Today, a little trip back in time to Valentine’s Days past. Which turns out to be a lot weirder than you might have expected, at least if the Valentine’s Day cards our ancestors gave each other are any indication.
So let’s take a look at a little over two dozen vintage Valentine’s Day cards that are creepy, threatening, or otherwise completely inappropriate for any occasion.
Let’s start with some cards that bungle the relatively straightforward concept of consent.
And while we’re talking about people beating each other with clubs, here’s a card that portrays domestic violence as more cute than scary.
Well that accelerated quickly:
Some of these cards are just weirdly ominous.
And there are so many guns!
And knives:
And swords:
And ropes?
These give off a real stalkerish vibe.
For some reason there’s a lot of cannibalism going on.
Now, not all of the cards I found were as unnerving as the ones above. Some were just suggestive. Very weirdly suggestive.
And then there’s this card, designed specifically for Rudy Giuliani.
I hope I haven’t ruined anyone’s Valentine’s Day with that last one.
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Can I add a good one?
I would post the picture directly but I don’t know how.
I’m actually not sure the baseball-themed “you strike me right” card is meant to portray domestic violence. I think the girl hit the baseball, which then hit the boy in the eye and knocked him down when he tried to catch it. Even so, it still wasn’t a good idea to make a greeting card with that much ambiguity in it, especially a Valentine’s Day card.
The clubs in particular are a bit disconcerting. Maybe they got confused about what people meant when they talking about “bonking” on Valentine’s Day?
On the other hand, the club is in character for the Pebbles and Bam-bam one (third one down for those not familiar with the original Flintstones show). Though I don’t recall Bam-bam ever using his club to threaten Pebbles to get his way on anything, so there’s at least that. Though it’s been ages since I saw that show, so my memory may be off on that point.
Speaking of Bam-bam, was there ever a storyline explaining who his bio parents were, and why they left him on Barney and Betty’s doorstep? Either in the original Flintstones series, or the Saturday morning sequel where he and Pebbles were teenagers going to high school? Just wondering if that ever got addressed in any official canon episode or something. (Presumably somewhere there’s a fanfic or two that addressed that plot point.)
I don’t see too much problem with a lot of these, in a vacuum. They’re just updates of metaphors which were old-timey even in their day and kind of dark-humorish looks at love. I do see the “I want to possess you, will you let me” subtext which most of these express to be too strong a message for some people, and would make them uncomfortable, but as many people actually like that subtext, I’m not sure there’s a good solution here.
@Redsilkphoenix:
Speaking of Bam-bam, was there ever a storyline explaining who his bio parents were, and why they left him on Barney and Betty’s doorstep? Either in the original Flintstones series, or the Saturday morning sequel where he and Pebbles were teenagers going to high school? Just wondering if that ever got addressed in any official canon episode or something. (Presumably somewhere there’s a fanfic or two that addressed that plot point.)
Actually, I find it refreshing that an occasional fictional adoptee exists whose biological parentage isn’t a heaping pile of narrativium; the only other examples who come immediately to mind are Swee’Pea and Jinpei from Science Ninja Team Gatchaman. (I also note that Bam-Bam’s super-strength apparently ceased to be an issue once he reached adolescence; perhaps he grew into it?)
We handed out Valentine cards similar to these when I was in school and never gave much of a thought about them, negatively or otherwise. They were just tokens. There was no agenda. Nobody suggested to us that they were improper or I suppose we would have stopped giving them.
I kinda like the ropes one, they seem to invite having fun together (though it’s not my kink). The rest seem way too pushy.
The ropes one is okay by me — anyone who’s old enough to understand it gets it, otherwise it’s just a cutesy Western pun. And the kid’s expression seems to hint “if you are a person of my preferred gender expression who’d like a little bondage, I’m your cowpoke. Yee-ha!”
But I’m creeped out by the suicidal ones — I mean, even kids young enough to have handed these around were liable to think “wow, way too much pressure from someone I don’t like!” (aka that icky boy in the back of the class that you gave the boringest Valentine too just because Mom told you you had to give him something) (who remained icky and is now mocked here).
That Wiki link made me snort. Sure, “they knew each other from childhood” but only “discovered” they were second cousins when Rudy wanted an annulment. I believe that about as much as I believe anything Rudy’s said since the election. You can see a line from there directly to the speech at the landscaper (between the crematorium and skeevy bookshop. I am not going to stop making that reference).
@Full Metal Ox: Yeah, nowadays nobody in a story can just be an orphan whose parent(s) couldn’t look after them and had them adopted by a nice family. It has to be a whole dramatic thing.
