Naurettava pirunkone

Automobiilihuumori 1900-luvun alun lehdissä

Kirjoittajat

• Teija Försti

Abstrakti

Ridiculous devil’s machine. Automobile humour in the early 1900s Finnish pressBefore the automobile eventually appeared on the market in Finland, newspapers and magazines began to familiarize the reading audience with the new technical invention. This article aims to answer the questions: What was the role of humour in that process? What was comical about the automobile? The first jests and humorous stories about the automobile were published at the turn of the 20th century in Finnish newspapers. At the time, the real automobile was still a rare sight in Finland. The first automobile was imported to Finland in May 1900, but the first popularity boom of the car did not take place until 1910 to 1914. The first automobiles were luxury items and the socio-economic group of people who could afford an automobile was narrow. Cartoons, stories and jokes that made fun of wealthy car owners and car accidents were central to the early car publicity in Finland. The car and gender were also linked together from the very beginning in the automobile humour. The early automobile humour constructed, thus, the image of the new technical invention even before most Finnish people had seen a car in real life. I suggest that in studying the early automobile humour and cultural representations we could get new insights into the adaptation of the car in Finland.