This is about old postcards. Some of them date back to 1900 or so, some are as recent as the 50s.
Most of them were sold at vacation spots. Workers got two weeks paid vacation a year, and they took off for the country or the seaside at the the first opportunity. They were looking for more than a simple change of scenery. They were after a lightening of the mind: a release from adult responsibility and a return to primal urges. After a year of doing what society expected of them, they wanted to say what the man above says: "Now I am my real self!"
If you were a guy, "being your real self" meant leching after girls, at least in your fantasies.
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Mosquitoes owned the countryside and you had to pay the price if you wanted to live in their domain. Amazingly even mosquitoes were drafted into vacation sex fantasies.
Bathroom humor, too. The vacationer allows himself to be a five year old again, amazed by body functions.
Cards (above) could be incredibly explicit...
...or over-the-top tastless (above).
Few things are out of bounds in the world of vacation cards. Probably the text in this picture (above) is urging the man to throw up over the rail, but it also looks like it's telling him to commit suicide.
I'm surprised to see that none of the famous newspaper cartoonists who tried their hand at vacation cards seem to have done very well.with it.
Vacation cartooning is a specialty, and most ordinary cartoonists can't do it. The artist has to come off as mischievous but not mean, the kind of guy who would be good at telling dirty jokes.
BTW, how do you like the intense color in this card (above)? It makes it seem like the characters are in Hell. The vacationer is depicted as Orpheus who's willing to risk everything, even damnation, in pursuit of forbidden fruit. The idea would appeal to the working man who's repressed himself for a year and has only a short time to psych himself into a bacchanalia.
More "husband with a wandering eye" humor. Most artists botch it. If you don't have a knack for it, that kind of thing becomes tragic. You feel sorry for the woman who has such an unfaithful husband.
Here's (above) a very skilled and funny artist...but he can't beat the vacation artist at his own game. Every artistic medium has its own unique requirements. Interesting, huh?
