The carousel game ritually exterminated the imagined Turkish monster.
Evidence
The ghostly figure in the background of the painting in Austria represents the clay effigy of a Turk’s head, an object that, although already decapitated, was knocked off its pedestal. This description from a Habsburg emissary of an Ottoman military commander suggests how Turks were viewed by the Austrians: “A thick bodied eunuch with sallow complexion, he had, ‘a sour look, scowling eyes, broad shoulders that stuck up, from which his head extruded as from a valley. With two teeth like boars’ tusks dominating his mouth [and] his voice, hoarse… he was the Fourth Fury.” The carousel game offered a way for the Turkish monster to be exterminated through the imagination. — Sophia Rose Arjana, Muslims in the Western Imagination, 345
Categorization
Category: Causal Relationships
- DEEPTHINKING: The carousel beheading is a vivid case of violence-by-proxy: an actual Ottoman military commander is simultaneously described in subhuman bestial terms (boar’s tusks, valley, Fourth Fury) and decapitated in effigy at a noble leisure event — the image manufactures both the monster and its ritual killing without any real war.