Library of Congress Opens Records of Anti-Comic Book Shrink 257
eldavojohn writes "Some light is being shone on comic book history today as the Library of Congress opens up the 222 boxes of a German psychiatrist's evidence and papers against comic books. Dr. Fredric Wertham is well known by comic book fans as the author of Seduction of the Innocent, a bestselling book linking comic books and juvenile delinquency — leading to a full blown congressional investigation (some say witch hunt) of the comic book industry. Wertham was long involved with criminal trials before campaigning against comic books and promoting industry and government censorship for children. Ars adds a little more context for the younger crowd and notes that he later tried to move against television violence but couldn't find the publisher backing he had against comic books."
Comics and Video Games (Score:5, Insightful)
I love how some of the most outspoken people against video games (as well as comics, porno, etc) are often the same people who are against government expansion. Government intervention is always bad...unless it regulates something these people don't agree with.
I'm looking at you, Mitt Romney...amongst others.
Weasel words (Score:2, Insightful)
Dear Slashdot editors:
Regardless of whether you're right or wrong, the phrase "some say witch hunt" is a weasel-faced cop out. It's a device commonly seen on Fox news to to inject opinion into otherwise factual reporting. If "some people" say it, tell us who. Otherwise, let us know it's your opinion.
Regards.
Re:Weasel words (Score:4, Insightful)
I would normally agree with that, but in this instance the term "witch hunt" is commonly used to describe this period in comic (and law) history. The "some people" is referring to the culture in general.
If you're looking for a wikipedia-style source to be cited, open a phone book.
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:3, Insightful)
futu (Score:3, Insightful)
"(some say witch hunt)"
For example, all of us.
--
I'd like to say you are wrong, so I will.
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:4, Insightful)
regardless as to whether it's the best way of expressing their message.
Close, but that isn't quite what I said. More accurate would be "...regardless as to whether it's the easy way of expressing their message". There will always be times when going against the code will make the better story, but I feel that rather than making the story better it often just makes the story easier to write, which is a hard thing for most authors to resist.
If you want your main character to be a criminal for instance, the easy way to do things is to have the criminal succeed and get rich off his crimes. With the code you can't do that, a criminal can't profit from his crimes, so what to do? You have to come up with other ways of having him 'win', through personal relationships, character growth, overcoming adversity, etc.
X-Ray glasses (Score:3, Insightful)
Demonization? (Score:3, Insightful)
And why should an enemy of freedom such as this man not be demonized? The trauma this man has inflicted on American media culture -such that entire media are still seen, more than 50 years later, as fit only for children- should be viewed with no other lens than pure, unadulterated contempt. There is nothing wrong with demonizing a demon.
Re:Congress: The New Superhero! (Score:4, Insightful)
Dr. Wertham is just an early predecessor to Jack Thompson. These idiots think that anything they don't understand or enjoy should be banned because "clearly it has no moral value". It's a myopic view of art and entertainment that would lead to everyone buying and enjoying the exact same things....
I take a possibly more cynical view that like so many other politicians, pundits and activists, their "cause" is nothing but a horse they've hitched their career cart to.
Re:X-Ray glasses (Score:3, Insightful)
The only juvenile delinquency that comic books ever made me want to delve into was with the X-Ray glasses they always advertised on the back page of the comics. For a little boy, I apparently had quite the dirty mind.
Didn't some of those Xray spec ads show a guy leering at his "skeletal" hand with young women in dresses in the same field of view? The ad was begging you to think of the logical conclusion to the picture-story.
How far back you want to go? (Score:5, Insightful)
Those dang kids and their __________, it's ruining them!
Video games
Magic the Gathering cards
Dungeons and Dragons
Comic books
Rock and Roll
Jazz music and dancing
How far back you want to go?
Re:X-Ray glasses (Score:4, Insightful)
The only juvenile delinquency that comic books ever made me want to delve into was with the X-Ray glasses they always advertised on the back page of the comics. For a little boy, I apparently had quite the dirty mind. The thought of being able to see through girls' clothes held more awe and wonder for me than any amazing stunt Superman or Batman could ever pull off.
I hear the TSA has a few job openings.
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:3, Insightful)
But you have to look at what comic book writers were trying to accomplish, and what Dr. Wertham was trying to accomplish. This guy thought he found a correlation between violent media and delinquency. Did it ever occur to him that the naturally violent children will be attracted to the comic books and later become criminals, regardless of what they are subjected to. This man compared leaving the responsibility of controlling media for parents to anarchy. It would be more accurate to compare the restriction of freedoms of all for the sake of protecting few to despotism. Every outlet of entertainment you look at will always create a market for those who are drawn to violence, and quelling it can only make the problem worse in the same way that prohibition made drinking worse. It's fine to create rating for parents to select which media to subject their children to, but eliminating it completely not only takes away the opportunity to do so, but it also makes people neglect teaching their children to use violence appropriately. There's nothing wrong with violence if used moderately in self defense or in the defense of others (one of the reasons my kids will learn discipline from martial arts). I guess some people still think they can create some utopia that operates in the absence of violence, like it hasn't failed countless times in history.
