Being one of the parts of culture sex is obviously influenced by it, and erotic cartoon, in particular, brings elements of humour and game into sexual culture and softens its “beastly” part.
Hundreds of erotic cartoons were created in every epoch. In one of the Vatican museums there is a statue “World Saviour”(on broad man’s shoulders one can see a rooster’s head with a beak-phallus), which is taken as a funny caricature nowadays. Grotesque was widely-spread in various forms because erotic caricature was recognized by our ancestors as a great stimulus. Gods of Olympus, whose lives were full of zestful situations, were often the characters of erotic caricatures.
Despite the endless fight against erotic works they were created even in the Middle Ages. Saunas for public and Shrove plays could not change the morals of society. In those times chastity belt to prevent wives from adultery was invented. That Venus belt had become the most favourite object of caricaturists. Renaissance erotic caricature with its unfading satire “Gargantua and Pantagruel” was notable with cheerfulness.
W. Hogarth’s engravings “Before” and “After” created as edifying were popular in the XVIIth century.
Erotic caricatures were not isolated; anti-religious and anti-royal literature was steeped in erotica. Streetwalkers, cuckolds, fornicators, and mods (“Inconveniences of Hunting”, “Fashionable Riding”, etc.) used to be the figures of fun in those times. D. Cruikshank, T. Rolandson, and J. Gillray created a lot of works concerning that subject.
In the times of the Great French Revolution erotic caricatures of Marie -Antoinette and Louis XVI, clergy, and aristocracy were extremely popular. George Sand was also mocked. F. Rops (“Woman the Faun”), Karand’Ash (“Life in the castle”), Foren (“Joy of Adultery”) paid tribute to erotic caricature, as well.
In the XXth century Polish caricaturists – experts of laughing absurd
The strips frequently included caricatures of famous people, especially politicians. For example, in the debut strip, Wanda and Candyfloss visit Madame Tussaud’s “waxworks,” passing the likenesses of Richard Nixon, Spiro Agnew, Charles de Gaulle, Lyndon Johnson, Fidel Castro, Henry Kissinger, and Mao Zedong, among others, as they make their way toward the museum’s “Chamber of Horrors.” These satirical portraits were usually given names similar to the names of the people they parodied: Marlon Blondo (aka Burpo), Henry Kissarun, Norman Mailman, and Herod Huge, for example. Senator Ted Kennedy was invariably depicted standing in a pool of liquid, a reference to the Chappaquiddick incident.
