The Apperception of Attitudes: Responses to ‘The Lonely Ones’ of William Steig

In all their daily behavior, whether intended or “accidental,” people are constantly exhibiting or betraying their inner attitude stances. Threatened by this fact, many would prefer to join an official conspiracy of silence to the effect that some human behavior is indeterminate and meaningless, and that a rigorous and unrelentingly analytic view “goes too far,” i. e. arouses anxiety when it encroaches upon the areas wherein it has been culturally agreed that the Emperor is wearing beautiful clothes. But the fact that we know far better than we officially pretend to believe, is shown by our actual phatic (1) understandings of each other.

When one displays behavior which should be recalled for re-editing, the usual extenuation offered is “I didn't mean it that way,” thus underscoring the fact evident to all that this was precisely how you did mean it. Likewise, we constantly, and no doubt correctly, read the attitudes of the other fellow, the unenthusiastic handshake, the over-perfunctory gesture. We need these masks precisely to the extent that our emotional stupidity and dishonesty hide from us the uselessness and impossibility of such disguises. But one excellent way of unmistakably eliciting this unacknowledged insight people have is to confront them with the “caricature” of behavior, the emotionally indifferent and ethically denatured world of the cartoon. By implicitly agreeing that here in this dehumanized world (of course it is not) everything is all in fun and that we don't really mean it, humanity can be caught off guard and freed to exercize emotional apperception and projection.

For example, here are a few cartoons which have appeared in mass circulation magazines of the last few years: