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76 Dagnostaw Demski the fact that the former pretended not to be images and the latter drew on humorous conventions” that formed an interpretation or a commentary rather than a reality. To understand this distinction let us examine the illustrations, the first as a type of serious (non-humorous) depiction and, then, humorous images of various character and tone. A typical picture presents the battle of Babina Glava””—and a landscape.”! The representation seems realistic and is presumably based on the artist’s knowledge. We do not object to what we see in it, unless we possess some knowledge of our own regarding the event. Who is the “Other” in this picture? We cannot know that, because there is no observable, intentional distortion of the image of either the opposing sides, including the losing side. According to Peter Burke, the Crimean War (1853-56) formed a subject of “artistic” correspondence of people, who were sent to the battlefields by the newspapers, art dealers, and publishers (Burke 2012: 173). Battle scenes and landscapes are among the motifs that were popular and common at the end of the nineteenth century. Both themes were mediated by culture, although this mediation was not clear to the audience in these times and constructed the Other in its own way. However, it remains beyond the scope of this paper to elaborate on the former theme any further. In contrast to the serious representations, striving to reach objectivity in the case of the ethnic Others (such objectivity denotes the way of depicting alterity based on knowledge, politics, and so on), humor is, as we see, an intentional tool of a narrated story. The common basis is formed by what receives attention. In serious representations it is a question of how they are perceived, but in the case of humor, the construction of which is intentional and made aware to all, the focus is on the types of Otherness that receive attention. What is significant is how and why they were distorted, what particular features were ascribed to them, and how they were used. In the ethnic humoristic representation, particular features associated with an ethnic group, which can lead to the creation of stereotypes are at stake. The historical and social contexts lie at the heart of the direction a stereotype takes—roughly speaking, in order to solve the dilemma of whether to protect the in-group or open up to the altered group. This process of regulating the “distance” between two ethnic entities is based on pretation. Description of the specific objects of reality had the task of triggering in the reader sensory representations (i.¢., their images): the appearance of figures, objects, interiors, and landscapes (Sztandara 2006: 16) '9 These threads are analyzed via other means. In Mitchell’s words, the image is the sign that pretends not to be a sign, masquerading as (or, for the believer, actually achieving) natural immediacy and presence (1994: 65). 20 The storming of the entrenchments of Babina Glava, Biesiada literacka, 1876. 2 The eminent art historian Thomas Mitchell linked the concept of landscape in painting with the narratives of rising and falling empires, represented as a threefold process of emancipation, naturalization, and unification (1994: 12).
