Blacking out teeth on a photograph or poster is probably the simplest possible form of social or political commentary. Even a three-year-old child probably has the motor skills necessary to do it. It requires no real creativity, and it’s done so often that it’s a cliche. And yet, remarkably, it is almost always funny. I took this picture of a subway ad a couple of days ago:

A few scribbles with a magic marker is all it takes to transform a powerful or attractive person (or a not-so-attractive person) into a slack-jawed yokel. In those few tiny marks, I see the human spirit struggling to overcome the darker aspects of modern capitalism. Er, maybe just in a tiny tiny way, but still.

Somewhere, at some exact moment in the past, some bored or outraged citizen became the first person ever to pull out a writing utensil and black out some teeth on a drawing or photograph or poster. Who was that person? Was he or she American? Is this a quintessentially American joke, given this country’s unprecedented obsession with dentistry? Do people do this in Britain, where bad teeth have generally not been an indicator of low social status? Has anyone ever written about this or studied it?