Originally published September 2, 1994, in Comics Buyer’s Guide #1085
So there I was, gnashing my teeth over the latest issue of Self magazine.
For those who came in late, Self published a poorly researched, slanted article by one Stefan Kanfer that cast comic books in as poor a light as could possibly be shone, short of suggesting that they be tossed into the village square and burned (just wait… that’ll come next.)
Anyone who bothered to write in a response got a form letter invoking the magazine’s obligation and right to publish material that some might find objectionable; a solid defense of those same First Amendment rights which Kanfer suggested suspending for comic books. (The best was when Randy L’Officier, wife of well-known Frog supporter Jean-Marc L’Officier, wrote in her letter of comment. Although she used the words, “As a woman, I feel…,” her form letter was addressed to “Mr. Randy L’Officier.”)
The most recent issue of Self had run the results of a poll, asking its readers whether they were of the opinion (having read Kanfer’s one sided screed) that the senate should begin investigating comic books in a move reminiscent of the 1950s. Guess what: The majority of readers proclaimed that such an investigation should indeed be launched.
Some of you may think it is premature and alarmist to be concerned over such findings. This is Self, after all… not The National Review or U.S. News and World Report. Except that articles in “family” magazines of the 1940s and ’50s went a long way towards inciting the witch hunt that resulted in the millstone of the Comics Code Authority which still hangs around the necks of the industry.
(I’m still amused at the argument over whether comics should or should not carry labels. Comics already have labels on them: They’re called “company names.” When a comic says “Marvel” on it, that means you get a book that’s not as intense as, say, one that carries the “Vertigo” label. Now if the publishers really feel it’s in their best interest to push the CCA label as the indicator of “kid safe,” that’s their decision. Me, I think it’d be smarter for them to push their own brand labels as guarantees of “kid safe” entertainment. I think more parents today are familiar with of “Marvel” than the “Comics Code Seal” anyway, and it makes more business sense to appeal to the former. As for the occasional suggestion that the seal presents a shield against potential protest groups… c’mon. Get real. Should the censors come, leaning on the CCA label for protection will be like facing a hail of gunfire while wearing only bulletproof socks. But I digress…)
So there I was with this free-floating annoyance, but not enough new ire or material for a column about it. And then, lo and behold, in the mail came an unexpected gift from a fan in Australia: A copy of a book I had never read, but only heard about.
Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric (not Fredrick, not Frederic, not Frederick) Wertham, M.D.
Wertham, a psychiatrist who spent years studying juvenile delinquency, came to the conclusion that “crime comic books” (a category into which he lumped such disparate titles as the entire EC line and Superman) were destroying the moral fiber of children. He wrote articles, testified before a senate committee, and eventually wrote the somewhat successful tome which spawned a generation of concerned parents, befuddled kids and, eventually, a singing group at a convention where over 30,000 attendees apparently didn’t share Wertham’s conclusions.
Whenever anyone points to the troubles of the industry, the finger of blame always points directly at Wertham. Now this isn’t entirely fair. Indeed, blaming Wertham for all the aggravation that comics underwent would be similar to Wertham’s own tactics of singling out comics for the decay in America’s youth.
One has to keep in mind the America of the time. Having just come out of World War II (a war in which Japanese Americans were imprisoned on American soil; a war that ushered in the Atomic Age), it was a time of massive paranoia. America had become a major player on the international scene, and we trusted almost no one… least of all ourselves (hey, the Civil had only ended eighty years previously. Think that’s a long time in a country’s history? Nah. Elvis debuted on TV forty years ago. We’re still feeling the impact, and he was just one guy.)
We had a society in massive flux. Soldiers who had seen the wide world now had to come home and settle back into “normal life,” and women who had been working in factories and keeping the country going were now being shoved back into the kitchen. And lo and behold, here came the baby boomers, shoved into a confused and confusing society. Birth rate was up. Juvenile delinquency was up. The Bronx was up (but, thankfully, the Battery was down.)
The lives of Americans were topsy turvy, and Americans wanted to know why. Now… Americans aren’t real big on complex subjects. We like things simple, easy to grasp, without a lot of big words or intricacy. (The attitude continues to this day, which is why people get worked up over Tonya Harding or O.J. Simpson and become seized with uncontrollable yawning every time Whitewater comes up. While frustrated Republicans shout, “No, really! Listen to us! This is important!” over a hideously convoluted investment scheme in which the Clintons lost money, couch potatoes of America plead, “Honey, switch to A Current Affair, would you?”)
And there were Fredric Wertham, who had come to the conclusion that the reason was: Comic books. He said this to anyone and everyone who would listen. And considering how many people wanted some nice easy answers to all America’s ills (comics… Commies… even the words sounded similar) comics fit the bill.
One of the people who listened to Wertham was a grandstanding Senator named Estes Kefauver. A Tennessee democrat, Kefauver chaired a 1950 Commission investigating organized crime. He used this notoriety to aim for a presidential nomination in 1952. Didn’t work, however. In 1956 he went madly for Adlai, becoming the vice presidential candidate to Adlai Stevenson’s run at the presidency which ended in defeat to Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. Just think. If Stevenson had won and Kefauver hadn’t died in 1963, impressionists during Watergate might have had to learn how to do a whole different guy.
In any event, during the organized crime hearings, Kefauver spoke to Wertham in connection with Wertham’s widely proclaimed expertise in the field of juvenile delinquency. Wertham convinced Kefauver that comics factored heavily into J.D., and this prompted the senate subcommittee hearings.
The hearings had several results:
1) Bill Gaines, publisher of EC Comics, stood in angry defiance of the subcommittee, defending the editorial material he published and his constitutional right to publish it;
2) The subcommittee found no causal connection whatsoever between comics and juvenile delinquency; said result was heavily pushed by various newspapers who correctly saw any government rumbling of suppression as potentially threatening to themselves;
3) Despite the subcommittee’s findings, the Comics Code was created by the publishers. The motivations for the action have been widely speculated about; whatever the motivations, the results were that Bill Gaines’s EC Comics were brought to a halt, and we’ve still got the CCA watching over publisher’s shoulders, a tacit vote of no confidence in the editors’ abilities to be able to turn in comic books conforming to the individual standards of their employers. (I mean, if the CCA went away tomorrow, would we immediately see an intense nude orgy with Betty, Veronica and Archie? The word “No” comes to mind. Actually, the words “Unfortunately, no,” comes to mind, but that’s a topic for a whole ‘nother column.)
Undeterred by the Senate’s findings–or perhaps angered by them–Wertham published Seduction of the Innocent in 1954.
It was a book that played into the ongoing American gullibility that was blossoming at the time. Be aware that other ripples of the 1950s besides the anti-comic leanings of Seduction are still with us. The 1950s gave us L. Ron Hubbard, who begat Lisa Marie Presley’s religious leanings, and aliens in Unidentified Flying Objects who apparently had nothing better to do with their time than land on obscure backroads, commandeer surprised farmers, and bring them back to their ships in order to give them proctological check-ups and similar exams. (I mean, c’mon. I can just see us spending trillions in tax dollars, and we finally get to far off worlds and meet alien races… and the first thing we say to them is, “Bend over, please. Thank you. Now turn your head and cough.” There’s an interstellar icebreaker for you.)
I suspect that Wertham was unaware Seduction of the Innocent would give him eternal fame… or infamy, if you will. He may have regarded it the way that Arthur Conan Doyle viewed Sherlock Holmes; namely, it’s nice that people are interested, but is that what people are going to remember the author for? In this case, the answer is unquestionably yes.
Was Seduction of the Innocent a good book, however?
When I sat down to read it, I admitted to a certain amount of trepidation. After all, I had bought into the long-held notion of Wertham as the great satan. Stefan Kanfer had actually held Wertham up as some sort of great visionary, which was enough to anger me all the more. And yet now… now that I actually had a copy of the stupid thing… I thought, “But… what if he makes all sorts of valid points, and convinces me that comic books really were destroying young minds?” Part of me wanted to reject any such conclusion out of hand, but another part wanted to be open to any new ideas.
What if Wertham really had something to say that struck a chord with me?
What if I decide he’s right?
Next week, I’ll tell you what I found.
(Peter David, writer of stuff, appreciates Rob Liefled’s contention that any publicity is good publicity, as long as they spell your name right. Don’t worry, Robb… I got it covered.)
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I read “Seduction” while i was in high school.
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I laughed a lot. (But quietly – i was in the public library.)
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My favourite contemporary reaction Wertham was Will Eisner’s “Spirit” story “The Awful Book”, which parodied EC comics and the whole issue.
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The narrator (an elementary school teacher) mentions in passing that “…where Doctor Wolfgang Worry, the school psychologist, was holding his weekly book burning…”
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(When that story was reprinted some years back, BTW, there were several senseless rewrites in the dialog and narration that made it substantially less funny than the original.)
Somewhat ironic that this article is reprinted just after the news that DC is going to switch to their own ratings system and dump the CCA.
The timing (and relevancy) of these articles has indeed been rather impeccable lately.
And meanwhile, America is once again in a topsy-turvy, paranoid mood, with people looking for easy answers for why nothing is the way it ought to be, and an ambitious Congressman is talking about holding hearings. Except this time, the bogeyman is Muslims.
And now Newsarama is reporting that that Comic Code Authority may have ceased functioning in 2009 and not told anyone, further putting the real world on the exact opposite end of the Comic Code story that started with SOTI: http://www.newsarama.com/comics/comics-code-authority-defunct-since-2009-110124.html
It’s pretty hard to find an original printing that hasn’t had all the great pictures in the center torn out.
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I can see where it was well received–telling parents it isn’t their fault their kids turned out the way they did will always find an appreciative audience. (And in point of fact, it isn’t always their fault. I blame the kid.)
While I agree that ultimately everybody is responsible for their own actions (possible exception for the mentally disturbed), I always thought very cynical and/or short-sighted the tendency to excuse bad parents of any blame for their kids.
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You don’t need to be a psychiatric genius or a great observer of humanity to realize the painfully obvious: that the parents are a huge influence in the formative years of any young person.
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No, that doesn’t mean parents are to blame for any crimes committed by their kids. But it does mean that the parents are a bigger factor by several magnitudes than videogames, comics, rock music, and other hobbies in understanding the way people act.
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This is one of the things that are so obvious that some people’s failure to accept this can only mean some huge amount of self-serving denial is going on.
But I see a lot of kids who have GREAT brothers and sisters while they…well.
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At some point a child’s peers become way more influential than their family. Now, you can argue that it is the parenting that will determine who the child will choose as their peers, that may well be the case.
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My sisters and I are very different people and though we have all ended up pretty well we also all made some mistakes along the way. I credit my parents with giving me an awesome childhood and a sense of right and wrong. I blame myself for the times I knowingly chose wrong.
I think a child’s peers are the second most influential factor in the formation of their personality, right behind the family.
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Yes, siblings cope differently. One kid escapes a uncomfortable domestic situation by becoming an avid reader, the other by taking drugs.
Bill Warren’s EC comics? No wonder everyone was suspicious of Bill Gaines, if he was publishing under an alias.
The collapse of EC had as much to do with distributors refusing to handle their product as with the code. EC submitted their books to the code. But Gaines soon saw the writing on the wall, particularly when some of the same people who controlled the distribution channels also set up the Comics Code Office. He knew Donenfield, Liebowitz and Goldwater didn’t like him and wouldn’t give him a fair shake. The rejected story from Incredible Science-Fiction was the last straw, not the sole motivation.
Here’s how relevant this article still is:
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schwarzenegger_vs_EMA
“Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association is a Supreme Court case pending before the Supreme Court of the United States. The case challenges a California law enacted in 2005 that bans the sale of certain violent video games to children.[1] The case is expected to be negotiated in June 2011.”
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This law was pushed by State Senator Leland Yee and requires labeling beyond the industry’s own ESRB, along with making it a crime to sell violent games to children. Something that stores generally are not doing in the first place.
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On top of that, Yee thinks parents should do the parenting… yet created a law that hands the job off to the government anyways. Perhaps not surprisingly, Yee is a child psychologist.
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But it just goes to show that whether it’s the CCA, MPAA ratings, or the ESRB, for some people that will never be good enough. Censorship is preferred, if not the end goal. And, as we’ve seen time and again, ‘non-traditional’ expressions of artistry such as comic books (or manga), video games, and specific forms of music like heavy metal or rap, are often the target.
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As if they have less value and don’t deserve First Amendment protections simply because (to stereotype a bit) older people don’t understand them.
True, Bill. To use an extreme example, the same parents produced both the Unabomber and the brother of conscience who turned him in.
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And I have four uncles that haven’t married and by all indication have remained celibate (except for the younger one who looks to be a closeted gay). Either they all have some hitherto-undiscovered celibacy gene or the overbearing and controlling personality of my grandmother has something to do with it.
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Look, obviously parenting isn’t deterministic. But it’s also extremely obvious that it has a huge influence on the kids, for good or for ill.
I don’t think anyone is denying that. But still…
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Look, I remember a time when I took Caroline to the playground. And this little boy, who looked to be about four years old, came over and simply shoved her as hard as he could, with complete deliberation, knocking her to the ground. The parents were immediately appalled by their son’s behavior and came over and scolded him and told him to apologize.
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And he did so in a flat, emotionless monotone, and then he looked up at me, and I swear, it chills me just to remember it.
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It was like looking into the eyes of a shark. There was just…there was nothing there. No emotion. No soul. No nothing. And I thought, Oh my God. He’s a sociopath. This is what a sociopath looks like at age four.
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Now: it was just a snapshot of a moment. Maybe I got it wrong. Or maybe the parents are actually evil bášŧárdš who were just putting on a show of looking concerned. But at that point in time, my read of it was that these were fairly normal parents and they were going to have a very rough go of it because I think their child is going to grow up to become a monster.
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I don’t want to put us into an endless debate of nature vs. nurture because I doubt it’ll go anywhere useful, but the truth is that sometimes you do everything you can and it simply isn’t enough.
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There’s a Bradbury story about playgrounds and the predators you find there…
Bruce Perry’s books “The Boy who was raised as a dog” and “Born for love” are about empathy, neuroscience, and case studies about how “good” parents can make certain mistakes unknowingly and raise a sociopath.
Sometimes the bully isn’t abused or unloved or misunderstood. Sometimes, the bully just wants your lunch money.
True. The causes of sociopathy are poorly understood, and it may well be that neurological factors are more important than environmental ones. There is research here in Brazil that shows that 25% of violent criminals in jail have sociopathic tendencies.
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Still, for people with normal empathy, I’d say parenting influences them in all sorts of ways, big and small, and obviously simblings will be influenced differently by the same parents.
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Gray64, I’d say a certain portion of bullies weren’t abused or unloved by their parents, they were enabled and coddled, something tragically common these days. A case that made the headlines here last year was of four teenagers (white and rich, all of them) that physically assaulted several people they suspected of being gay.
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When the four were arrested, the Mommies and Daddies made such a big show of supporting their kids, and telling everybody they’d never be able to do what they were accused of, they were good kids, and other vomit-inducing behaviour that made it obvious that the four were spoiled rotten by the clueless rich parents.
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The assaults were recorded on camera, and even more brutal and cruel than people initially suspected. Even their first lawyer gave up on them. In that case, I couldn’t stop thinking that if the parents had spines and moral centers, it wouldn’t have happened.
>The Bronx was up (but, thankfully, the Battery was down.)
Also of note is the people ride in a hole in the ground.
Yup. New York, New York. It’s a helluva town.
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I’m so impatient to find out what you thought of the book.
Darn you for posting these in the original order!
This fits in nicely with my current reading. I’m about halfway through “The Ten Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America” by David Hajdu. It is absolutely fascinating. Not to mention it combines two of my favorite interests- comic books and history. The book already talked about an earlier report filled with Wertham’s research called “Horror in the Nursery,” but he wasn’t the sole author.
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The best part is reading letters written by kids at the time defending comic books. If anyone continues to be interested in the subject and has time to read a book that’s only a bit over 300 pages, I’m enjoying it quite a bit. However, in the words of one particularly well read man, “You don’t have to take my word for it!”
With the recent announcements of first DC, and now Archie, deciding to not use it any more, the Comics Code is virtually an orphan.
Was it THAT out of date for even Archie Comics to leave it?
And what is to keep some “concerned parental group” from finding a modern version of Wertham and trying to start the whole crusade all over again under the (still antique) belief that “Comics are just for kids”?
Just asking and trying to stay optimistic at the same time.
Wanting to refresh my memory, I went looking for a copy of the original Code on-line, and found this version with examples:
http://www.lambiek.net/comics/code.htm
Looking over it, I cant imagine any publisher today trying to do realism in comic books coping with “Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority.”
And how many comics could handle “Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture, vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited?”
“Profanity, obscenity, smut, vulgarity, or words or symbols which have acquired undesirable meanings are forbidden.”
There go Kick-Úš and Hit Girl.
“Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.”
I can still remember Mort Weisinger’s comment in a Lois Lane letters column that both Lana Lang and Lois measured 36-24-36. (That would be considered overweight these days.) Anyway, MAN, would comics look different if THAT standard were still enforced.
“Seduction and rape shall never be shown or suggested.”
Actually, we might’ve been spared the story of Dr. Light and Sue Dibny, something I wouldn’t mind not having seen.
There are others. I’ll leave it to the rest of you to look things over and comment on as you like.