it gets even more interesting

If you click on the images, they come up screen-size.

So Sol's father, typically for the jewish stereotype of the time, owns a pawnshop. I imagine that how the character might be regarded by the reader (particularly the reader in a small town like Maitland, South Australia, where there were surely very few, if any, jewish people) is entirely in the eye of the beholder in this case. Certainly the joke is not a hostile one towards Sol here unless you feel all stereotypes are inherently potentially hostile, which I suppose they really are (later thought: I suppose someone could make something of the way Sol's father profits from the sacrifices of sporting heroes - since I only have contempt for sporting heroes that doesn't wash too well with me).


There are a few jokes over time about Sol's interest in money, and I've singled out most of them here. By contrast I didn't come across any jokes about Bluey being interested in money, except the last of these three. I suppose once again this second strip could pretty safely be said to fall into the stereotype mode, though in this case it's probably also the double stereotype of the foolish foreigner as well. That said, I like what Sol says as he goes into the post office - that's quite funny and additionally suggests the character is stepping outside the routine to comment on it. Bluey's statement in the last frame makes no sense to me at all, as regards a punchline.


The last of these three kind of upsets the whole stereotype, I would say. Or does it?


I suppose Sol is pretty strident in knowing where is money is, etc and that Bluey still owes it to him, but he's hardly put out when he's told that they're even.

I am just trying to sift through this material to find what's inherently racist and what's just kid humour. If it was Ginger Meggs going through any of these routines, I daresay it wouldn't strike us as some kind of jewish stereotype, though if you recall, Ginge's dad - in one of those bizarre, bizarre, bizarre twists of our culture - was made up like Roy Rene, a caricature of some Faginesque type. The rationale for this must have seemed immensely obtuse even when the Meggses first appeared in 1921.

If you don't know who I'm talking about look them up. I've been trying to find an online image of Mr. Meggs for quite some time now (you know, minutes) and I've got nowhere, so... (peters out)