Description
J. Lolua's 1973 illustration "Whose Fault Is It?" is a sharp social satire on the 1970s generation gap and youth fashion. The drawing shows a girl dressed in a Western-style short skirt, while in the background, a militia officer holds a detained boy, with an elderly woman looking at them. The text on the illustration features a revealing dialogue: "Why have you bound this young man, my son?" asks the elderly woman. "He assaulted a young lady in the street," the militia officer replies. The woman responds: "Why blame the boy? Detain that girl instead!" The irony lies in the fact that despite the boy's actual assault, the older generation woman defends him and blames the girl due to her "provocative" outfit. The artwork ridicules the conservative absurdity and societal hypocrisy of the Soviet period, where foreign aesthetics and fashionable styles were condemned more harshly than an actual crime.
