Nr. 2 (19) anul VI / aprilie-iunie 2008 - ROMDIDAC

of resistance against the system. The consumption of such works substituted
for real protest.
The following caricatures present the quality that the communist system
feared most: the successful combination of wit, innocence, and authentic
laughter in the face of the even tragic situation. The wit is circumstantial
and dated; once it is explained, it rewards the
reader/viewer. In Suicide Line, Stanescu targets
the Romanians’ obedience and the system’s
deliberate suppression of joy by forcing people
to live at the level of immediate necessity with no
reason for living like soulless tools.
On the other hand, he laughs at the so-called
volunteer activities and at the necessity to stand
in line for the most necessary items for survival.
Volunteering and standing in line to commit suicide
is so tragic in its meaninglessness that it becomes
ridiculous when the character asks others to save
her place in the other line not to take a chance on
missing an opportunity!? Standing in line used to
be the only way of getting things which
were not rationed. What should have
been the ultimate form of opposing
the system becomes another way of
playing by its rules. The one in which
the danger sign has a schedule refers
to the controlled blackouts which
were frequent during that period.
Again, even danger was something
which people cannot take seriously
and it thus becomes laughable.
The theme of shortage is also
explored in the caricature of the
writers’ strike. The writers finally admitted that they had complaints but lacked
the basic means with which to write them down. The scarcity of “materials” is
also an implication of the further lack of subjects about which to write. Stanescu
seems to ask the rhetorical question “what is the limit of the Romanians
endurance” again and again. In comparing two
parties, one from 1979 and one from 1989 he
documented the degradation of intellectual life
as a consequence of continuous worries about
immediate needs.
Ex Ponto nr.2, 2008
166
Stanescu’s caricatures present “the comic
history of a tragedy” which “helped Romanians
survive while in the middle of disaster,” as Andrei
Plesu described Stanescu’s work. After 1989
when Romanians had a better idea about how
the Secret Police worked, they understood that
such mass phenomenon as the circulation of