Re:How far back you want to go? (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Public domain golden-age comic downloads (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:3, Insightful)
I didn't know you had to decapitate people to be considered evil! I think robbery is pretty bad even when performed without a weapon (which actually happens quite often).
There's evil, and there's Evil.
Re:It's My Fault, I Apologize, I Was Wrong (Score:4, Insightful)
Perhaps a better label would have been "insanity?"
It's not insanity. Witch hunts are behavior that perfectly normal people in good mental health engage in. It's part of what it is to be human. I'm not saying that it's not wrong and evil and all that, just that this type of evil is part of the human condition. Scapegoating, xenophobia, confirmation bias, all completely normal.
You're not seeing the past correctly (Score:5, Insightful)
As much as Dr. Dickhead and Congress should be excoriated appropriately, let's not forget that the Comics industry bent over backwards to censor itself. If they'd shown a little more backbone, imagine what Lee and Kirkby could have done with the "Marvel Way" in the sixties. Imagine not having that fucking glut of saccharine Archie products. Mind you, we probably wouldn't have gotten Mad magazine if things had turned out differently, so it's hard to be judgmental.
The problem with this is that you are applying modern behavior to events that happened over 50 years ago. Or to put it another way, what you suggest is kind of like going back in time to the 1950s and getting angry because nobody has a cell phone. (That's "mobile phone" to you non-North Americans).
I've read some books that talk about the era, which was before I was born. One of the problems is that people and American society were a lot less litigious back then. Sometimes people screwed you over and you didn't go to court over it. You just took it and moved on. People didn't run around suing each other over everything like they do today. I guess, in theory, Bill Gaines of EC and publishers of similar fare could have tried to stand up, but the reality was that the distributors wouldn't touch books that weren't blessed by the "Comics Code" and the Code was specifically written to put companies like EC out of business by forbidding them from doing exactly what they had done. And keep in mind too that plenty of publishers of what I will call "family safe" comic books such as Archie, various Disney comics (these are a lot better than many realize - look up Carl Barks for more info) and others were more than happy to play along with the Comics Code because they didn't do what it forbade and they were really happy to see competitors driven out of the business. Some people probably really did believe that comics turned kids into juvenile delinquents and those people thought that the Code was just doing a public service. There's always been a rumor that John Goldwater, the publisher of Archie Comics, was infuriated by Mad's (then a comic book not a magazine) parody called "Starchie" and he vowed to put EC out of business. Goldwater did substantial work for the Code and it's probably no coincidence that a lot of what the Code forbade applied to EC directly.
Mad became a magazine specifically to evade the Code. It was a huge gamble that worked. But many artists, writers and others in the comic industry lost jobs and had to scramble to find new ones thanks to the Code. I'm pretty sure that if Bill Gaines and others could have stood up to the Code they would have.
Re:Comics and Video Games (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry, but the most influential pro-censorship politicians of this era have been H. Clinton, Lieberman, and Al Gore's wife.
Do your homework. Remember the "Tipper Gore is a whore" t-shirts? She lead the gaggle that stickered the cassettes / CDs.
Remember the attempts at video game censorship with that Florida nutcase lawyer? Hilary and Joe L.
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:5, Insightful)
While it's true that necessity is the mother of a great deal of creative invention, there are a great many stories which simply could not be threaded through the eye of the needle which is the Comics Code.
The Code did more than just say things like "no boobs" and "no decapitations". It dictated which points of view could be expressed. A writer couldn't write a story which questioned the authority of the police. A writer couldn't do a story which expressed the idea that maybe crime does pay. These were specifically disallowed. The Code even declared entire topics off-limits. You couldn't write a story about drug use... pro or con. (The first mainstream comics to defy the Code were about the dangers of drug use.) You couldn't write a story expressing an opinion about homosexuality, because the subject couldn't even be mentioned. At best you might be able to fashion a Star-Trek-like metaphor for the topic you wanted to comment on, but that kind of vagueness leaves your point open to misinterpretation or just going over people's heads, which makes for a weaker story, not a stronger one.
The Code's overriding principle was that all comics should be suitable for children. It was tantamount to requiring that all movies in cinemas be rated G or PG. That wasn't just a challenge to storytellers' creativity, it was an assault on it. You simply cannot write a sophisticated, nuanced story about complex themes, on an adult reading level under the Code. Because kids couldn't handle that.
If you want writers who "look at both sides of a situation", read a newspaper. Most good writers of fiction have an actual point of view, and use their writing to express it. They shouldn't have to work around a system which declares their point of view impermissible, or the topics they wish to explore off-limits.
Re:I like Adam Smith's critique of small governmen (Score:3, Insightful)
We'd just have different problems if they all went away in any case; and, in America at least, if you really do work hard and hold down a decent job life really isn't going to be all that bad without a major health malady.
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:I like Adam Smith's critique of small governmen (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem is that, of all the economic growth over the last thirty years or so, almost all of it has gone to the top one percent. The owning class are actively redistributing wealth upwards. You may be alright being a slave, but I'm not. The working class creates wealth, by actually working, yet the wealth goes to the owning class, who thanks to socialism for the rich, don't even have the excuse that they are 'risking' their wealth by investing it in job creation. They get bailouts, even if the companies they own employ only minimum wage Indians and Asians and no actual Americans whatsoever.
Re:Congress: The New Superhero! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes, it is important to give Wertham his due props, because he did contribute positively to his community and our society in many ways. He was precisely the kind of complex shades-of-grey character that the Code prevented later comic book writers from depicting in their work.
Re:I like Adam Smith's critique of small governmen (Score:4, Insightful)
You misunderstand socialism. The problem isn't stupid people, it's greedy, evil, selfish people. You see, we have government to protect us from those people. Socialism isn't about helping people who are too stupid to help themselves, it is about protecting those too weak to protect themselves.
History has shown us that we can not educate the vast majority of people to become genius saints, that is simply not human nature. In fact, the idea that we need to "educate" humanity to be genius-saints is pure Marxism. It didn't turn out so well.
Giving to the poor benefits society. In a more egalitarian society where everyone has a place, people work harder. They cheat and steal less. Social stability improves. Unfortunately, some people want these benefits without paying for them. They want you to pay to help the poor, so they don't have to. I don't approve of crooks like that, and fully support making them pay their fair share.
Re:I like Thomas Jefferson's Critique of Large Gov (Score:3, Insightful)
I make over that and don't lose half my income. And I really don't see your imagined slippery slope as a problem. There is a clear distinction between the owning class who make the majority of their income from gambling (or 'investment' as they like to call it) and the vast majority of us who actually work for a living.
Most countries in the world pay a significantly larger proportion of GDP in taxes than we do. In fact, taxes in America account for less than 20% of GDP. Yet many citizens in many countries that pay more in taxes actually consider the taxes they pay to be a great bargain in exchange for the services they get.
So the real question is, what are we doing wrong here in America? Why are we not getting a good bargain? I would say, that is thanks to the corrupting influence of the rich man's money on politics.
Re:Actually, it's even bleaker than that (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Ah yes, Wertham (Score:3, Insightful)
Even then it was more of a procedural tool then anything else.
Re:You're not seeing the past correctly (Score:2, Insightful)
Some things do not change over time.
Fallacious reasoning is fallacious reasoning, today or 50 years ago. Censorship is censorship, today or 50 years ago.
No, it's not like that at all. It's more like going back in time to the 1950s and getting angry because so many people were ignorant enough to think that segregation was a good idea, and wishing that someone would do the Rosa Parks thing a few years earlier.
I WISH it were a parody... (Score:3, Insightful)
I really _wish_ it were a parody.
- the tract is very very real, as TheRaven64 already pointed out
- the accusation that comic books actually turn children into violent juvenile delinquents also was actually very real, and in fact the main thrust of the campaign against them. The muppet mentioned in TFA actually testified before the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency that comics are the cause for juvenile deninquency, and actually convinced them. The hearing that William Gaines got, and which another poster quoted actually happened before the same Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency.
If it helps, remember it was also roughly the same age when America also believed such stupidities as the Domino Effect, or such stupid theories as that the Americans are more creative (measured in patents!) than the Russkies (which didn't have a patent office, actually) because the Americans have more pictures in their children's books. The ideas that basically "monkey see, monkey do" and that pictures somehow have some kind of magical power over the mind of youngsters, were sadly very very real.
Why even politicians believed such things... now that's a good question. Lead water pipes, maybe? ;)
- the accusation that video games are making teenagers shoot up the school... well, just listen to Jack Thompson or Joe Lieberman, really. Or at the rhetoric waved around each time some school shooting happened.
Really, I wish such things were just a parody of reality. But reality actually is that some people are that freaking stupid, and that eager to have some scape goat for everything wrong today. Whenever that "today" may actually be.
For an idea of how far back it goes... well, let's just say the main accusation that got Socrates executed was that his ideas are a corrupting influence on the youth.