@Crip Dyke: hee!
Nope, no backstory for Bamm Bamm in the original series. There would have been more than one if they bothered, as The Flintstones had horrible continuity. Take Mr. Slate. The tall, balding guy with the big nose was originally an entirely different character, called Mr. Rockhead or JJ Granite in his early appearances. Fred and Wilma’s house was given several addresses, how long they’d been married and how they met changed etc.
The ones with the ropes seem more kinky than threatening, but that’s just me XD
What’s going on with the eyes on the second gun one? Are those telescoping irises resting on some sort of film? I think you ought to be hunting for an ophthalmologist before a Valentine, kid.
My fav is definitely the pen on pants one because I can’t imagine a non-sexual reading of it.
@Crip Dyke:
I’m not sure if this will work on the current iteration of the blog, but it used to be possible to post an image by lopping the security S off the image URL; let’s see what happens:
http://pbs.twimg.com/media/EuNRs4qVkAAOMJR.jpg
Maybe I’m just wearing pink glasses, but two of those kinda looked like they involved two women. I’m pretty sure they’re not supposed to, though.
@Crip Dyke: Danny Trejo looks weirdly adorable in that image. Always a fan of his work in general.
The Royal Ontario Museum posted this amusing one: http://twitter.com/ROMtoronto/status/1361016111681142785?s=20
Er, what are that bloke’s intentions towards that bear?
I choose to interpret the picture that it’s a trap. The cute teddy bear lures him in; then all the big bears eat him for hunting.
@Full Metal Ox
I think Taran from the Chronicles of Prydain books was also a parentless founding whose parentage was never revealed. In fact, there was some part where he thought he’d found his father and was upset that it was a simple shepherd/farmer rather than the nobility or royalty he’d always hoped for, but it turned out the guy lied because he was old and needed help reviving the farmland that he needed to survive and told him before he died from accident injuries. But it was a major character arc, as Taran had even thought, when he saw the guy fall initially, to leave him and hoped it would bury his shame, and he did some major reassessing of his values and what kind of person he was because of that moment where he seriously considered leaving a man he believed was his father to die so he could escape the shame of being a commoners son. And in the end, the theme continues, that his bio parentage isn’t important, because nothing defines who he is except him and his own actions, and at the finale the wizard who raised him said he found him in the bushes near a battlefield where many men and women lay dead,noble and peasant, with nothing to connect him to any particular person, which really cemented that no, we aren’t going to find out his dad was secretly an emperor or anything else, and anything he gets in life is the result of his own actions and not as a gift of noble birth.
I nearly spit out my tea at the “baby, I love you” one. So sinister, yet so funny – if that was the artist intention then they are a design genius.
Speaking of Bam Bam, my cousins toddler has earnt that nickname after turning from the most mild mannered, sleepy baby imaginable to a cheerfully destructive whirlwind seemingly overnight. It’s very cute but his lack of any sense of personal safety is adding a few grey hairs to his parents, I think.
The one that appears to show a redheaded cavewoman assaulting a topless ballerina from behind?
The “wipe your pen upon my pants” one seems to have a piece of actual penwiper fabric forming the guy’s knickerbockers, so that at least makes some sense in a slightly bizarre take on the greeting-card-with-practical-use concept.
(Why in the ever-loving blue-eyed world that guy is standing in front of a doghouse with what looks like a shark-toothed leopard in it, though, I cannot imagine.)
Yeah, the weapons imagery is problematic but the whole classical Eros/Cupid mythology with the bow and arrows is partly to blame for it.
Also, the circus tent in the background of the “Let’s Come to the Point” card inclines me to think that the guy is supposed to be doing a sword swallowing act. Hard to tell in 2D, but it looks like the card has some kind of popup/cutout feature that you can manipulate to make it appear that he’s swallowing the little knife.
Still pretty weird as a valentine motif, but less skeevy than directly menacing your beloved with sharp weapons!
It’s nice to see they used to make cards specifically for Armie Hammer.
I’ve never got why something being cute or lovable means you’d want to it it (or her/him/them), but somehow the one with the “sweet enough to eat” is at least… pretty? I like that the girl’s expression is less abject horror or weird delight and more “I did not sign up for this”.
The other cannibalism one is just weird. What is she doing with that giant spoon?? Is she going to boil the guy until he’s mushy enough to eat with a spoon? If it’s for stirring, she’d need a bigger pot.
@ Kimstu
I didn’t know penwiper fabric was a thing! Huh. What an exceedingly weird Valentine. I love it.