic, in which the tables were frequently turned on sexist behavior, with some misfires that I put down to the cultural divide, and simply that not every daily is going to be great.
Reading more of the strips (particularly the earlier ones) I came to realise that Pusztai himself often put the character in to situations where her clothes were practically falling off her, or where the comic was clearly designed for leering, horn-dog men, and didn’t offer any particular redemptive qualities at all. Of course, that kind of thing had been pretty common in comics that appeared in magazines with male readership, going back maybe to the 30’s and 40’s. At least, in the West. So I’m not quite sure about Hungary. So what’s my point with all that?
I guess it’s just my growing realisation that the character is more of a vehicle for Pusztai’s humor than it is an attempt at delivering a message, which is pretty much just SOP for newspaper comics, anyway. I’m a little disappointed in that, but then again, not everyone can be Walt Kelly(!) So, more than the strip being memorable for any particular message, it’s probably best-appreciated for the appealing design, the fairly clever gags, and the sheer attractiveness of the main character.
Incidentally, while I was browsing that fan-art collection the other day and came across the inevitable examples of people putting Jucika in to pure-sex scenarios and fantasies, I was kind of struck by how often they didn’t work for me. The idea being that she’s not really meant to be a sexual character per se, but more of a suggestive one that already offers bystanders and viewers a hell of an eyeful. Or something like that.
I’m not familiar with how womens rights developed in Hungary, but even from the Wikipedia page it says:
To me that’s a strong indication that the strips are supposed to be critiquing sexism, which means there is a message. Maybe Hungary was more progressive at the time, but in most of the world in the 1950s women had a rough time of things. Showing a strong female character who frequently outwits the men (and sometimes women) around her would definitely be seen by many in that time period as being pro-women/women’s rights.
Just some timelines to support my stance:
Edit: My main point being, just cause it doesn’t feel progressive today doesn’t mean it wasn’t back then.
It was actually the WP page itself that gave me the original impression that the strip was progressive and message-oriented. I think the key point being left out there is that it evidently grew that way over time. So in fact, there seems to be some white-washing going on.
The simplest explanation is probably that the writer(s) didn’t happen to catch the early and middle-stage strips, in which (as I was talking about above) Jucika’s clothes are frequently falling off her, with the usual point being that she’s little more than an object of ogling.
All that in fact makes a lot sense to me, in that it’s extremely common for comics to evolve over time, both in terms of art and style of humor, as the cartoonist better learns how to handle things.
Yeah, that wasn’t the issue for me at all. I give a lot of credit to Pusztai for doing what he could in that more sexist-time, behind The Iron Curtain. Also interesting is that it debuted a mere year after the Hungarian Revolution was launched, then crushed. Not hard to imagine that he played it ‘safe’ at the start, before drifting towards his later progressivism.
Yeah, I wouldn’t say there’s much of a message intended in these either, other than that she’s often relatable and sticks up for herself. A big part of the humor is that she’s ditsy and free-spirited, and there’s definitely a trend of “fan-service”, or titillation, or whatever you want to call it. I like the art, the jokes are good, and I largely appreciate it as a window into the past.
I haven’t delved into fan art myself, but I can imagine. Fan art on the internet always seems to go down that path…
I also like to think of her as quirky, quick-thinking and resourceful. I guess when the character is generally so likeable, we tend to want them to be sort of avatars of what we admire, I dunno…
Erotica is what gives one a boner, pornography is what they use to jerk off.
And yet for me she doesn’t quite fall in to either spectrum. Maybe it’s ‘doll energy,’ to coin an expression.
the guy from the onion? /s