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Library of Congress Opens Records of Anti-Comic Book Shrink
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."
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.
Linux, you magnificent bastard, I read the fucking manual!
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.
Living With a Nerd
Chief Counsel Herbert Beaser: Let me get the limits as far as what you put into your magazine. Is the sole test of what you would put into your magazine whether it sells? Is there any limit you can think of that you would not put in a magazine because you thought a child should not see or read about it?
Bill Gaines: No, I wouldn't say that there is any limit for the reason you outlined. My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste.
Beaser: Then you think a child cannot in any way, in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that a child reads or sees?
Gaines: I don't believe so.
Beaser: There would be no limit actually to what you put in the magazines?
Gaines: Only within the bounds of good taste.
Beaser: Your own good taste and saleability?
Gaines: Yes.
Senator Estes Kefauver: Here is your May 22 issue. [Kefauver is mistakenly referring to Crime Suspenstories #22, cover date May] This seems to be a man with a bloody axe holding a woman's head up which has been severed from her body. Do you think that is in good taste?
Gaines: Yes sir, I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it, and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.
Kefauver: You have blood coming out of her mouth.
Gaines: A little.
Is Congress the new superhero, defending the rights of comic book readers everywhere? Um, no ...
...
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. Sure, the RIAA, MPAA and big radio would love that but it would kill creativity as we know it.
Comic books and video games aren't my cup of tea but that doesn't make me think they should be banned because those who enjoy them are delinquents and dangerous. If everyone who didn't share my POV was labeled dangerous
Damnit, you're not supposed to open the shrink wrap. Do you know how much value this has lost?
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.
Living With a Nerd
It's not Congress opening up these records, it's the Library of Congress.
Worst story EVER!
Rest assured, I was on the internet within minutes, registering my disgust.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
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?
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.
They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignorance. - Terry Pratchett
Golden Age Comics has many of these pre-code comics in friendly formats (i.e. not pdf) and available free downloads. Registration is required, however, as they are quite strapped for bandwidth, especially considering a single comic can easily be 30-50mb.
They also have a donations page if you're feeling generous wrt the free service they provide.
So check out some of these pre-code comics, they vary in quality immensely, but it's an interesting look back at what was considered vulgar and damaging to children 50+ years ago.
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.
I wrote that summary and CmdrTaco posted it without editing so I guess some if not all of the blame should be on me. And I'll concede that the statement is not accurate. There were staged comic book burnings and during the testimony, Kefauver and Wertham (a German doctor no less) opened their testimony with statements calling Hitler a "beginner" when compared to the comics industry as well as flat out claiming comic books affected children to the same way Nazi propaganda indoctrinated children. Several books on the history of comics detail this testimony including Bradford Wright's Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America.
... ? Also, you do know that after the reformation of the comic book industry, juvenile delinquency did not plummet, right? We can still purchase said comic books today. So it seems you have the public burnings to spread fear and you have the oddly selective nature of who is guilty but the "worse than Hitler" testimonial logic is probably more faulty than "weighs as much as a duck" so I don't know what the right label would be.
So I must confess I was wrong to use that phrase, clearly "a witch hunt" would have more sound logic than what was used in an attempt to have the government replace the parents in guiding their children. Tell me though, if you don't think it was a witch hunt, why did backing dry up when they tried to move on to television to clean up all the violence that children saw in the moving pictures? The unrealistic violence of Larry, Moe and Curly is okay because
Perhaps a better label would have been "insanity?"
My work here is dung.
Video games are corrupting our youth! Comic books cause delinquency! The internet is limiting our attention span!
Whatever. Save the children: brain-wash them to be "pure and innocent".. or the world will come to an end.
I know for a fact that I wouldn't be where I am today had I not had comic books when I was little, games like the Lucasarts point'n'click adventures when I was a teenager and the internet later on. I literally taught myself to read and write English and French (2nd and 3rd languages) through those things, and was given an incentive and the means to learn about computers and programming, which I happily and successfully make my living off today. There is no doubt in my mind that I would be a completely different person had Dr. Wertham and his minions deprived me of those.
So, I want whiners like that guy to just shut the hell up. I don't want them to censor my comic books, ban my video games or disconnect my internet, and I will fight tooth and nail to make sure my kids (if I ever have kids) will have unfettered access to all the stimuli I had when I was young (be those "good" or "bad" in Dr. Wertham's view).
I would go as far as to say, film ratings are stupid. What if a 12-year-old watches a 18+ movies instead of just Disney cartoons with rainbows and flying unicorns?
Good thing Dr. Wertham is already dead, because he would just HATE webcomics (omg, comic books on the internet! It's the work of the devil!)
Actually, it seems to me like that kind of idiots has an even bleaker view of it all.
They didn't just think that a violent comic or a violent game just "clearly it has no moral value", but rather that people and especially teenagers will mindlessly do whatever comics/games/tabletop-games/anything tells them to. Let's not forget that the book was called "Seduction Of The Innocent". And really that was the whole thrust. They think that if a 16 year old sees a comic cover where a guy with an axe is holding a woman's severed head, they'll go like mindless zombies and do a verbatim copy of the deed.
Or in more modern days that if some 16 year old spends an hour a day sniping in some FPS, next thing you know he'll climb on the school and snipe people, because he's just that mindless and unable to distinguish between reality and video games. Or that while a 17 year old may be old enough to be trusted to do that sniping (M rating is good enough there, see?) God forbid that he ever sees a boob, 'cause he's not ready for _that_ yet. He'll probably go on some rape spree than ends up with him giving the town council a facial shot. Or, really, dunno what.
And if you thought _that_ is stupid, well, at least one Chick Tract seems to be based on thinking that AD&D actually teaches children to cast real spells. But I digress.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
"Civil government, so far as it is instituted for the security of property, is in reality instituted for the defence of the rich against the poor, or of those who have some property against those who have none at all."
The Wealth of Nations,Book V, Chapter I, Part II, 775
If Government is stripped of all other functions save the defense of property, it is a tyranny of the rich. I believe that is why the rich nearly invariably favor small government. The more desperate the have-nots are, the more they will put up with and the less they will demand. Taking away social safety nets favors the rich employer who desires a pool of desperate, starving, cheap workers.
But the truly rich make up less than one percent of our population. Why do the non rich desire smaller government? Is it out of some philosophical principle? Well, if humans were commonly genius-saints, perhaps. But we aren't. Most of us start from our assumptions and reason backwards to find support. And most of the upper middle class assume they will be rich one day, despite the lack of any evidence that this is likely. The gap between an upper middle class person making $100,000 to $250,000 per year and an actual owning class person is tremendous. We do not have as much upward mobility in our society as we would like to believe, but everyone believes we do. Why? Simple: anyone who says they don't think they can make it is obviously a failure. Who wants to admit to being a failure? The myth says hard work will make you rich, what, are you lazy?
This is how the rich fool the middle class into defending the rich from the poor, even though the middle class has far more in common with the poor than the rich.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton