Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Rapeutationists and DIRA zombies are preconditioned for violent behavior by cinema and video game violence.

Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

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8. "Bumps and Bulges"

Advertising in Comic Books

"But they have raised no cry, I wonder why."
-- Countee Cullen


One is apt to forget that besides delinquent and emotionally disturbed children there are many children who are just plain unhappy. That is particularly true of adolescents. If you gain their confidence and give them a chance to talk to you under suitable circumstances you will find that one of their most frequent and serious worries has to do with the growth of their bodies.

Writing about the health problems of adolescents, Dr. J. Roswell Gallagher, one of the country's leading student-health specialists, gives first place to worries about health and development: "To the adolescent boy they are matters of vital concern. ... To be abnormal in growth or development is (to him) a very serious matter." He goes on to point out that parents and teachers often misunderstand that "among perfectly normal adolescents" there are great variations in height, weight, size and maturity from the standard average pattern.

Biologically these variations in physical development in boys and girls usually have little significance. They become worries and plague the children in their social context. Unsuitable reading, chance remarks by adults, kidding by other children, over-concern of parents, incautious remarks by doctors and so on are apt to set off worry and unhappiness over being "different" or "abnormal." Sexual maturation, mental and physical, may add associations, guilt feelings and fantasies. It is usually the same areas of the body that are involved in these worries. In boys it is the face (complexion and hair), the body build in general (muscular strength, height and weight) and the primary sexual characteristics. In girls it is the face, the general body build (fat distribution and weight) and the area of greatest psychological sensitivity, the breasts.

In psychotherapy of children with all kinds of difficulties I have found that one of the main goals has to be to raise their self-confidence. Adolescents with these hypochondriacal growth worries can be helped provided they come to the attention of an experienced adult. But for prevention, efforts directed at the individual child are not enough. Attention must be given to the adults who exploit these anxieties of children commercially.

No better method could be evolved to cause such worries or to aggravate them than the advertising in childrens' comic books. I understand that there are advertising associations or advertising councils interested in keeping products advertised, as well as the manner of their advertising, on an ethical level. If that is true, they must have looked the other way with regard to the stupendous amount of advertising in comic books. In any case, they "raised no cry." Advertising is, or could be -- quite apart from its selling aspect -- a wholesome educational influence. That in comic books is not only anti-educational, but has done untold harm to children from the point of view of public health and mental hygiene, not to speak of common human decency.

There are different types of adolescents, the Stanley Hall type, the Thomas Wolfe type and others. Whatever their social status, their native ability, they are all more or less susceptible to the worries and anxieties exploited by the scare advertisements in comic books. These advertisements are apt either to cause hypochondriasis or cater to it. In some children such hypochondriacal reactions assume serious forms. In the semipornographic, semiobscene magazines for adults sold at the newsstand, some of the same products and some of the same advertisers can be found. Sometimes the names of the firms are different, but the addresses are the same. When these advertisements are in comic books they are slanted to children and adolescents.

Advertisements in comic books have caused decent boys and girls many tears. This advertising brings the comic-book industry an enormous revenue. In the Journal of the American Medical Association Dr. Harry F. Dietrich, writing from the point of view of pediatrics, said that "parents must be shown that pimples and pounds are relatively unimportant problems." He spoke of "puerile worrying about temporary cosmetic blemishes, guilty worrying about juvenile masturbation, and competitive worrying about their children's ounces and inches" as "all this wasted emotional effort." But what chance do parents have when by mass advertising campaigns children are inveigled to worry about these very things and encouraged to keep away from doctors and secretly buy expensive, phony and sometimes harmful remedies?

I have seen a number of cases where pre-adolescents or adolescents have fallen for these advertised products which of course did not help them. The advertisements merely stimulated their hypochondriasis and increased their mental anguish. I have on different occasions openly drawn attention to this public-health violation. It is a matter which the Federal Trade Commission could have taken up. Since the claims in advertisements are often exaggerated, misleading and false, the Post Office could• have prosecuted for fraud. Nothing happened, except that the advertisements got more brazen and shameless. Only one health department, one of the biggest and best in the country. took up the matter at all. Its report stated that it found large quantities of "dangerously misleading advertisements" in comic books, and that "many thousand comic books contain ads promoting the sale of bogus patent medicines." It pointed out how these advertisements were especially directed to adolescents: "The comic books grow worse each year in accepting flagrantly misleading ads. The pity of it all is that teen-agers are very conscious of their appearance. They send for these phony-and-harmful skin cure-alls without telling their parents." Nothing was done, however, even after this outspoken confirmation of my findings by an official public health agency. The charmed existence of the comic-book industry evidently extends to its advertisements.

In order to guard youth against overconcern about skin or figure, and to help when they are plagued by fears of abnormality or ugliness, one must try to make them less self-conscious. Dr. Gallagher points out from his experience that one must assure them that there is no cause for shame. And he warns that one should not even use the word problems in this connection because it "has much too gloomy a sound."

Millions of comic books do exactly the opposite. They especially play up these very words which should be avoided. Advertising people tell me that in the profession this is called the "emotional appeal." And that is precisely what it is -- ruthlessly playing on the emotions of children. They ask children whether they are not "self-conscious" about one minor or fancied ailment or another, thereby, of course, deliberately making them self-conscious or unhappy. They promise to help them if they are "ashamed" about some little, or perhaps even nonexistent, blemish, thereby, of course, causing them to feel unnecessarily ashamed. They frighten the girls by insinuating to them that they have "problem bosoms." This phrase alone thrown at twelve- or thirteen-year-old little girls is enough to precipitate a severe and distressing hypochondriacal reaction. No wonder they are willing to spend money on all kinds of pills, ointments and gadgets!

Even girls without neurotic trends are apt to be sensitive about their breasts during and before adolescence. Some girls mature earlier than their classmates and go through agonies because they fear they are conspicuous. The opposite may of course occur, too. There are all kinds of folklore superstitions that the growth and shape of the breasts has something to do with past or future sexual life. Usually it is difficult for a woman, and much more so for an adolescent girl, to tell even a doctor about such secret preoccupations. A genuine sexual hypochondriasis may center around the breasts in very young girls, with anxiety, fear dreams, preoccupation with sex and guilt feelings.

Here is fertile soil for the comic-book "breast ads." They promise certain help for "problem bosoms," "NO MATTER WHAT SHAPE BOSOM YOU HAVE" ($5.95). A typical full-page advertisement in a comic book addressed to "Junior" has two photographs of girls, one average, the other with markedly protruding comic-book-style breasts, The caption says:

DO MEN CHOOSE MARY OR ALICE?


and goes on:

When Tom H- met Mary W- and Alice B-, folks wondered who the lucky girl would be. Both girls were pretty and charming, and grand fun, and enjoyed the same interests Tom did. But, somehow, it was Alice whose lips Tom bent to in the moonlight . . . it was Alice whose "I do" rose breathlessly at the altar ....

Tom's choice was not surprising. For it is the woman with a beautiful, alluring bust contour who most often wins the admiration, popularity and affection every woman desires. And there can be no COMPLETE feminine beauty without a warmly rounded, lovely bust contour, symbol of woman eternal. Look through history. Look around you today. It is the woman with graceful, appealing figure lines who enjoys social and romantic triumph. Yes, there are many lovely Marys whose wit, charm and friendliness cannot compete with the natural law of man's attraction to beauty fulfilled completely.

The _____ Ritual . . . may be able to improve the handicap of unappealing figure lines . . . which may mean the difference between loneliness and thrilling romantic fulfillment! Formerly $2.00 ... Don't let skepticism or discouragement deny you the opportunity for happiness ... Be fair to yourself, to your future as a woman.


One must always remember that an issue of such a comic book has an edition of hundreds of thousands of copies. In such a large number, a percentage of unfortunate girls are bound to fall for it, worry themselves sick, keep their worries a secret, and send for the advertised merchandise.

Suppose a girl does not fall for these photographs and the accompanying text. Other advertisements suggest a test even more apt to give her inferiority feelings and' make her think she is not as other girls. "BREASTS LOSING FIRMNESS?" screams another ad (on the same page on which a doll is advertised). This one promises to lift your breast "into a vital-beautiful form," It tries to persuade the adolescent girl that there are three kinds of inferiorities: first, "those with normally firm bosoms who want that added lift and separation that make the difference between an ordinary appearance and real figure beauty"; second, those whose breasts lack "firmness"; third, girls with "PROBLEM BOSOMS" ($1.98).

But maybe even these pictures, their text and the "firmness test" do not make enough girls worried. Then there are full• course lessons in hypochondriasis. In a comic book with stories of love's frustrations there is a full-page advertisement (found in many other comic books, too) with sets of photographs: "Before" and "After." The "Before" look like average girls; the "After" have noticeably protruding breasts. Accompanying these pictures are three sets of diagrams, each purporting to show profiles of women's bust lines. Any girl, of course, especially after she has been alarmed by the text, can identify herself with at least one of these diagrams and brood about the corresponding information: "SELF-CONSCIOUS ABOUT YOUR FLAT-LOOKING BUST LINE?" ($2.49). Some advertisements are especially directed to growing girls whose busts are just starting to develop and lead off with screamers: "SMALL BUST." They promise a "secret patent-pending feature" for "UNSHAPELY SMALL BUSTS." Such advertisements have caused inferiority feelings in countless children, some of whom will carry this emotional burden with them through life.

The ultrabosomy girls depicted as ideal in comic-book stories and the countless breast and figure advertisements make young girls genuinely worried long before the time of puberty. These very young girls become entrapped by the sex appeal of comic-book pictures and the "emotional appeal" of their advertisements. Laura's case is a good example. One day her mother came home unexpectedly. Laura was nine years old at that time. As her mother told it to me, "she put tissue paper inside of her dress so that she would have a bosom. She must want to grow up too fast. She wants to grow up and be fixed up beautifully." I asked Laura's mother to tell me more about the girl. "There is nothing wrong with her," she said. "She reads comic books all the time. She reads Jumbo, Archie, Jeanie, Millie the Model, also Nellie the Nurse. One day my husband picked up a comic book. He said, 'Who the h___ reads this?' I said, 'Laura does.' He said, What, all those naked women?' I said, 'Well, that is all they sell for the children, what can you do?'" The psychiatric social worker to whom I turned Laura over for guidance reported to me later that the girl had absorbed all the breast lore from comic-book pictures and advertisements.

Some adolescents, depending on their type of constitution, pass through phases of growth when they are apt to be chubby. Is that something unimportant, which most of them will outgrow? No, comic-book ads say. There are "valuable secrets on how to get the most out of your life! DISCOVER HOW TO BE HAPPY ... LOVED ... Do something positive about your unsightly superfluous fat" (tablets, $1.98).

There are other "secrets," too, to help the adolescent girl once she has become sufficiently self-conscious about her figure: belts, girdles, creams, pills, tablets, books, reducing contraptions, massage, etc. In the unending stream of advertisements it goes like this:

I lost 70 lbs. in 5 months

Lose fat fast. 10 lbs. in 10 days ($2.98)

Reduce safely ... Take off 7 lbs. the first week! Lose ugly fat now ($2.50) -- (This one is in a comic book endorsed by a psychiatrist.)

How an unhappy fat girl became a happy slim girl ... 5 lbs., 10 lbs., 20 lbs. -- even more, as many as you want! (Full month's supply, $2.00, three months', $5.00) Not sold in drugstores.


No matter what part of her body a girl may be sensitive about, skillful advertisements take care of every eventuality and scare her with the supposed ugliness and serious import of "BUMPS AND BULGES" ($2.98). Special attention is drawn to "buttocks":

You have nothing to lose but weight ($2.00)

It helps restore the right curves in the right places ($2.00)

Don't suffer humiliation and ridicule by being fat! ($2.00)

The only known food product listed in medical dictionaries as an aid in reducing! ($4.00)


Modern medicine has definite scientific knowledge about weight reduction. Expert medical authorities have clearly expostulated this knowledge to other physicians in medical journals. And in popular writings addressed to the non-medical public, it has been made available to adults. But to children we teach exactly the opposite of the well-established scientific truth.

Dr. Frank H. Krusen, chairman of the Council on Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, at the request of the Council on Foods and Nutrition, wrote in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "No form of external manipulation is capable of removing adipose tissue from a particular region of the body. Massage will not reduce local deposits of fat.... " Speaking of "spot reducing," he states that the value of "these devices is absolutely nil." His article makes it perfectly clear that "there is no 'easy way' to reduce fat. Proper reduction of the intake of food is the only logical method of reducing weight."

The excellent pamphlet, "Overweight and Underweight," put out by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, contains genuinely scientific information: "Massage will not take off pounds.... There is no way to reduce safely without eating less.... No easy way is safe." Unfortunately the number of adults who read this pamphlet is infinitesimally small in comparison with the millions of children and adolescents who learn the opposite in comics advertisements:

GREATEST BENEFIT IN REDUCING BY MASSAGE

The method is so simple and so easy: NO EXERCISE OR STRICT DIETS. Scientifically designed reducer. Your own private masseur at home.

Apply over most any part of the body-stomach, hips, chest, thighs, buttocks, etc. USED BY EXPERTS. Thousands have lost weight this way. Can be used in the privacy of your own home ($8.95 plus postage)


Of course adolescents who pass through a slender growth phase are not forgotten:

Skinny Girls are NOT Glamour Girls!

Ashamed of your skinny, scrawny figure?

-- can help you to add pounds and pounds of firm attractive flesh to your figure

Checked by our medical director, a well-known New York practicing physician . . . ($2.00)

If ... you are ashamed of your skinny scrawny figure ... a doctor-approved formula ... So don't let them snicker at your skinny, scrawny figure. A skinny scarecrow figure is neither fashionable nor glamourous. Remember, the girls with the luscious seductive curves get the dates. ($2.00)

SKINNY GIRLS DON'T HAVE OOMPH!

You will want those extra pounds that "bring out" your natural eye-catching curves. Take _____ faithfully for a week. See if you can't actually feel the difference. ($2.00 plus C.O.D. charges)


Some perfume advertisements try to make girls anxious and discouraged. "Do people talk about you? Are you alone? Unhappy? Discouraged? Are you a girl who just can't seem to find the right man?" (Gossip perfume, $2.00 plus postage). Others stimulate girls to erotic fantasies and arouse sadistic-masochistic wishes: "Do you want to make men obey you? ... Do you want to make him obey your every command? (Chez-Elle perfume, $2.00 plus postage).

Or:

Dear Friend: ... the same double power she used when she took a husband away from his wife or a sweetheart away from the arms of his loved one ... (Diablo's secret perfume, $3.00 plus postage)

Men killed each other just for her favors and when she beckoned men leaped to obey ... (Fury perfume, $3.00 plus postage)

Can you make strong men weak? Do you dream of THRILLING moments of LOVE and ECSTASY? ... Let Blue Passion help bring him into your arms ... (Blue Passion perfume, $2.00 plus postage)

All my life I dreamed that some day I would find a perfume that would raise a man's ardor ... (Man-Trap perfume, $2.00 plus postage)


Skin conditions are another field for comic-book scare advertisements. Acne. pimples, blackheads and complexion troubles of all kinds are a cause for worry, inferiority feelings, anxiety and, on account of superstitious beliefs, guilt feelings about sex. This effect they are apt to have not only on insecure children, but on the rank and file of children in general. "Acne affects adolescents at the time of life when their appearance is of most importance to them," writes Dr. Marion Sulzberger. "It often produces feelings of inferiority and psychologic and emotional damage which may be permanent and which often color later life." The main trouble with these mild skin conditions is that they upset people, especially children, so seriously. Comic-book advertisements do all that they can to make boys and girls extremely self-conscious about their skin, and to feel miserable when there is the slightest blemish. They promise instant, miraculous cures.

A full page advertisement begins with this dialogue:

"Ask your friend Tom."

Tom, why don't Sis and I get invited to proms and parties?"

"Frankly, Jim, it's those ugly blackheads."


Then follows the indoctrination with fears and shame:

What a "black mark" is the blackhead ... according to men and girls popular enough to be choosy about dates!

"Nobody's dreamboat!" "Nobody's date bait!" And that's not all that's said of those who are careless about blackheads. But blackheads ARE ugly! Blackheads ARE grimy! And they DON'T look good in close-ups!

So can you blame the fellow who says, "Sure, I meet lots of girls who look cute at first glance. But if, on that second glance, I see dingy black -- it's good night!"

Or can you blame the girl who confesses, "I hate to go out with a fellow who has blackheads, if he's careless about that you're sure he'll embarrass you in other ways, too!"

But you -- are YOUR ears burning? Well, you've company, and, sad to say, good company. There are lots of otherwise attractive fellows and girls who could date anyone they like if they'd only realize how offensive blackheads are and how easily and quickly they could get rid of them, If they want to! ... The "he-man" who's also clean-cut, will get the breaks wherever he is! . . . Even cute girls get careless.... So don't take chances, cute though you may be!


Another statement in the advertising is, "Those ugly blackheads give others such a wrong impression of you!" Some boys take this as a reference to masturbation and react with worry, guilt feelings and withdrawal. The advertised cure is to use a gadget to extract blackheads mechanically ($1.00).

Children read these skin ads very closely. A fourteen-year-old girl said in the Clinic, "I had one pimple once. I read all about it in the pimple ads. I wondered how it would come out if I put something on it." Many boys and girls have more pimples and buy the "remedies" on the strength of such advertisements as these:

Your good qualities -- intelligence, character, dignity -- all go to nought, are completely cancelled out by a skin that nobody loves to touch ... To remove the distressing embarrassment of these skin blemishes ... ($1.98)


Many of the advertisements give the children the impression that buying such a product is like going to a doctor, thereby keeping them away from real medical advice which might either reassure them quickly or really help them. For example, a big ad directed to girls concerned about pimples says:

STOP Losing Your Chances for Dates ...

It's so easy that a few weeks from today you won't believe your mirror! ... PLANNED BY DOCTOR. ($2.00)


A full-page advertisement with four pictures of schoolboys and girls starts with a blazing headline:

I WAS ASHAMED OF MY FACE

"I just want to be alone!" ... The skin doctor's formula ... works wonders ... ($2.00 plus postage)

Now while the memory of prying eyes deepens your misery ... save your present and your future ... Special Note to Girls ... Embarrassed by periodic pimples? ($2.00)


Some children get so worried about acne and the repeated failure of the costly comic-book cures that they withdraw socially to such an extent that they look like -- and have been diagnosed as -- incipient schizophrenia. The unwary physician who does not remember that one has to gain a youngster's confidence first and make the diagnosis afterwards may fall into this error. I have seen a number of such cases of skin-sex hypochondriasis. All examinations and tests ruled out schizophrenia. A high school student was presented to me at the Clinic by one of my assistants with a history of liking to be by himself and brooding. He had been previously diagnosed as incipient schizophrenia. I elicited that what he had were not irrational worries, but very understandable and comic-book-ad inspired ones: "Ever since I was getting out of public school I worried about it [acne]. I read the full-page ads in the comic books and I did what they said, but it didn't help. There are times when I withdraw completely. I can see myself standing there in front of the mirror. I scratched this -- I can't remember ... [weeps]."

A thirteen-year-old girl showed me an advertisement which made her deeply concerned about some minor cosmetic blemish. It has a big photograph of a girl, her head lowered on her arms, her face contorted, evidently from crying, a handkerchief clutched in one hand. Above it in enormous capitals:

STOP crying about PIMPLES

($3.00 plus postage charges)


Concern about hair is not overlooked in comic-book ads:

Here is thrilling new hope. Do you want longer hair? ... Your hair to become softer, silkier, more lustrous than it has been before -- in just one short week! ... ($1.00)


Advertisements for boys cover different areas, but appeal to the same kind of susceptibility to juvenile hypochondriasis as those for girls. The concern of boys with growth and body build is exploited in advertisements illustrated with photographs of supermuscular he-men (often with big genitals like some of the comic-book heroes). I have seen a number of cases of boys who were developing more slowly than some of their friends, who were only mildly concerned about it until comics ads made them feel downright ashamed. These advertisements go like this:

How to Make YOUR Body Bring You FAME instead of SHAME! Are You Skinny? Weak? Flabby? ... I know what it means to have the kind of body that people pity! ... I don't care how old or young you are or how ashamed of your present physical condition ... I can shoot new strength into your old backbone ... help you cram your body so full of pep, vigor and vitality that you won't feel there's even standing room left for weakness and that lazy feeling! ...


A full-page advertisement illustrated with photos of muscular he-men says:

From a SKINNY WEAKLING to a MIGHTY MAN ...

I gained 53 lbs. of MIGHTY MUSCLE. 6-1/2 inches on my CHEST; 3 inches on each ARM. You can do it in 10 minutes a day!


Presently the same advertisement appeared (December, 1953) in a super-endorsed comic book with a public service page of the National Social Welfare Assembly. Now "Skinny" gains "70 lbs." of mighty muscle, his chest grows "7 inches" and his arms "3-1/2 inches each"!

The large art photos of male nudes wearing only scanty trunks are a special comic-book feature. Of course there are boys who look at them admiringly because they are interested in body development. But he must be an inexperienced psychologist indeed who does not know that these photos of supermales serve also other purposes. Boys with latent (and sometimes not so latent) homosexual tendencies collect these pictures, cut them out and use them for sexual stimulation. One of my patients started to cut out these photos at the age of eleven. One ordinary children's comic has no less than fifteen such photographs!

Many children get hurt in two ways by these he-man ads: They get disappointed when they do not get results, and they get homoerotic fantasies from the photographs. One ten-year-old boy was treated at the Clinic because he had prostituted himself to men. He looked a little too small for his age. He told us how he studied comic-book ads to correct this: "I have one of those books at home. It is no good. I got several. I started doing it for thirty-five days and nothing happened. I tried it for my arm -- you know, 'mighty arms.' I thought I could be strong, but it didn't work. All I did was keep the pictures of the wrestlers and boxers and photographs of strong men and muscle men."

Comic-book advertisements give children the idea of scrutinizing themselves in a mirror, to look for anything they should worry about. One ad has a big balloon:

Hey SKINNY! Yer ribs are showing!


and continues farther down the page:

When you look in the mirror ... practice in the privacy of your own room ... just watch your scrawny chest and shoulder muscles begin to swell ... those spindly arms and legs of yours bulge ...!


Some of these advertisements hint at worries and guilt feelings based on the superstitiously supposed effects of masturbation.

BUNK! Nobody is just naturally skinny! Girls snickered at me behind my back. Are you always tired? Nervous? Lacking in confidence? Constipated? Suffering from bad breath? Do you want to gain weight?


Another ad advising you how to become "an all-around HE-MAN" says "Prove it to yourself in one night!"

Emphasis on the region of the "crotch" in some ads directs attention to a similar line of thought, as do "supporter" ads ($2.98) and remedies for "itching" which "may go ... to the crotch of the legs." ($1.00). It is not only a fraudulent claim, but an invitation to sexual hypochondriasis when an ad says:

Do the best science knows for you to do to GROW MORE VIRILE HAIR IN 30 DAYS.


For all these artificially created or aggravated inferiority feelings, the comic-book ads offer one emotional outlet: overcompensation in brutality. Under the thin disguise of self-defense, full-page ads are permitted to tell millions of children:

I BROKE HIS HAND LIKE A MATCH!

It was easy! He was helpless. He howled with pain! ... Method of Offensive Defense, based on natural, instinctive impulse-action ... Smashing, crashing, bone-shattering, nerve-paralyzing method ... 70 BONE-BREAKING SECRETS . . . ($1.00 -- formerly sold at $5.00)


Besides all these "health," body building, complexion, "bumps-and-bulges," he-man and brutality advertisements there is a stupendous amount of advertising which deserves to be called a childhood armament program. Comic-book advertisements use any device known to advertising writers to fascinate children with weapons. Children have been supplied with arms through these comic-book ads or have learned from them how to make their own weapons, some of them deadly. In one radio discussion about comic books the time-worn argument was raised that Grimm's fairy tales are violent, too. John K. M. McCaffery, newscaster and literary critic, interposed that he had seen lots of weapons advertised in comic books, but had yet to see an edition of Grimm's fairy tales with advertisements of crossbows.

In millions of comic books, ads make all kinds of weapons attractive to children. There are premiums for boys and girls "consisting of genuine .22 cal. rifles" (of course, with an illustration of the rifle). This is a deadly weapon and only the other day a fourteen-year-old boy killed an eighteen-year-old with one of them.

All kinds of "toy" guns and pistols are advertised in comic books. A typical advertisement has a big picture of a gun:

Amazing new gun. Shoots like a real gun.


An accompanying sequence teaches how the gun might be used to threaten people:

You fooled us, kid, I thought that gun was a real one!


Other guns can be transformed into dangerous weapons. An eleven-year-old boy who knew his way around told me about one of them: "They can make it snap faster with an elastic. They shoot little round pebbles. You get the pebbles from puzzles they sell in stores. They fall in little holes when the puzzles are jiggled around."

A great role in the advertising is played by B.B. and air guns. Some shoot B.B.'s, some, steel darts. They are considered harmless by some people -- but not by children who have been injured or by those who have lost an eye when shot by them.

Medical journals and public agencies have drawn attention to the many serious eye accidents from B.B. and air guns. I inquired of one public agency, which knew of a number of cases blinded by these weapons, what they were going to do about it. They answered that they were "planning a campaign to reach all children in school about the horrors of B.B. guns." Dr. James B. Bain, of Washington, D.C., reports twenty-nine eye injuries, in five of which an eye had to be removed -- all caused by B.B. guns in one single year in Washington alone. As reported in the Journal of the American Medical Association, the Society for the Prevention of Blindness of the District of Columbia reports nine B.B. eye injuries in three months and asks for laws prohibiting the sale of B.B. guns to children under eighteen: "The only effective way of preventing these injuries is to ban the sale, use and possession of air guns."

According to statistics from 421 hospitals all over the country, reported by Pathfinder, there were from Christmas, 1949, through January, 1950, 275 air gun injuries; 164 of them were eye injuries, with permanent impairment of vision in sixty-four and eye removal in twenty-five. Philadelphia pioneered with a humane ordinance banning air guns. The results were spectacular, a lesson to those who do not realize that progress in preventive medicine is helped by laws. Where there had been seventeen air rifle eye injuries treated at Wills Hospital in Philadelphia in the short survey period, in the twenty-five months following enactment of the ordinance there was only one. A similar observation was made in Pittsburgh, where in 1951 an eye injury from B.B. guns occurred once every twelve days; when the use of these guns was restricted there was only one such injury in 1952. No wonder that the National Society for the Prevention of Blindness suggested in 1953 an ordinance, which among other things would prevent the sale of air guns to minors.

All this is a good illustration of the social problems of comic books: On the one hand adults and children are warned against these guns; at the same time glamorous advertisements in comics seduce more and more children into wanting, buying and using them. Children's real interests seem to count for little. While the experts in ophthalmology know the danger of these guns and have advocated the only real method of prevention, there are experts in child psychiatry and education who do not draw the line at endorsing comic books which have ads with big pictures of these guns:

Strap this sweet-shootin' -- on your bike ... Only $6.95

Shoot regular steel BBs ... ($6.95)


Dr. William C. Menninger has called the pre-adolescent period "the golden age for mental hygiene." It seems also to be the "golden age" for comic-book publishers, advertisers and experts. Text, pictures and medical endorsements blend to lead both child and parent astray. Take a 1953 endorsed comic book which contains the story of "Superman when he was Superboy." It has a full-page colored advertisement for an air rifle in which a newspaper editor says about an air rifle program: "The police like the idea -- so does the school superintendent -- so do the ministers." The ophthalmologists do not!

After one of the instances when a boy was killed in an adolescent gang fight, John E. Cone, chief of the Kings County District Attorney's homicide bureau, made a full investigation which verified my findings on comic-book advertising. He reported:

"We collected a veritable arsenal of home-made weapons, switch-blade knives, milk can handles converted into brass knuckles, and so forth. We found out pretty much of their ideas were obtained from comic books. For instance, in one book a lad showed us how to change a converted cap gun into a lethal weapon. And these lads also purchased a number of guns as a result of the advertisements contained in these crime comic books. Many times they will say that comic books are for adult consumption, whereas actually the advertisements would never appeal to an adult."

Knives of different kinds are advertised in comic books, too. How far has the armament program for children progressed in the knife category? A search of a single school yielded 141 knives! The attitude of the authorities towards knives in the hands of children seems to be this: Let's permit adults to advertise and sell to juveniles as many knives as possible; then, when they buy and use them let's punish the juveniles as severely as possible. In some neighborhoods detectives and policemen have been instructed to bring to the station house any youth who carries weapons. Weekly checks for dangerous weapons in places where children are apt to meet have been announced. A national magazine had an article about the dangers of switchblade knives sold to and used by children, with the rather cynical comment that the toll up to now was "relatively small -- a few dozen children killed, somewhat more wounded." This article concluded: "Don't let your son be smart-alecky about a knife. De-glamorize knife-carrying to him." What possible good can such suggestions do when at the same time enticing comic-book advertisements offer these very switchblade knives for sale to even the youngest child? And while the ads supply the knives, the stories describe their use for skilled violence. You see the young boy, with his hand in his pocket where the switchblade knife is carried, talking to a grown-up. Suddenly he whips out the knife (and you see the exact way to hold it, with your thumb on the button): "Make a move and I'll whittle you down to half my size!"

Despite the facts that according to police authorities switchblade knives are "one of the worst weapons out," that their sale to children under sixteen is forbidden, that in New York alone teen-agers and switchblade knives were involved in some one thousand stabbings, that switchblade-wielding teen-agers have been held in bail of $100,000 each, millions of comic books carry illustrated advertisements:

"FLINGS OPEN FAST." "Big size! Only $1.65."


Juvenile gangs sometimes spring up quickly. Gang leaders have told me about the problem of arming them. Here comic-book advertising has proved a great help. A full-page advertisement offers a:

10-PIECE KNIFE SET

8-inch blade roast slicer
8-inch blade ham slicer
7-inch blade butcher knife
5-inch blade sandwich knife
4-inch blade vegetable knife
4-inch blade utility knife
3-inch blade paring knife
4-inch blade grapefruit knife
8-inch sharpeningknife


The question of the kitchen-set knife ads came up several times in Hookey Club sessions. Once a thirteen-year-old boy said, "This knife set in the comic books is disguised as a kitchen set, but of course the kids immediately know what to use them for. They buy them and split them up. In the schools where I was, the boys use them. They have straps and strap them on their legs. See the point there? They specify the point so that you know how you can use it. But they make out it is for meat! Naturally the boys are not going to buy them for cutting meat and so forth!"

One type of advertisement I call the "arsenal ad." It consists of a whole page of illustrations and text offering guns, pistols, rifles, throwing-knives, leather whips, slingshots, fencing-sets and other useful toys for children of the comic-book era. Police have found whole arsenals of weapons in children's hiding-places and traced some of the arms back to these ads.

Comic books have other dubious advertisements of miscellaneous character. I have examined and treated a number of youths after they had been arrested for prowling about trying to look in windows to see women undressing. Most of them were rather harmless and responded readily to common-sense forms of psychotherapy and guidance. One of them told me about "peeping Tom ads" in comics and other boys confirmed their suggestive significance. There are telescope ads, for example, offering: "Real power and up-close clear view! A 1,000 thrills are yours with this powerful imported telescope. Enjoy life! ... Bring some scenes so close you feel you can touch them!" Another advertisement, for binoculars:

You'll get the thrill of a lifetime when you take your first look through these powerful binoculars. It's positively amazing how well you can see ... You'll be able to see people and wild life from a distance and watch what they're doing when they can't see you. Enjoy front row seats from way back!


Boys in New York, Boston or Chicago who buy these binoculars are well aware that there is no "wild life" on city streets. They also know what else these optical instruments can be used for. Some ads point this out:

... Bring in distant people with amazing clarity and sharp detail ... See without being seen ... ($3.94)


In some ads it is especially pointed out that you can look into "neighbors' homes" and the illustrated telescope points to a half-nude girl.

Many "human relations ads" are not exactly helpful to juveniles. One is for a course for boys on getting along with girls:

It's Easy to Win Her! Women are funny -- Put psychology to work. No more clumsy mistakes for you ... Don't be a Faux pas!


This last phrase would indicate that the retooling for illiteracy has made headway even among advertising copywriters!

There are courses for girls on how to handle boys, too:

Learn once and for all how to get along with men in this amazing handbook


Comic-book stories teach violence, the advertisements provide the weapons. The stories instill a wish to be a superman, the advertisements promise to supply the means for becoming one. Comic-book heroines have super-figures; the comic-book advertisements promise to develop them. The stories display the wounds; the advertisements supply the knives. The stories feature scantily clad girls; the advertisements outfit peeping Toms.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Thu Dec 05, 2013 11:39 pm

PART 1 OF 2

9. The Experts for the Defense

The Scientific Promotion of Comic Books

"But when you notice the intent, You are dismayed at what is meant."
-- Schiller


The direct effect of comic books on children through their pictures, text and advertisements is reinforced by an indirect influence: endorsements and writings of experts. They affect the child through parents, teachers, doctors, clergymen, adults in general and public opinion.

The comics industry took hold of the minds of children unobserved. Those whose function it would have been to watch what happens to children took no notice of comic books, or if they did, regarded them as trivial; at any rate, did not read them. When through sporadic cases it came out that comic books had harmed children, the conquest of American childhood by the industry was already an accomplished fact. The children, many of them despite guilt feelings, accepted the comic books, and the adults, many of them against their better judgment, accepted the opinions of the experts.

The experts for the defense function primarily on two fronts: first, to counteract the healthy reaction of parents against crime comics in all their disguises; secondly, to combat the criticism voiced by professional people once they begin to look at samplings of comic books children have been reading for years. The activity of these experts for the defense came in two waves. One, in the early forties, followed the disclosure of what comic books really are by the literary critic, Sterling North. The second, in 1948, came after I first presented the results of my studies of comic books in Washington and demonstrated their actual sadistic marrow. These two peaks are well documented by the two special comic-book issues of the Journal of Educational Sociology, both edited by Professor Harvey Zorbaugh of New York University's School of Education. Their special pleading in the guise of "dispassionate scrutiny" represented an all-time low in American science. But as publicity for comic books these issues were well-timed and immensely successful.

From magazines, newspapers and the radio, and from the endorsements on so many comic books, one may get the wrong impression that there are many scientific experts defending comic books. Actually the brunt of the defense is borne by a mere handful of experts. Their names occur over and over again. They are connected with well-known institutions, such as universities, hospitals, child-study .associations or clinics. That carries enormous weight with professional people and, of course, even more so with casual lay readers and parents all over the country.

In their actual effect the experts for the defense represent a team. This, of course, docs not mean that they work as a team. They work individually. But their way of reasoning, their apologetic attitude for the industry and its products, their conclusions -- and even their way of stating them -- are much alike. So it is possible to do full justice to them by discussing them as a team rather than individually. There is little danger of quoting them out of context, for what they have to say is so cut and dried that one quotation from the writing of one expert fits just as well into that of another.

Of course they contradict one another occasionally, or contradict themselves between one paper and another. That is not really their fault, but part of the impossible thesis they defend. One expert who has endorsed an enormous number of crime comics, for example, will point out the great vital appeal they have for children, while another proclaims that "crime comics are read mostly by adults." One writes: "Comic-book readers like their comics in large doses," while another is proclaiming that "an excess of this reading suggests a need for deeper study not of the reading, but of the child." Or one will say that comic-book stories are only fantasy and the children know it, while another is saying of comic-book characters, "To their readers they are real flesh and blood people." Or, to take an example of self-contradiction from a rather sketchy article by another of the experts: He writes that only 36 per cent of adults unqualifiedly approve of comic books as reading for children and that the objections refer to the most serious areas a parent can be concerned about, the "danger to character and mental health." Despite this, he draws the contradictory conclusion that "on the whole American adults approve the comics as a medium of entertainment for children."

One expert writes about the fact that children, while they may neglect their other possessions, "hardly ever deface or lose a comic book. These books are treasured, they are objects of barter, they become collector's items," Another expert writes that the fact that comic books are "cheap publications which may be destroyed or bartered without compunction makes the comics comparable to stories told by storytellers of old," In other words facts do not make much difference to these experts; comic books are good anyhow.

The question of why children become excessive crime-comics readers is also answered both ways by the experts. On the one hand they say that this excessive reading is, in each individual child, the sign of a separate disease, On the other hand, they state with equal confidence that it is part of the normal stages of childhood. Actually, of course, the stages of childhood do not unfold automatically, independent of social influences. Excessive comic-book reading is an adult-induced condition, to which, for a number of reasons, some children are more susceptible than others, although none is immune.

Comic books, one expert writes, "may be used as an introduction to reading of the originals -- particularly of the Bible." Another team-expert will inadvertently admit the opposite, that "one of the most unfortunate things about comic books is that ... children are not so apt to read better books which might of course influence them to higher ideals."

The names of experts for the defense and of the institutions with which they are connected have been printed in millions of comic books and/or full-page comic-book advertisements in the Saturday Evening Post and the Saturday Review of Literature and/or in statements by the publishers or their spokesmen. The chairman of the Section of Criminal Law of the American Bar Association, commenting on the writers in the two special comic-book issues of the Journal of Educational Sociology, found it "disappointing" that in a "purportedly objective study" experts do "not make a complete disclosure of their interests." He further mentions that when he wrote to one of the experts to enquire about this, "she did not respond." [1]

In quoting experts for the defense in this chapter I am referring to those specifically mentioned in the Kefauver Report as having or having had connections with the industry. There are, of course, sporadic experts who have defended comic books without any such connection. I do not consider them as members of the defense-team.

Speaking in a very different connection of "impartial" studies made by experts economically connected with an industry, the Commissioner of Investigation of the City of New York has taken the view that such studies should be discounted: "You do not bite the hand that feeds you." The New York State Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comics, in seeking the opinions on crime comics from a wide variety of experts, including psychiatrists, judges and educators, discounted testimony by any of these team-experts. This may well be a proper attitude to take in order to ascertain the true facts for judicial or legislative purposes. But since I was carrying out a scientific investigation I took a different course, and studied all the team-experts carefully as if their opinions had been expressed gratis. I cannot agree with some of the experts that the fact that comic books are so widely read proves them to be all right. To my mind it only shows that they are deserving of study. In the same way, I do not believe that because the opinions of the experts for the defense are so well circulated, they must be all right. To me that indicates that they, also, are a proper object of study.

As my inquiry proceeded, I wanted continuously to criticize my own conclusions in the light of the opposing views. So I took all the experts very seriously, at least until I had analyzed their arguments. The devil can quote scripture for his purpose. What would these experts quote? I found them mentioning Aristotle, Freud and the brothers Grimm. According to Newsweek's "Platform," "at least half of all comic books" in 1949 "were devoted entirely to crime or supermen, in their assorted guises." (In actual copies read, the number is much larger, and by 1954 the proportion was very much higher.) Can there be any scientific theories to justify that? Paid partisanship is not the complete answer. The influence of the experts for the defense is to be explained not only by the fact that the public is being misinformed about comic books, but that it is exposed to wrong ideas about children. On that soil both comic books and their experts flourish. So the little comic book, with its pictures, text and advertisements and expert endorsers is an indicator of a generalized reaction of society.

The writings and speeches of the experts for the defense have many features in common. They always shy away from telling what is actually in comic books, what the plots are, what the characters really say and do. They do not want to call attention to the books, they prefer to put all the blame on the child, or his mother. As one of them writes in one of those "neutral" articles in a national magazine: "We must look not at the comics but at the child." Why should I as a doctor look only at the child and "not at the comics"? Why not look at both? This same expert notes, not without sarcasm, that comic books "grew to considerable dimensions before the 'guardians of our culture' were aroused by them." But should not the guardians of our children have been aroused first?

Here is an example to show how impossible it is to get any idea of what comic books really are from these writings by defense experts. In an article on comic books widely circulated by the Child Study Association of America, purporting to be a "survey" of the whole comic-book field, only the following titles of comic books are even mentioned:

1) Superman (whose publisher employs the writer of the pamphlet)

2) Mickey Mouse

3) Donald Duck

4) Mutt and Jeff

5) Moby Dick

6) Three Musketeers

7) True Comics

8) Blondie

9) Li'l Abner

10) Jungle Comics (described with the classical understatement that "sometimes women are featured in these stories, as captives or intended victims")

This is supposed to be a survey! One need only glance at any newsstand to discover that the most important part has been left out. This misrepresentation goes so far that the same expert writes, "There is a considerable amount of humor in the comics" (she means comic books) and she tries to make parents believe that the sexy wenches in the jungle books are just "fair maidens"!

The experts for the defense do not tell you what children get out of these stories, either, what they actually say, what is reflected from comic books in their minds. Instead they write about the good things that comic books are supposed to have done, be doing or will do in the future, about how educational they are or could be, and to what good uses they could be put. One states, for example, "History is often a dull subject. ... Through comics it could be made a fascinating study. ... American history would become a popular study in school.... " Unquestionably it is fascinating to learn that George Washington needed the help of Superboy to cross the Delaware. But do you want to direct the child's attention to the personality of the father of American democracy or to the exploits of a uniformed superman-youth? Similarly, it must be admitted that a lesson about anthropoid apes is less "dull" when accompanied by a picture of the animal about to rape a girl.

Pooh-poohing their bad effects, one expert points out that he knows a hospital where "comic books are used specifically to calm down troublesome" juveniles. He does not mention that this is the only psychiatric hospital in the country where troublesome juveniles sent there for observation and treatment got so out of hand that the police had to be called to "calm them down."

The team-experts like the word deep. It occurs over and over again in their writings, e.g. "the appeal of comic books is deeply rooted in our emotional nature." They use this word as an answer to any objection that is raised. The reply that things are "deep" or "deeper" or "far deeper" is supposed to answer everything. In one short paper the word occurs four times: "The motivation toward unsocial acts lies much deeper than any casual contact with ideas on a printed page"; the language habits of children "derive from deeply rooted home and school standards and not from any casual contact with any entertainment medium"; these "comic book characters are deeply human"; only if a child is "in deep emotional conflict he may be further burdened or disturbed by his comics reading."

One hopes to find in these writings at least one case where a comic-book addict seemed to be adversely influenced by comics in which it was proved that not comic books but something "deep" was the real cause. But in all the writings of the experts I found not a single case like this. Instead there are again and again flat statements like this: "the roots of delinquency and crime are far deeper," or "... the roots of [the] difficulties lie in ... his life ... rather than in the storybooks that he reads." Who then has gone to the root of the problem? One expert tells us: "Superman strikes at the root of juvenile delinquency" and apparently this is "deep" enough.

Those who have studied comic books seriously know that comic books have to be differentiated from newspaper comic strips. Dr. Richmond Barbour, director of guidance of the city schools of San Diego, writes: "The easiest way to study abnormal psychology these days is to read the unfunny crime comic books. Don't mistake them for the comic strips your paper prints. Papers wouldn't dream of printing the stuff.... " Yet the experts in their writings speak unspecifically of "comics" and seem to be trying to mix comic books with newspaper comic strips, much to public confusion.

Without exception all these experts have in common one trait that is not in agreement with the best established usage of scientific writing. If a scientist wishes to prove that a special virus is not the cause of a virus disease, it is obligatory that he at least refer to the literature which says the opposite. But these comic-book experts continuously quote each other and try to bury in complete silence some of the studies that have been made demonstrating the harmfulness of comic books. So it is necessary to get acquainted with samples of this literature which are never mentioned.

Dr. George E. Reed, director of a large psychiatric hospital affiliated with McGill University, in a paper read before the American Psychiatric Association, reported on a study of the effect of comic books on normal children from seven to fourteen. He proceeded in a strictly scientific manner, using among other procedures a "game technique." He determined the latent as well as manifest meaning of the pictures to the child. It is noteworthy that his observations were made before crime comics came to full bloom in the blood-and-bra formula. In contrast to the experts for the defense, Dr. Reed said what the comic books are about: "Violence is the continuous theme, not only violence to others but in the impossible accomplishments of the heroes, heroines and animals." He found undue stress on superdevelopment of hero and heroine: "... any variation from this 'norm' is the subject of suspicion, ridicule or pity." He noted that "distorted educational data are common"; that "direct action" by the hero is "superior to the dumb and incompetent police"; that race hatred is taught: "... foreigners are all criminals"; that "scantily clad females [are] man-handled or held in a position of opisthotonos [exaggerated intercourse-like position]." It was his opinion that juvenile delinquency is in part dependent on environment and that "comic books are of increasing importance as a part of children's environment." With regard to sexual development he drew this important conclusion: "The repeated visualization of women being treated violently by men can do nothing but instill an ambivalent emotional attitude in the child toward heterosexual contacts." In other words, he pointed to a profound disturbance of normal psychosexual development of children through the medium of comic books. As a result of his studies he regarded it as "fallacious" to consider comic books as a substitute for mythology or folklore, or to regard them as a normal emotional outlet for normal children. In vain will you look for any mention of this carefully weighed psychiatric report in any of the writings of the team-experts professing to express both sides and enlighten the public.

Sister Mary Clare, a trained and experienced teacher, published a study of the effect of comic books on children under eleven. She found that the innocuous comic books of the humorous and animal type that parents know about form "an insignificant minority." She found that comic books have "their greatest appeal during the years when the children's ideals are being formed, that is, from 3 or 4 to 12." She sums up the relation of comic books to delinquency: "Children want to put into action what they have learned in their comics: thinking they can have the thrill that is theirs only vicariously as they read. Sometimes they set out to imitate the hero or heroine, sometimes it is the criminal type that appeals, and of course they are sure that they will not fail as the criminals did in the magazine story, for 'getting caught' is the only disgrace they recognize." She deplores particularly the harm comic books do to children's eyes. Another effect of comics on young children is excessive daydreaming along unhealthy lines. One of her observations is that "scenes of crime, fighting and other acts of violence are "among the items most noted and best remembered by even the youngest children." She relates this to her finding that in adventure comic books there is a "disproportionate emphasis on crime, sadism and violence."

One of her cases highlights what comic books do to the minds of many children. She asked a nine-year-old boy which comic book he liked best and he answered without hesitation: "Human Torture."

"You mean 'Human Torch,' don't you?"

"No," he said positively, "Human Torture."

Dr. B. Liber, experienced psychiatrist and author of a textbook of psychiatry, states that "abnormal thinking and behavior may be due to other causes as well, but the comic books contribute their share." He cites the case of a nine-year-old boy: "His gestures with arms and legs and his motions with his entire body illustrated the crimes which he feared and enjoyed at the same time -- 'strangling is like this and like this...'" This boy described his fears and thrills: "Then there is the natives. They tear a guy apart. In two halves ... I like the Superman. . . . I like stabbing a tiger ... I like Nero fiddling Rome with some fire." Dr. Liber sums up his opinion like this: "The problem of the comic books has not been solved and will not be as long as somebody can make much money through their existence and popularity. Their source is fiendishness, viciousness, greed and stupidity. And their effect is foolishness, mental disturbance and cruelty."

A sociologist, Harold D. Eastman, carried out an analysis of some five hundred comic books and with the aid of his sociology students studied several hundred high school pupils from three high schools, thirty-five children at the fourth-grade level, pupils from a rural school and inmates of two institutions for the treatment of juvenile delinquents. In experiments with the fourth-grade children he found that over half of them wanted to play the part of the villain. As far as the relationship of comic-book reading to delinquency is concerned, he found that crime comics and generally not acceptable comics were "the most desired reading for the juvenile delinquents." Crime comic books were listed as first choice by more than 90 per cent of the inmates of both institutions for delinquents. With regard to the question of imitation he cited the case of a fourteen-year-old high school girl who stated that "she didn't like comic books because her boy friend read them all the time and tried to make love to her as he imagined Superman would do it and she didn't like that at all."

He analyzed ten comic-book heroes of the Superman type according to criteria worked out by the psychologist Gordon W. Allport and found that all of them "may well be designated as psychopathic deviates."

In another study, by Mary Louisa McKinney, who has studied comic books and lectured to PTA groups in Tennessee, the reactions to comic books of seventy-five children aged ten, eleven and twelve were studied. There were some who spent up to fifty hours a week on them. Her outstanding finding was that although children realized that comic books made their "pleasant dreams turn bad," they kept on reading them.

What do the experts for the defense have to say? We can disregard their remarks that there are comic books which are read only by adults. One expert herself admits that "wherever there are comic books you will most certainly find children."

The experts say children do not imitate what they see in comic books. As Governor Smith used to say, let us look at the record:

1) A boy of six wrapped himself in an old sheet and jumped from a rafter. He said he saw that in a comic book.

2) A twelve-year-old boy was found hanged by a clothesline tossed over a rafter. His mother told the jury that she thought he re-enacted a scene from comic books which he read incessantly. The jury returned a verdict of accidental death and scored comic books.

3) A boy was found dead in the bathroom, wearing a Superman costume. He had accidentally strangled himself while trying to walk on the walls of the room like his hero.

4) A boy of ten accidentally hanged himself while playing ''hanging."

5) A fourteen-year-old boy was found hanging from a clothesline fastened over a hot-water heating pipe on the ceiling. Beside him was a comic book open to a page showing the hanging of a man. The chief of police said, "I think the comic-book problem can't be solved by just a local police ban. It will require something bigger."

6) A ten-year-old boy was found hanging from a door hook, suspended by his bathrobe cord. On the floor under his open hand lay a comic book with this cover: a girl on a horse with a noose around her neck, the rope tied to a tree. A man was leading the horse away, tightening the noose as he did so. The grief-stricken father said, "The boy was happy when I saw him last. So help me God, I'll be d___ if I ever allow another comic book in the house for the kids to read!"

7) A boy of eleven was found hanged from a rope in the bathroom. He had the habit of acting out stories he had read in comic books.

8) A boy of thirteen was found hanged in the garage. On the floor was a comic book showing a hanging.

9) A boy of twelve was found hanging from a clothesline in a woodshed. On the floor was a stack of comic books.

10) A ten-year-old boy was found unconscious, hanging from a second story balcony. He got the idea from a comic book he had been reading.

11) A boy died after swinging in a noose from a tree. He had tried to show another boy "how people hang themselves." The City Council denounced the "mind-warping" influence of comic books.

12) An eight-year-old boy jumped from a second-floor fire escape "like Superman" and broke both his wrists.

One conclusion of the experts that has been widely accepted is that, as one of them puts it, comic books "are really the folklore of today," or that what is in them "is the folklore of the times, spontaneously given to and received by children ..." This seems to be a disarming argument. But is it true?

What is folklore? The term was introduced over a hundred years ago by the British scientist W. G. Thoms. It is now used in many other languages. Authorities seem to agree on the definition of folklore as "the oral poetic creations of broad masses of people." Folklore has intimate connections with other arts, from dances to folk plays and songs. In the history of mankind folklore has played an important role. It is one of the fountains of wisdom and of literature. Many writers -- among them the greatest, such as Shakespeare and Goethe -- have drawn on it. It does not require much thought to realize that comic books are just the opposite. They are not poetic, not literary, have no relationship to any art, have as little to do with the American people as alcohol, heroin or marihuana, although many people take them, too. They are not authentic creations of the people, but are planned and concocted. They do not express the genuine conflicts and aspirations of the people, but are made according to a cheap formula. Can you imagine a future great writer looking for a figure like Prometheus, Helena or Dr. Faustus among the stock comic-book figures like Superman, Wonder Woman or Jo-Jo, the Congo King?

When children act out comics stories, the results are destructive. But children's real nature comes to the fore when they are given the chance to act out stories from genuine folklore and children's folk tales. Frances C. Bowen has shown this in her wonderful Children's Educational Theater at Johns Hopkins University. "Overly exuberant children," she found, "learn to be co-operative and find a wholesome outlet for their energies."

Another statement by a comic-book expert that has gained wide currency is that comic books contain "a strikingly advanced concept of femininity and masculinity." In further explanation of this statement it is said: "Women in the stories are placed on an equal footing with men and indulge in the same type of activities. They are generally aggressive and have positions which carry responsibility. Male heroes predominate but to a large extent even these are essentially unsexed creatures. The men and women have secondary sexual mannerisms, but in their relationship to each other they are de-sexed."

If a normal person looks at comic books in the light of this statement he soon realizes that the "advanced concept of femininity and masculinity" is really a regressive formula of perversity. Let's compare this statement with the facts. One of the many comics endorsed by this child psychiatrist has the typical Batman story, the muscular superman who lives blissfully with an adolescent. Is it so advanced to suggest, stimulate or reinforce such fantasies? The normal concept for a boy is to wish to become a man, not a superman, and to live with a girl rather than with a superheroic he-man. One team-expert has himself admitted that among the three comic-book characters "most widely disapproved" by adults are Superman and Batman -- the prototypes of this "advanced concept of masculinity." Evidently the healthy normal adult rejects them.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Thu Dec 05, 2013 11:39 pm

PART 2 OF 2 (CH. 9 CONT'D.)

As to the "advanced femininity," what are the activities in comic books which women "indulge in on an equal footing with men"? They do not work. They are not homemakers. They do not bring up a family. Mother-love is entirely absent. Even when Wonder Woman adopts a girl there are Lesbian overtones. They are either superwomen flying through the air, scantily dressed or uniformed, outsmarting hostile natives, animals or wicked men, functioning like Wonder Woman in a fascistic-futurist setting, or they are molls or prizes to be pushed around and sadistically abused. In no other literature for children has the image of womanhood been so degraded. Where in any other childhood literature except children's comics do you find a woman called (and treated as) a "fat slut"? The activities which women share with men are mostly related to force and violence. I admit they often use language -- "advanced," I suppose -- which is not usually associated with women. Dr. Richmond Barbour mentions an example: "'Try this in ya belly, ya louse' the young lady says as she shoots the uniformed policeman in his midsection. Scantily dressed, thighs and breasts exposed, she is leading three similar gun-girls. One has been shot, and she is falling. Another girl shoots at the police with a revolver and mutters, 'Here's one fer luck!'"

The prototype of the super-she with "advanced femininity" is Wonder Woman, also endorsed by this same expert. Wonder Woman is not the natural daughter of a natural mother, nor was she born like Athena from the head of Zeus. She was concocted on a sales formula. Her originator, a psychologist retained by the industry, has described it: "Who wants to be a girl? And that's the point. Not even girls want to be girls.... The obvious remedy is to create a feminine character with all the strength of Superman.... Give (men) an alluring woman stronger than themselves to submit to and they'll be proud to become her willing slaves." Neither folklore nor normal sexuality, nor books for children, come about this way. If it were possible to translate a cardboard figure like Wonder Woman into life, every normal-minded young man would know there is something wrong with her.

The experts claim that the theme of comic books is good conquering evil, law triumphing over crime. There are many more crimes in comic-book stories than crimes that are punished. Moreover, punishment in comic books is not punishment; it usually takes the form of a violent end. Melodrama instead of morality. Comic books direct children's interest not toward the right, but toward the wrong. In many stories the criminal wins to the very end, and you see the man who has murdered his wife triumphantly pouring the rest of the poison into the sink in the last picture. There are whole comic books in which every story ends with evil triumphant.

If the forces of law do win in comic books, they do so not because they represent law or morality, but because at a special moment they are as strong and brutal as the evildoer. The real message of the comic books to children is the equation: physical force equals good. As the author and critic, Marya Mannes wrote: "In twenty million comic books sold it would be hard to find a single instance where a character conquered only because he was kind, honest, generous or intelligent." Can there be a more serious indictment?

"Comic books," said Frances Clark Sayres of the children's department of the New York Public Library, "reduce everything to the lowest common denominator of violence, vulgarity and commonplace expression." That seems true also in the sphere of moral judgments. A comic-book publisher's advertisement embellished with names of some of the experts says: "It is on record that Cain killed his brother. And Peter Rabbit stole a carrot, if we remember rightly!" Murder as no more significant than taking a carrot! That is the ethics of the comic books, ethics with which the experts evidently have no quarrel.

The experts further claim that comic books are an aid for children in their general adaptation to life and, as one of them puts it, can serve as "mechanisms for personal experimentation with reality." It is not clear how children are supposed to do this. Are they supposed to play the hunters or the hunted? The torturers or the tortured? The rapers or the raped? Are they to fantasy that they stab wild animals or girls in the eye or that wild animals will come to their aid when they need help? Where does the reality of life come in? Adaptation to the reality of life consists in learning to use one's faculties for something constructive, to make an effort to apply oneself, to seek guidance from those who know better, to respect the rights and wishes of others, to learn self-discipline. The reality of life may consist in a struggle, but that does not mean a continual violent physical fight between those who are not allowed to kill and those who are permitted to kill.

In vain does one look in comic books for seeds of constructive work or of ordinary home life. I have never seen in any of the crime, superman, adventure, space, horror, etc., comic books a normal family sitting down at a meal. I have seen an elaborate, charming breakfast scene, but it was between Batman and his boy, complete with checkered tablecloth, milk, cereal, fruit juice, dressing-gown and newspaper. And I have seen a parallel scene with the same implications when Wonder Woman had breakfast with an admiring young girl, with checkered tablecloth, cereal, milk, toast and the kitchen sink filled with dishes draining in the background.

Mastery of reality is based on a normal and not an abnormal set of human values. What the comic books give children to "experiment with" is either the reality of the sordid or what Stephen Spender calls "glamorized unreality." What the experts are telling us is that children have to learn to accept violence as a part of life, not only violence in the name of a cause, but violence for violence's sake. Adaptation requires sustained effort. The only effort that comic books teach is to avoid errors if you don't want to be caught. That pervades even their slippery slogans: "Forget one detail and there is no perfect crime!"

There are children who suffer from frustration. One team-expert's advice is: "Superman symbolizes the modern attempt in dealing with these problems (of frustration).... If not Superman himself, some one of the many other characters such as the Batman, The Flash, Captain Marvel, and the Green Lantern." Is that the best we can do for children, that we teach them the Green Lantern will help?

Another apologia brought forth by the experts is that "anything in which children show such absorbing interest must meet some emotional need in the child." But, if a child shows any trouble, he presents "special problems which call for careful consideration not in relation to his reading alone but to more fundamental emotional needs." In other words, comic books supply the needs of children only if nothing goes wrong. If anything goes wrong, we are told that they do not supply the needs of children and that we must leave out comic books entirely and search for ever deeper needs beneath needs. This talk of deeper and deeper needs is science fiction rather than science.

This passage by one expert is often quoted by the others: "Much of what children find in the comics deals with their own unconscious fantasies. It is possible ... that they need this material as a pattern for their dreams to give them content with which to dream out their problems." This is the most derogatory statement about normal children that I have ever read. It confuses what a child needs with what he can be seduced to desire. Some comic books depict necrophilia. Does that supply a need in the child? Many comic books describe every conceivable method of disposing of corpses. Do children need that for their daydreaming? It is a fallacy to regard the aberrations of adults as the needs of children.

Children need action and comic books supply that, the experts say. But no instrumentality has ever been invented to keep children more inactive than comic books. Moreover action is not merely action. It has content, meaning and emotional interest. The kind of action depicted in comic books is not what children need, but what adults think will excite them and sell.

Do we really know so little about children's needs as these experts imply? Children need friendliness, they need a feeling of identification with a group, they need cheer and beauty. And they want and need honest and disinterested guidance, because it gives them a feeling of security. It is precisely here that the comic-book industry and its experts stab them in the back.

Closely related to the argument that comic books supply children's needs is the further one that the child has his own choice about comic books. He can select what he wants and the responsibility is therefore his. This claim goes so far that the children are held responsible even for the unsavory development of the comic-book industry: "It is their [the children's] selectivity and their standards which must in turn influence the comics, whose content and standards of quality and taste are shaped to meet the customer's demand."

How much choice does a child with ten or twenty cents in his pocket have? There are many stores in town and country which have only comic books and no other printed matter except perhaps newspapers and magazines of no interest to the child. With only comic books to choose from, children really have no choice. But even if they did have a choice, the principle of leaving it entirely to them which is so vociferously promulgated by the Child Study Association of America is wrong. It is our duty to teach the child to make choices. The librarian Mrs. Sayres points out that through comic-book reading the child "loses his ability to discriminate." Of course we should try to see things from a child's point of view, but as educators and doctors we must adopt a larger view, use our own judgment and not deliver children into the hands of those who exploit their inexperience.

A pretty piece often played by the symphonette of comic-book experts is on the theme that it was always so. Children always have had these psychological needs to escape from reality and to give vent to feelings of hostility and resentment, and they used to be satisfied by fairy tales, by dime novels -- even by Shakespeare. All these, the experts tell us, are just as cruel and just as violent as comic books, so why pick on comics?

They formulate this in various ways. "Children have always sought this kind of vicarious adventure.... Through our own dime novels, big little books and comics," says one. "Comic books [are] in a way parallel to some of the fairy tales such as Beauty and the Beast, Hansel and Gretel, and The Pied Piper of Hamelin, all of which could be pretty scary to children," says another. Or: "... psychologically the comics are the modern fairy tales." Only those who do not know what is in the comic books have fallen for this, for there never has been a literature for children so enormously widespread, appealing mostly through pictures and expressing, as Dr. Richmond Barbour put it, "savagery, murder, lust and death."

After his excellent and incontrovertible description in 1940, when he found that 70 per cent of comic books contained material which no newspaper would accept, Sterling North followed up the subject eight years later. He found that the average comic book had even lower ethical, artistic and literary standards than it had in 1940. Speaking of fantasy and crime comics, he commented that they were "almost without exception" guilty of what I, in the meantime, had called "obscene glorification of violence and sadism." As a literary critic he took up this question of whether it was always so and found:

To those who insist that we older Americans also read trash in our youth, I say go back and read Horatio Alger and even the dime novels, if you wish. Edward Stratemeyer's Rover Boys may have seemed a trifle too pure to be credible. But the effect that had on impressionable readers was to heap scorn on the cheat and honor on the boy who played to win but played fairly and modestly. Frank Merriwell, hero of countless tales of pluck and luck, may have been both too virtuous and too successful to be considered a probable characterization, but his influence on millions of young Americans was never such that it burdened the juvenile courts.

The trash of today is of an entirely different sort. It is even less well-written than the interminable tales of derring-do and virtuous adventure that filled my boyhood. And, unlike that earlier form of literature, it has added rivers of rape, arson, torture and hooded justice to youth's increasingly dim lexicon.


Marya Mannes has described how her eight-year-old son became addicted to comic books despite an abundance of good books and other entertainment in their home. "Each story," she said, "is a catalogue of force, a metronomic repetition of violence that has in it the seeds of aberration." And she added: "The reasonable may talk all they please about the lurid literature our fathers used to read in their youth; let them find examples -- books widely read by the young of other generations -- which can touch the comic books...."

As for fairy tales, have the most cruel of them, including some of those by Grimm, been so good for children? Dr. Wilhelm Stekel wrote: "I really consider fairy-tales unsuitable for children, at least in the form which Grimm, for instance, has given them. New editions for the various age levels should be printed, in which will be eliminated, or at least modified, all that is cruel. It is not absolutely necessary for the ogre to devour his own seven children, for torture and murder to occur wholesale."

So some fairy tales are not a very good alibi. But even if they were, comic books have nothing in common with them. Fairy tales have a magic of their own which is completely absent from comic books. In comics the solution is simple, direct, mechanical and violent. Fairy tales contain emotional conflicts; they cannot be reduced to who catches whom, who knocks out whom, who kills whom and how and who is going to torture whom. Dr. J. G. Auerbach, psychoanalyst at the Lafargue Clinic, who made comparative studies of the effect of fairy-tale and comic-book reading on children, concluded:

Why does the picture of Hansel and Gretel pushing the witch into the oven create no desire in the child for vindictive action against those who boss him? How does the bloody cutting open of the wolf's belly to let out Red Riding Hood's grandma differ from the knife attacks depicted in the comic books? ... I believe the answer lies in the fantastic element of the fairy tale, which depicts a world far removed from reality. The child may identify himself with the persons or animals in this fantasy world, which he makes his own. There he may allow his fantasy to soar as he wishes: it is his private empire in which he reigns. He knows the difference between the real and the imaginary; there is no attempt to bridge the gap. Another helpful characteristic of fairy tales is their poetic form, even in prose, which also tends to remove tragedy or mischief from everyday life. The less fairy tales obey these two laws, the more they are apt to instil in the child anxiety, or a desire to translate fantasy into reality.


Children who play fairy tales would have a hard time having someone actually eat Red Riding Hood. But they can and do try to bind, gag, and stick each other with sharp instruments as they see it so realistically depicted in comic books. Comic books are not dreamlike and not symbolic. If symbolism occurs it is coarsely sexual. In comic books no one lives happily ever after, as they do in fairy tales; in comic books some characters get eliminated by force, others go on killing. "The comics may be said to offer the same type of mental catharsis to its readers that Aristotle claimed was an attribute of the drama," says one of the experts. But comic books have nothing to do with drama, with art or literature. To invoke Aristotle in their defense is like invoking Beethoven in defense of street noises.

The experts claim that comic books are no worse than dime novels were. True, dime novels were subliterary; but they were earthy and indigenous and had overtones of literature. They had echoes of James Fenimore Cooper. They taught conventional values. Their vocabulary did not even contain swear words. The hero would say "something which sounded very much like an oath." No "lousy, stinking coppers," "dirty squealers," "fat sluts," "filthy bilge-rats" or "dirty rotten scum!" They did not have psychiatrists endorsing them. It was not necessary.

Richard B. Gehman, novelist and magazine writer, had this to say in his essay "From Deadwood Dick to Superman": "[Dime novels] never glamorize the robber nor the desperado . ... The hero's morals were impeccable .... The hero pulled himself up from poverty by hard work.... He honored and respected his parents."

A favorite argument of the comics experts goes like this: Children's troubles or delinquencies are complicated phenomena. How can you pick out only one single factor and even mention comic books? Aren't you guilty of oversimplification?

Nobody versed in clinical research would reason like that. You cannot put "factors" into a discussion of a child as you put eggs into a basket. The different factors that influence a child's life may accentuate, activate, counteract or negate one another. Or they may run side by side. You cannot at the outset reject any factor because on the surface it seems trivial. Sometimes the causes are near at hand and are overlooked for just that reason.

Of course there are other factors beside comic books. There always are other factors. That is true of tuberculosis, of syphilis, of automobile accidents. When a child reacts to something, whether it be comic books or a dog that bites him, a good doctor takes up the whole situation and does not leave out any factor, including the possibility that either the comic books or the dog may be virulent.

When it comes to prevention, the let's-not-blame-it-on-any-one-factor argument is totally inadequate. Take a tree. Its health and growth depend on many factors: its age, the soil, the water, the weather, the pruning, the nearness of other trees and vegetation, absence of injury from animals such as deer and mice and pests. All these factors combined make up the health of a tree. But when you study the health and life of trees concretely you find that one single factor, Endothia parasitica, regardless of all the other factors, beginning in 1904 wiped out all the native chestnut trees in the United States. The agricultural experts know that. But the comics experts would call it an "oversimplification."

Study of one factor does not obliterate the importance of other factors. On the contrary, it may highlight them. What people really mean when they use the let's-not-blame-any-one-factor argument is that they do not like this particular factor. It is new to them and for years they have been overlooking it. If they were psychoanalysts, they were caught with their couches up. They do not object to specific factors if they are intrinsic and noncommittal and can be dated far enough back in a child's life. They do not object to social factors provided they are vaguely lumped together as "environment," "our entire social fabric," "culture" or "socio-economic conditions." Comic books have been -- and still are -- considered beneath the dignity of scientific scrutiny and not a respectable causal factor. But science does not mean a closed system of respectable causes, it means a mind open to all potentialities.

One of the industry's experts writes: "The comic book situation acted merely as a precipitating factor in the production of symptoms by fitting the details of the child's psychic difficulties." Merely is the tip-off. Is it not important for us physicians if a condition which otherwise would not have broken out is "precipitated" by a psychological influence such as comic books?

In trying to deny the harm done by comic books the experts make it appear that comic books have no influence at all and represent merely "casual contact with ideas on a printed page." But when they pronounce on the effects of "good" comic books they suddenly forget that and write that comic books "exert tremendous influence."

The experts say: "Making a scapegoat out of comic books will not solve our basic social problems." Naturally. Another says: "The comics are an outgrowth of the social unconscious." I do not believe that comic books -- any more than slums -- come from the "unconscious." Both are kept alive by the same social forces.

If a child has any trouble that can be traced to comic books, the experts maintain that this child was "predisposed" or "unstable" beforehand. Of course this is a diagnosis made only after the child got into trouble. It amounts to no more than saying that the comic books are good and the children bad. I believe it is the other way around -- that the children are good and the comics bad.

To blame everything on "predisposition" or a supposedly preexisting "emotional disorder" means of course to deny the role of temptation and seduction. According to the experts, the trouble is always in the child, and not in the comic books. The fault is always in the child's mind, and not in the invasion of that child's mind from outside.

The experts say that only abnormal children are affected by comic books while normal children are supposed to be immune. If abnormality is defined with any degree of psychiatric accuracy, the opposite is true. Many severely abnormal children are not affected by comic books. They are wrapped up in their own morbid fantasies and imaginations.

The experts like to invoke early infantile experiences and say that what is pontifically called the "character structure" of the child is laid down finally in the first few years of life and therefore cannot be deflected later by such trivial things as comic books. Yet in their writings I have not found a single case of comic-book inspired nightmares, behavior disorders or delinquency where, by analysis, the comic books as etiological factor were disproved and causation by infantile experience was proved.

A child is not a stereotype of his own past. To blame everything on very early infantile experiences is not scientific but exorcistic thinking: Nothing could harm a child unless the devil was already in him. Comic books do their harm early enough. Children of three or four have been seen poring over the worst. Freud would not have considered that too late for harm to be done.

The idea that all children's difficulties begin and end with their very early family relationships has placed an enormous emotional burden on mothers. When children read comic books excessively, seduced by their ubiquity, their covers and their sex appeal, the experts tell us that it is also up to the parents. They are supposed to regard excessive comic-book reading as a danger signal, a "symptom of disturbance," "not to control or limit his reading" but to look for causes in the child and even seek "psychiatric help." If only half of the excessive comic-book readers were sent to mental hygiene clinics, some of which already have a waiting list for a year or more, these clinics would be occupied with only this for a century.

A star argument is that whatever a child does, he would have done anyhow, even if there were no comic books. With such an argument -- if it is an argument -- you can condone anything. It is true that many children read comic books and few become delinquent. But that proves nothing. Innumerable poor people never commit a crime and yet poverty is one of the causes of crime. Many children are exposed to the polio virus; few come down with the disease. Is that supposed to prove that the polio virus is innocuous and the children at fault?

Take the fourteen-year-old Chicago boy who strangled an eight-year-old girl. He left fifty crime comic books in the room with his dead victim. They depicted all kinds of ways of abusing girls and killing people, including strangling. The experts want us to assume that this is a mere coincidence, that the similarity between the details in the comics and the details of the deed committed have to be ignored, and that what we must look for instead are "far deeper" causes!

The causes of children's delinquencies are not like stones that fall into water. There is a delicate balance between impulse, rationalization and inhibition; temptation, seduction and opportunity; imitation, morality and guilt feelings; fantasy, self-control and a final precipitating factor.

The most insidious thesis of the experts is that comic books "serve as a release for children's feelings of aggression." Children, so the stereotyped argument runs, need vicarious violence to overcome frustration through aggression. If comic books make people get rid of their aggressions, why are millions of them given to young soldiers at the front whom we want to be aggressive? Comic books help people to get rid not of their aggressions, but of their inhibitions.

The experts not only justify sadism but advise it. One of them, a child psychiatrist, writes: "In general we have offered to the strip writer the following advice: 'Actual mutilation ... should not occur ... unless the situation can be morally justified. ... If such an act is committed by some fanciful primitive or by some enemy character it can be more readily accepted and used by the child.'" In its long and tortuous history, psychiatry has never reached a lower point of morality than this "advice" by a psychiatric defender of comic books.

The getting-rid-of-aggression-by-comic-books argument has no clinical basis. The children with the most aggressive or violent fantasies or behavior are usually the most habitual readers of violent comic books. Running away from home is one of the most typically aggressive acts of children. I have seen many children between the ages of eight and twelve who ran away and who were found "with a stack of comic books."

The crudity of the experts' reasoning corresponds to the crudity of the comic books. The concept of the release of aggression is applied far too mechanically. It would have to be shown in the individual case that aggressive tendencies are pent up or dammed up, thwarted or repressed. In young children one can sometimes determine that by the Duess Test. The next step is to find out whether blood, horror and violence are of any use in such a situation. We have found that they are not. Children do not need just an outlet, anyway; what they need is guidance to understanding, substitution and sublimation. Far from giving release, comic books make violence and brutality seem natural to children. Comic books give release to only one aggression -- that of the comic-book industry.

A number of years ago I had to examine a young man in jail in order to give an expert opinion about his sanity. He was in serious trouble, being accused of attempted rape. He had enticed a girl to walk with him past a vacant lot, had suddenly pounced on her and struggled with her. The girl had stated that there was no actual rape and that she got away from him bruised and with her clothes torn. I told him that I wanted to know more about his life and he told me the story.

Since childhood he had had fantasies of taking a girl and tying her up, especially tying her hands behind her. It started when he was about eleven and saw pictures of that in comic books. Then he looked for comic books where that was especially depicted, for example, those with girls tied in chairs with their hands fastened behind their backs. He cut out pictures and also drew them. They gave him sexual fulfillment. He had no intention of raping the girl, an act of which he would have been less ashamed. What he wanted was just to tie her up. The struggle to do it had given him full sexual satisfaction. This was one of the cases that made me resolve to study the comic-book question systematically.

We seem to have made a fetich of violence. A pamphlet distributed by the Child Study Association of America contains this outlandish statement: "Actually, hitting is one of the ways in which children learn to get along together." At a meeting of the National Conference of Social Work, the statement was made: "Brutality has always been a part of children's literature and life.... If your child destroys your furniture while imitating Superman or Captain Marvel, he's being motivated by impulses we shall need more of, if the world is to survive -- the impulse to annihilate an evil." The speaker did not explain what was so evil about the furniture.

Almost a decade after his first study, Sterling North wrote: "I have yet to see a clear, convincing, logical proof of the harmlessness of comics from any psychiatrist or psychoanalyst -- even those to be found on the payrolls of the comic magazines, where their true function is usually hidden under some such euphemism as 'consulting editor.''' One can sum up the scientific writings of the defense experts by saying that their relationship to real science is like the relationship of comic books to real literature. Since they think so highly of comic books, this comparison should be no offense to them.

We could learn from the specialists in agriculture. They teach you to let all plants and trees grow to their optimal development. They do not compromise with anything that might conceivably harm crops and they try to prevent harm by spraying trees early. They do not try to find something good in anything that interferes with growth; they do not say there must have been something wrong beforehand; they teach you how to cultivate the soil scientifically. They would know how to deal with the comic-book pest.

Psychiatry, I think, should be a science of the positive health of the mind. Its aim should be to help the individual to develop his true personality. It is not enough for a psychiatrist to say that he has not found that comic books cause nightmares, anxieties, morbid fantasies or violent acts, and that therefore they must be wholesome for children. Mental health has positive signs. A child needs positive factors: He needs ethical principles to live by, he needs the concept and experience of loyalty and solidarity, of beauty, constructiveness and productiveness, creative expression, the spirit of the family and love. If that is interfered with, his positive mental health has been harmed, whether he has symptoms or not. All these positive factors are absent from crime comics. If a rosebush should produce twelve buds and only one blossoms, the bush is not healthy and it is up to us to find out what is interfering with its growth. The chief content of a child's life is growth and learning. No positive science of mental health is possible if it permits such interference as the mass onslaught of comic books.

_______________

Notes:

1. According to the Kefauver Senate Crime Committee (Special Committee to Investigate Organized Crime in Interstate Commerce) the following persons, among others, who are thought of as independent critics by the public, have been or are employed by the comic-book industry: Dr. Jean A. Thompson, Acting Director, Bureau of Child Guidance, Board of Education, N.Y.C.; Sidonie Gruenberg, director of the Child Study Association of America; Prof. Harvey Zorbaugh, Professor of Education, New York University; Dr. Lauretta Bender, child psychiatrist in charge of the children's ward of Bellevue Hospital, N.Y.C.; Josette Frank, consultant on children's reading, Child Study Association of America. The amounts paid range to $300 a month over a period of many years. One expert, Professor Zorbaugh, served as "research consultant to Puck, the Comic Weekly." One comic-book publisher alone spends $750 a month on four children's experts who endorse his products.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Tue Dec 10, 2013 11:56 pm

10. The Upas Tree

Making and Makers of Comic Books

"Through its bark the midday sun Makes the fluid poison run, And darkness of the night conceals When the poison pitch congeals."
-- Pushkin: "The Upas Tree"

"This boundless upas, this all-blasting tree."
-- Lord Byron


Crime comic books are showered upon us in abundance. What is the tree on which this fruit grows? After the most careful study for many years I have come to the conclusion that it is not a tree which only occasionally bears poisonous fruit, but one whose very sap is poisonous.

Early in our investigation it became clear to me and my associates as we were analyzing the comic books themselves and their reflection in the minds of every type of child, that we should also have to study the making and the makers of crime comics. So for years we have taken every opportunity that offered, and created many opportunities ourselves. We have talked with publishers, writers, artists, middlemen between comic books and radio and television, publicity agents, lawyers whom manufacturers of crime comic books consulted, members of financially related industries such as the pulp paper industry or publishers of erotic magazines or books, technical and office employees. Some of them were very co-operative, especially when they talked about other firms than their own. And we noticed that the lower down we went on the financial-returns ladder of the industry, the more critical the employees were of the wares turned out. Most of them know very well what they are doing.

A penologist and writer, David Dressler, after making a survey of comic books and their makers, wrote: "At least this much ought to be accepted as fact: There are objectionable comic books. The publishers know it. The editors want it." He "questioned people who would be expected to take a view opposed to Dr. Wertham's -- publishers and editors of comic books. Many insisted ... that the publications of some other house definitely portrayed sex deviation." One of them told Dressler, "These other fellows, they know exactly what they're doing .... I don't know how they can look at themselves in a mirror."

Some of those connected with the industry in one way or another were kind enough to write me long letters, giving data and their own deductions. Others permitted me to take notes, sometimes even with a stenographer.

Although I am a psychiatrist -- or maybe just because I am a psychiatrist who recognizes a social, scientific problem when he sees one -- I was not interested in personalities. In this story, there are no single villains whose character would explain the picture as a whole.

One of the experts for the defense has said aptly that comic books "came upon us silently." That is exactly what happened. Children were reading crime comic books for years, millions of them, while parents, teachers and mental hygienists thought they were occupied with humorous reading. When Sterling North, and later the Lafargue group, drew attention to their real content and meaning, parents were confronted with a phenomenon for which nothing in their experience had prepared them. It is precisely at this point that the comic-book manufacturers did a magnificent job -- in public relations. One publisher stated publicly: "Criticize the comics as much as you wish. We like to have you talk about them." And they proceeded to instill into mothers what they should think. Never before, have child psychiatry, mental hygiene and child psychology been used with less substance and with more success in the interest of an industry. Comic-book publishers put out statements of their own or quoted statements of their hired experts with supreme disregard for the fact that the very excess of their wording or the very inconsistency of their arguments might be detected. They supplemented the mass appeal of their product with the mass appeal of their pseudoscientific demagogy. Here are three typical examples:

The studies of my group have shown us conclusively that children who read good books in their comic-book deformation do not proceed to read them in the original; on the contrary, they are deterred from that. Librarians all over the country have borne that out. Yet a comic-book publisher stated publicly that children who read classics in comic-book form "go on to read the complete story in its entirety." The phrasing alone gives away the intent.

Or a publisher quotes publicly the statement of one of the experts for the defense that children read comic books because of "the satisfaction of some real innermost need of their own." Again the wording is interesting. If it is really a need, why must it be a real need, and if it is a real need, why must it be an innermost need, and if it is an honest-to-goodness real innermost need, why the addition of their own?

Another publisher repeats publicly that juvenile delinquency is "far too complex" for such a simple thing as crime comic books to play any part in it. At the same time, in complete disregard for the intelligence of his readers or listeners, he states that his own crime comic books are "responsible for lessening juvenile delinquency."

The behavior of crime-comic-book publishers has some resemblance to the plots of their products: pious slogans and ruthless actions. After I had examined many comic books and their effect on many children I arrived at the formula which my further studies have confirmed, that crime comics represent an obscene glorification of violence, crime and sadism. This is not a characterization of some, but the formula of the bulk. It would therefore be incorrect and unjust to say that one crime-comic-book representative is more irresponsible than the other. Their common prayer seems to be: Suffer the little children to come unto me and I shall lead them into temptation.

From innumerable talks with children I got this image. Picture to yourself a typical American boy of nine or ten walking along the street. In his pocket is his spending money, or his weekly allowance, or his lunch money, or his movie money or candy money, or some of his saved money, or part of his earnings from after-school work or from a birthday or Christmas gift. A very small group of men is lurking behind him intent on getting most of that money away from him. They want even more than the money he has. They tempt him, they lure him, they show him how to steal, how to break into houses through the windows and how to sell stolen goods. They even sell him the weapons -- guns and knives. The profits from all this run into tens of millions of dollars. What do the children get in return? The Child Study Association of America says that they get "escape"; but what they really get is entrapment. They get no literary values they can take along into life, but merely temptation, corruption, and demoralization.

Men who guard a public building have to undergo a civil service examination, but anybody can become a crime-comic-book publisher and become part of an industry that at the present time has greater and more widespread influence on children in town and country than any other public or private agency. All he needs is enough capital to buy a special printing press, employ a good circulation manager, a shrewd editor, some hack writers, letterers and cartoonists and a few child experts to endorse his product. We have been told that he will get as much as 40 per cent return on his investment.

If you want to compare this with what the child receives for his ten cents in economic terms, buy a copy of a pocket magazine for adults which also costs ten cents. They are printed on excellent paper, they have many good photographs well reproduced, good reporting, alert editing, a great variety of subject matter. And yet their circulation is small compared to that of comic books. Moreover, the old or return copies of these magazines are valueless, whereas comic books continue to be sold, shipped abroad, traded secondhand, borrowed and studied, as long as they hold together. Old comic books never die; they just trade away. Just as children were taken advantage of in the field of physical labor, so now they are taken advantage of economically, as a market. In the matter of reading the adults get the best, the children the worst.

Against the child is concentrated the economic power of a large industry. It has been estimated that a third of all cheap pulp made in the United States and Canada is used by comic-book publishers. Even granting that many adults read these comic books, the proportion of adult and child readers is such that over a million dollars a week is taken out of the pockets of children.

We have found that the individual child spends much more money on crime comic books than adults familiar with their circumstances would assume.

I have seen many children who have spent over fifty dollars a year on crime comic books, more often than not without their parents' knowledge. Occasionally parents realize it to some extent. One alert parent wrote me: "This form of literature drains my children's pocket money." In one of the most critical surveys, made on 450 pupils in grades 4 to 6, it was found that the average child read 14.5 comic books a week. Two children claimed that they read a hundred a week.

The actual cost of production varies. Some books have royalties attached to them. A small comic book, such as one that Columbia University Press got out for educational purposes, costs about one and one half cents, but if done less carefully could be done for three fourths of a cent. A sixteen-page comic book such as those used for advertising or in politics costs no more than two and one fourth cents for an average edition of 650,000. The profits from comic books and the revenue from advertising in them are staggering. Crime does not pay, but crime comics do.

If I were asked what I have found to be the outstanding characteristic of the crime-comic-book publishers, I would say it is their anonymity, or semi-anonymity. This was an unexpected phenomenon. There are at present seventy-six major juvenile-book publishers. Their children's books bear the imprint of their firm. But with crime-comic-book publishers, mass purveyors of children's literature, you can't be sure who publishes what. A parent who would look casually over his child's comic books would think that almost every book has its own publisher. Actually a very small number of firms puts out most of the comic books, but does so under various names. Different reasons are given for this concealment. Income-tax policy is one of them. The fear of compromising the name of a whole firm by objectionable products is another. I like to think that some of the biggest publishers are ashamed to have their real trade names appear on such products.

Sometimes the publisher's name on the comic book and the name and contents of the book show a ludicrous discrepancy. For instance, one of the 1952 crop has on its first page a horrible picture of a man shot in the stomach, with a face of agonized pain, and such dialogue as: "You know as well as I do that any water he'd drink'd pour right out of his gut! It'd be MURDER!" The name of the publisher is: Tiny Tots Comics, Inc.

The names of comic books and their numbering are sometimes also anything but informative. If one comic book is criticized, the publishers may stop the series and start the same thing again with another title. If a comic book is designated No. 17 or No. 60 or No. 15 it may actually be No. 1 of that title. This I am told has something to do with Post Office regulations according to which they may change the name but must keep the number, to keep some sort of connection with the former product. So Crime may become Love; Outer Space, the Jungle; Perfect Crime, War; Romance, Science Fiction; Young Love, Horror; while the numbers remain consecutive.

After we had once penetrated the fog of "nameless horrors" and equally nameless publishers, we arrived at a simple, irrefutable conclusion: some of the biggest crime-comic-book publishers get out the worst and the most widely read comics. The little fellows, far from being more irresponsible, make an effort once in a while to get out less objectionable comics. But they have to return to the formula or, as some have done, give up publishing crime comics entirely. This is of course just the opposite of what many sincere adults have been led to believe.

Some comic-book firms are connected with related enterprises such as paper mills. Some firms of course publish other things beside comic books. A firm which published a family magazine published also what the New Yorker generously called "high-toned monthly comic books." Some firms published a national magazine on the one hand and some of the worst crime comics on the other, the readers of one part of this enterprise not knowing about the other.

From the point of view of the scientific study of the crime comic book as a social phenomenon, these connections are not without significance. National magazines whose publishers also publish comic books do not as a rule print articles critical of comic books. Several times we had a chance to see how this works. A writer asked the Lafargue group to give him some background material for an article on violence in children. We gave him some of our conclusions, including some of the lessons in violence in comic books, which he incorporated in his article. When he told me which national magazine he was doing the article for, I told him that since its publisher also published comic books his article would not be published there. He did not believe that such censorship existed. His article was never printed.

As a psychiatrist I was interested in what some of these publishers did before they published comic books for children. Some of them published semipornographic literature for adults.

The type of cynicism that we found in the dialogue of comic books parallels some of the published statements that comic-book publishers and their representatives have made off and on when confronted with public opinion. These are some examples:

"There are more morons than people, you know."

"I don't think comics hurt children because they grow out of it."

"Sure there is violence in comics. It's all over English literature, too. Look at Hamlet. Look at Sir Walter Scott's novels."

"I don't see a child getting sexual stimulation out of it. Looking at those enlarged mammary glands he'd remember that not long ago he was nursing at his mother's breast."

"We do it by formula, not malice. A cop, a killer, a gun and a girl."

Utterances of the editors are no less cynical. Richard B. Gehman, in "From Deadwood Dick to Superman," quoted one: "Naturally after a kid has identified himself with the crook in the beginning, and after he's followed him through various adventures, he's going to be a little sorry when the crook gets shot. Sure he'll resent the officer who does the shooting. Maybe he'll resent all cops. But what the hell, they sell. Kids like them."

The editor of the comic book The Killers and other similar ones said with disarming frankness: "The so-called harmless books just don't sell."

Another editor: "We are not selling books on the basis of bosoms and blood. We are business men who can't be expected to protect maladjusted children."

From my talks with editors and with those who work under them, it seems to me that they have three main tasks. They call a writer for a story, and often give him a check even before he writes it. They determine what are the "real innermost needs" of children. Thirdly, they watch public reaction to the small extent that this is necessary. When the editor receives a copy after the pencil-man, the ink-man and the letterer have done their work, he -- thinking of course of the "needs" of the child -- "makes final corrections, changing a word of dialogue or indicating in the margin that a girl's half-torn dress should show more of her left breast" (Gehman).

I learned that editors read some of my writings on comic books and discussed them at staff conferences. They reasoned that they did not have to worry too much and that public reaction against crime comic books would soon subside. I know of one company where the editor took my findings very seriously and tried to clean up his crime comic books -- and finally gave them up altogether as the only way to do it. This company published an educational comic book which was a financial flop and was discontinued. That is not so hard to explain. Suppose you give a man a highball for breakfast, two highballs for lunch, three highballs for dinner and some strong brandy in between. All the while you keep telling those with whom he lives that this is being done to satisfy his "innermost needs," help him get rid of his "aggressions" and give him a chance to "escape from the humdrum of his life." Would you expect him to be a good prospect for buying regularly tomato juice, ginger ale or milk?

The distribution of comic books is an extended and efficient operation. The wholesale distributors furnish them to newsstands, confectionery stores and many other places. Some newsstands receive shipments of from fifty to one hundred comic books every second day, others restock every two or three days with more than five hundred comic books. Millions of comic books are returned and their distribution is in itself a big industry. Their front covers are tom off, or they are otherwise marked, and they are sent to Europe or North Africa -- everywhere except to countries which guard their children against them by bans on importation. That they are sold in countries where the children cannot read English shows that they do not need words and that children "read" them just from the pictures.

My associates and I have spoken to many vendors. And very many of them do not like to sell crime comic books. They know they are not good for children and they would rather not handle them. The president of the Atlantic Coast Independent Distributors Association has estimated that three fourths of comic books are not "worthy of distribution" and the president of the National Association of Retail Druggists said at a convention: "It is a tragic fact that many retail druggists are peddlers of gutter muck. The charge can be held against them with justice; their only defense is that it has never occurred to them to check on the comic books."

When parents critical of comic books have realized how defenseless they are against them they have made two unreasonable demands of vendors in stands or stores. First they have asked them to read the comic books before they sell them! That is of course impossible, just as it is impossible for a busy housewife to read all her children's comic books first, though that has been suggested by some experts.

The second demand is that the small vendor should reject the most bloody and sadistic comics. But is it fair to ask these economically hard-pressed people to eliminate those comic books that sell best, when nothing is done at their source?

Comic books that don't "move" are a great headache to the small vendor. If he doesn't return them he has to pay for them. But returning them makes a lot of work bookkeeping, so sometimes he just keeps them and tries to sell them.

A number of these small storekeepers who know a lot about children's comic-book habits have given us valuable hints in the course of our studies. One man who owns a small stationery store told us that he sells many classic comic books. "The school is right next door. The kids come in and use them for their book reports." He also handles a lot of twenty-five-cent pocket books, but has no classics in those editions. "The children don't buy them as long as comic books exist." As for the business aspects, he makes five cents on each pocket book, a cent and three quarters on the classics comics and two and a half cents on a crime comic book.

I found a good opportunity to study what one might call the cultural role of comic books in small stores in very poor neighborhoods where immigrants or migrating minorities have moved into a section of the city. For example in a small candy store frequented almost entirely by Puerto Ricans who had moved into the district there is no other reading matter aside from comic books. But of them there is a large secondhand supply limited to the violent and gruesome and sexy kinds. There are always children around, including very young ones, and this is their first contact with American culture. They cannot even speak English, so of course they only look at the pictures. They have not yet heard that the experts of the comic-book industry have found that comic books teach literacy, so they don't learn to read from them. But here their little money is taken away from them. Late in the evening, and into the night, children collect at this store, which is also a place for that much hushed-up phenomenon child prostitution of the youngest and lowest-paid kind.

Many vendors objected to the block system of purchasing comic books. Again and again they have told me, "I have to sell comic books, although I don't want to. Otherwise I don't get any magazines." Or: "I have no choice. I am entirely dependent on block booking." The secretary of the Arizona Pharmaceutical Association has stated: "The druggists have not been selling these because of the profit. We have been compelled to take them to get the other magazines of the better class. Cases have been found wherein druggists who refused to accept certain comics found their supply of higher class popular magazines cut in half."

The proprietor of a small bookshop in New Jersey who had some good books on his shelves also carried a lot of crime comic books. When I asked him about it, he said, "I want to carry good pocket-size magazines for adults. The dealer said No, unless I took his comic books. I kept after him and then he reluctantly said I could have them, but I would have to fetch them myself. I would phone; then he would say, they are not in yet; then I would phone again and he would say they are all sold out. So -- I sell comic books." When the comic-book industry raises the cry of civil liberties and freedom of speech in connection with guarding children against the worst of the crime comic books, I am always reminded of the plight of these small business people who are forced to do something wrong which they do not want to do. The comic-book industry certainly does not give them freedom.

Actually these small dealers live in fear and do not want their names revealed. For example, I received a petition signed by six people, sent to me in the mistaken belief that I had some influence. "We are taking the liberty of writing to you as my friends and I have a problem which we do not know how to attack. The subject matter of the problem is such that we cannot take it to our ministers, as it is a delicate subject and one which we know has to be corrected at its source.... Our druggist says that he is dictated to in the matter of buying magazines for the reading public. He wished to dispose of some comic books, the tone of which he did not like, but was told that unless he bought all that the publishers offer he could not buy the magazines he wished. In a free country why does this have to be? Who is doing the dictating? ... I would like to ask, what is happening? ... We cannot stand by and see this happen .... Please don't use our names ... We don't want any libel trouble...."

The writers of comic books rarely want to be professional crime-comic-book writers. I have had letters from them and have spoken with a number of them. One firm may employ as many as twenty or thirty such writers. Their ambition is to write a "Profile" for the New Yorker, or articles or stories for national magazines or to write the great American novel. The scripts or scenarios they write for comic books are not anything which they wish to express or anything they wish to convey to their child public. They want to get their ten dollars a page and pay the rent. They do not write comic-book stories for artistic or emotional self-expression. On the contrary, they write them in the hope of finding eventually the chance for self-expression somewhere else.

The ideas for their stories they get from anywhere, from other comic books, from newspapers, movies, radio, even jokes. Believe it or not, some comic-book writers are good writers. And the paradox or the tragedy is that when you read a comic-book story that is a little better it does not mean that a bad writer has improved, but that a man who was a good writer had to debase himself. Crime-comic-book writers should not be blamed for comic books. They are not free men. They are told what to do and they do it -- or else. They often are, I have found, very critical of comics. They are the ones who really know what goes into them. They know the degenerate talk that goes on in some editorial offices. But of course, like comic-book vendors, they have to be afraid of the ruthless economic power of the comic-book industry. In every letter I have received from a writer, stress is laid on requests to keep his identity secret. I have one letter from a man, evidently a very intelligent writer, who mentions this three times in one letter!

There has been a great critical outburst about the ex-comic-book writer Mickey Spillane and his fictional hero. Spillane has sold some twenty million pocket-book copies. The critics object to his artless cynicism, his bloody sadism, his debasement of women. To me this criticism seems to be sheer hypocrisy. Mickey Spillane writes for adults and mostly for young adults who have been brought up on crime comic books. Why is Spillane with his paltry twenty million copies for adults more important than exactly the same thing -- with colored illustrations -- in hundreds of millions of comic books for children?

Malcolm Cowley has written an excellent analysis of Mickey Spillane. "Mike Hammer," he says, "takes a peculiar delight in shooting women in the abdomen"; "the characters have no emotions except hatred, lust and fear"; "sometimes in the story the fierce joys of sadism give way to the subtler delights of masochism"; "soon he is back in the high-powered car, ready to visit another incredibly seductive woman and start a new episode"; "he has strong homosexual tendencies." But all this is old stuff to American children. The abdomen is where you shoot a woman -- if you don't shoot her in the back. You kick a man in the face, or shoot him in the eye. And there is always a new episode coming up. This is the freedom of speech that the industry invokes when parents try to protect their children from crime comics.

If I were asked to express in a single sentence what has happened mentally to many American children during the last decade I would know no better formula than to say that they were conquered by Superman. And if I were further asked what is the real moral of the Superman story, I would know no better answer than the fate of the creator of Superman himself.

John Kobler has written one of his magazine articles about the rise of Superman. It has a photograph of Jerry Siegal, inventor of Superman, lying on an oversized, luxuriously accoutred bed with silken covers, in a room adorned with draperies. Here indeed is success. Kobler describes how Superman knocks out an endless procession of evildoers. "When a gangster rams Superman on the skull with a crowbar, the crowbar rebounds and shatters his own noggin." Kobler does not fail to point out that Superman comes to children highly recommended. A child psychiatrist declared that Superman "provides an inexpensive form of therapy for unhappy children." So Superman and his inventor were well launched.

Since then, in the course of our studies, we have often seen troubled children, children in trouble and children crushed by society's punishments, with Superman and Superboy comic books sticking out of their pockets.

How did the Superman formula work for his creator? The success formula he developed did not work for him. Superman flies high in comic books and on TV; but his creator has long since been left behind.

I am told that if I were to visit the National Cartoonists Society my reception there would lack chumminess. In fact, collectively they consider me to be a devil with two horns. Actually, when we extended our studies to include artists who make drawings for crime comic books, far from blaming them we found that they are victims too. I doubt whether there are any artists doing this work whose life ambition was to draw for crime comic books. From interviews, telephone calls and letters we found out that they are afraid too. This is the kind of thing I was told: "Please don't mention that I even spoke to you! I'd be blackballed; I'd be ruined!" Here I found the comic-book industry's conception of freedom of speech again. It is a strange part of the comic-book industry that its vendors, writers and artists are so afraid. Maybe they should take the advice of the industry's experts and read horror or supermen comics to get rid of their fears.

Quite a few of the members of the National Cartoonists Society draw for comic books. By and large it pays well, but it is not their artistic ambition. As a rule they are highly critical of what is drawn, by themselves and by their colleagues, for crime comics. One famous comics artist told me, "Of course you have to keep my name confidential -- but if I were you there are four hundred comic books I'd like to have taken off the stands." Ray Abel, an illustrator of children's books, is quoted by the Wilson Library Bulletin: "As for the comic book illustrator, I can speak for him, too, as I have done a few comic books in my time. There creative ability and imagination, the things that make an art form interesting, are completely blocked. The artist is a machine and his only aim is to attain a mechanical competence that will make him completely indistinguishable from the other 'machines' in the business. No, I can't say anything in favor of comic books."

The industry and defenders of comics like to mix up comic books and newspaper comic strips in the mind of the public. There are of course financial relationships. Some comic strips are made into comic books. A national weekly containing newspaper comic strips finances research on "comics" (which comes out favorable to crime comic books). Comic-book artists know that, as Stanley Baer ("The Toodles") expressed it in a radio forum at Northwestern University, "the syndicates as well as the feature editors of the various newspapers watch the strips very carefully. And it isn't the newspaper strips that are the ones that are severely criticized." E. Bushmiller ("Nancy") told the San Diego County Women's Clubs, "I wish you would differentiate between the newspaper comics and the comic books. Most newspaper comics are wholesome, but a large percentage of the comic books are cheap junk and just turned out for a quick sale."

It is in an artistic sense that these artists are victims. I know that quite a number of them are highly gifted; but they have to turn out an inartistic assembly-line product. That is what is essentially wrong with comic books: There are too many pictures. The mass effect of these stereotyped, standardized images is something totally different from and much inferior to the well-spaced illustrations in a good children's book. Instead of helping a child to develop his artistic imagination, they stifle it. Even if the drawings were good. which they are not, their numbers would kill their artistic effect.

Some artists have told me that they earn or did earn more money from crime comic books than from any other art work. But they realize very well that it does not help their artistic development. Aline B. Louchheim, reviewing an exhibition of the National Cartoonists Society, placed the political, gag and humorous cartoonists much higher than the comic-book artists. "Let us admit it," she wrote, "the general level of drawing is appallingly low.... Even the superb brickbat Krazy Kat tradition is gone."

Whenever the question of control of crime comics is raised, the industry starts to fuss about freedom of expression. It is only when one talks to artists and writers of comic books that one realizes fully the sham of this argument. Who wants to express what in this medium? The writers tell you frankly that what they want is to satisfy the editor -- to get their check. If they want to express something, as many of them do, they want to do it in a "legitimate medium." Text and drawings of crime comics are concocted, not created. And there is no freedom of concoction. One comic-book artist told me: "I feel very much like you do about the crime stuff. I did most of my work on assignment. They tell me: 'We want blood.' I used to get very much disturbed about it. They criticized my drawings because they were not sexy enough. My instructions were to make these drawings as sexy as possible. They told me to show as much as possible. For example, I had to draw two women fighting showing as much of the thighs as possible, seductive poses, cruel faces, and one or both flailing the air with a long blunt club. Or two men wrestling, or a man and a gorilla. Thigh muscles must be emphasized and emphasis on all body proportions -- you know what I mean."

He added that after these drawings were used in crime-comic books they were printed and catalogued according to sex and action and then sold to private customers who had strange erotic desires, for very personal reasons. Some wanted men, some wanted women, some wanted thighs, etc. All this was taken from drawings for comic books for children!

Experts for the defense are just as necessary for the industry as writers or artists. It could not possibly exist in its present form or extent without them. They are a commercial necessity. The many publishers of genuine children's books do not employ such experts. They do not need them. Neither do they need codes, codes forbidding -- after years of publishing -- blood, sadism, sex perversion, race hatred and so on. Nor do they need endorsements on their books. Were it not for the confusion spread so adroitly by the comics experts, the good sense of mothers would have swept away both the product and the pretense. The more we studied the industry, the more it was impressed upon us that it was mainly via the experts that the crime-comic-book industry has established such a firm hold on our social fabric. Nobody can understand the industry who does not understand that part of the problem.

I have sometimes indulged in the fantasy that I am at the gate of Heaven. St. Peter questions me about what good I have done on earth. I reply proudly that I have read and analyzed thousands of comic books -- a horrible task and really a labor of love. "That counts for nothing," says St. Peter. "Millions of children read these comic books." "Well," I reply, "I have also read all the articles and speeches and press releases by the experts for the defense." "Okay," says St. Peter. "Come in! You deserve it."

Every medium of artistic and literary expression has developed professional critics: painting, sculpture, drama, the novel, the detective story, the seven lively arts, musical recordings, television, children's books. The fact that comic books have grown to some ninety millions a month without developing such critics is one more indication that this industry functions in a cultural vacuum. Literary critics evidently thought that these accumulations of bad pictures and bad drawing were beneath critical notice. I have convinced myself often that they were ignorant of the material itself unless it was brought home to them in their own families.

One literary critic had been very permissive about comic books and had not included them in his other excellent critiques of life and literature. He changed his mind one evening when after reprimanding his children, aged seven and five, he overheard the older saying to the younger: "Don't worry. In the morning I kill both of them!"

There have been other excellent critics, but they came later. Marya Mannes has expressed her opinion tersely: "Comic books kill dreams." She discerned the monopoly position comic books had obtained among the educationally less privileged: "In one out of three American homes, comic books are virtually the only reading matter." John Mason Brown had this to say: "The comic books as they are now perpetually on tap seem to me to be not only trash but the lowest, most despicable and most harmful and unethical form of trash." When heckled by a comic-book publisher about what his own children think of his opinion, he made the classical reply: "They have been so corrupted by you that they love them."

The closest critics of the poison tree should be the parents. Gilbert Seldes has correctly seen as a key problem of comic books "the paralysis of the parents." In his recent book The Great Audience he says: ".... unlike the other mass media, comics have almost no esthetic interest." (I would question his "almost.") After quoting testimony that connects comic books with delinquency and evidence of their brutality and unwholesomeness he goes on: "Most of these outcries represent the attitudes of parents searching for a way to cope with a powerful business enterprise which they consider positively evil.... The liberal-minded citizen dislikes coercive action, tries to escape from corruption privately, and discovers that his neighbor, his community, are affected.... Year after year Dr. Fredric Wertham brings forth panels showing new ugliness and sadistic atrocities; year after year his testimony is brushed aside as extravagant and out-of-date. The paralysis of the parent is almost complete."

What causes this paralysis of parents? I do not think it is a real paralysis; it is helplessness. The vast majority of mothers have been outraged when they read the crime comic books their children read. But the moment they raise their voices they are knocked out by the experts for the defense and by an avalanche of pseudo-Freudian lore. Freud himself never saw a comic book. And I am certain that he would have been horrified -- and even more horrified to learn that his name is being used to defend them by some uncritical would-be followers.

The mothers are not complacent. They are put in a difficult position. They have been told not to worry about comic books, but to read them aloud with their children. Let's go along with Mrs. Jones as she tries to follow this advice. Her son is seven years old, so she selects a comic book which is obviously for children: it has full-page advertisements showing forty-four smiling and happy children's faces. This, she thinks, must be just the thing to read aloud to her child. So she starts with the cover, The Battle of the Monsters! She describes the cover to her son. It shows an enormous bestial colored human being who is brandishing a club and carrying off a scared blonde little boy in knee pants. Then she goes on to the first story:

"LOOK!! Their bodies are CRUMBLING AWAY!!"

"KILL! K-AARGHH!"

"YAIEE-E-E!!"

Mamma has some difficulty in pronouncing these speeches. But her difficulties increase when in the course of the story a man encounters a big serpent: "WH-AWWGG-HH-H!! YAAGH-H-H-H!!"

She goes on, however, and comes to a picture where a yellow-haired man mugs the dark-hued monster from behind: "AARGH-H-H!!!"

Mrs. Jones thinks perhaps she had better switch to another story. So she turns a few pages and begins "Whip of Death!"

"REVENGE!"

"AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!"

There is a picture of a boy tied to a mast with the captain lashing him so furiously that his bare body is criss-crossed with marks. The boy dies of this beating.

Mrs. Jones gives up. She realizes that she will never comprehend the new psychology which defends comic books and she decides that if the child-psychiatry and child-guidance experts say Bobby needs this to get rid of his "aggressions" he has to go through with it alone. She can't take it.

Suppose for a moment that a girl of nine is physically violated by an adult. Democratic justice demands the most rigorous determination: Did this violation occur? Is it established beyond a reasonable doubt that it was this adult who did it? But do we give this man the right to address the parents of the victim, expounding his view that from his investigations he has found that the girl liked it; that it satisfied a "real innermost need" of her own; that struggling against him helped her to get rid of her own "aggressions"; that in her "humdrum" home and school life this was a way of psychological "escape" for her; and that after all, in this modern world of ours girls may get raped and he was helping her to become acquainted with and adjust to "reality"; that she will laugh it off and grow out of it; that the basic character is formed in the first few years, anyhow, so that rape when she's a little older than that can have no real effect?

This simile is not far-fetched. This is precisely what we permit the comic-book industry to do when they violate children's minds.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Wed Dec 11, 2013 12:05 am

11. Murder in Dawson Creek

The Comic Books Abroad

"Reputation abroad is contemporaneous posterity."
-- French saying


The Alaska Highway, which runs for some fifteen hundred miles to Fairbanks, Alaska, begins at Dawson Creek, in the Peace River district. Dawson Creek used to have about five hundred inhabitants. Then it became a boom town during the construction of the highway. Now it has settled down to about 3,800 people. The center of a famous wheat-producing agricultural area with record yields, Dawson Creek is a well-ordered community which boasts of a six-hundred-thousand-dollar high school. The farmers of the surrounding region go to the town for trade and recreation.

One evening in 1948, one of these hard-working men, Mr. James Watson, was returning in his car from a show not far from the Dew Drop Inn in Dawson Creek to his home in Kilkarren. With him were some friends and relatives. His son was driving while he, on the back seat, was holding a small child on his knees. Suddenly the occupants of the car thought they heard a loud bang like a shot. Before they could decide what it was a second shot rang out. It was about nine thirty in the evening and they couldn't see anybody. But Mr. Watson slumped over, shot through the chest. His son Fred stopped the car, still couldn't see anybody. Someone screamed. And he turned the car around and rushed the wounded man to the hospital. He died three days later.

Mr. Watson was one of the most respected residents. For some time he had been president of the Dawson Co-operative Union. He had come from the north of England and had owned his farm in the Peace River district for thirty years. Who could have murdered him, and why?

When the police traced and arrested the culprits the mystery of the motive became even greater, for they were a boy of thirteen and a boy of eleven. "This is one of the worst tragedies to come about by juvenile delinquency in this North country," one newspaper commented. The authorities, puzzled and serious, made a thorough investigation of the whole case. The boys were turned over to the Department of Health and Welfare for study.

Neither boy had any excuses to make. They verified what the police had found and told a straightforward story. They were like amateur actors repeating as best they could remember the plot of a play they had carefully learned. They had stolen a rifle from a parked car. Then they went to the railway yards and stole cigarettes from a truck. The night before they had stolen a flashlight. The night of the murder they had proceeded along the Alaska Highway, stood in a ditch and waited for a car to come along. They were playing highwaymen. When a car did come they flagged it to stop, and fired a shot; but the car went right on. When Mr. Watson's car came along they did the same, firing a shot in the air. But when that car didn't stop either they fired right at it.

The mother of the older boy, although her son had not been in any trouble, was worried about him. She had noticed that he spent a great deal of his time reading little colored booklets all dealing with crime. Three days before the shooting she had tried to get advice as to what to do about him. The authorities had no preconceived ideas; but after investigation they all came to the same conclusion: These boys had been not only influenced, but actually motivated to the point of detailed imitation, by crime comic books. Every detail of what they did was found blueprinted in the comic books they had been reading. The older boy had read about fifty crime comic books a week, the younger boy only about thirty. They didn't see anything peculiar in that, either as something wrong or as something which could serve as an excuse. It was left to the authorities to piece it together.

This case was like an experiment. Nobody was looking for a "scapegoat." Nobody had given any thought to comic books (except the mother of one of the boys) before the murder. Nobody wanted to prove anything, except what really happened. Nobody wanted anything except the truth. The representative of the Department of Health and Social Welfare declared as a result of his investigations that the source of the ideas possessed by these children was clearly their comic books, and he testified to the effect comic books had had on their minds. In his verdict the coroner also referred to the evidence of comic books in this case, comic books "which are apt to encourage crime."

At the trial in the juvenile court the Crown Prosecutor, Mr. A. W. McClellan, told the Court: "I feel that parents and the public generally have been on trial this afternoon as well as these two boys.... I have no doubt that if the public generally had been present at this trial they would have gone in a body to the purveyors of these so-called comic books and demonstrated in no uncertain terms what they thought of their pernicious influence. It is clear that in many cases parents have no idea of the effect the reading of this muck -- for that is what it is -- can have on the minds of children. I cannot say too strongly that I think these two unfortunate boys have been strongly influenced by what they have been reading. I would like to see a concerted effort to wipe out this horrible and weird literature with which children are filling their heads."

Juvenile Court Judge C. S. Kitchen also singled out crime comic books as the predominant factor in this tragedy. He spoke about "the influence of the literature these boys have been subjected to" and added: "I am satisfied that a concerted effort should be made to see that this worse-than-rubbish is abolished in some way."

It did not do the boys much good, but Dawson Creek had become comic-book conscious overnight.

I heard about this case right after it happened. There was nothing new about it. It was just like so many others where children had taken their roles from comic books. It was one of those cases where cause and effect were so clear that nobody dared dispute it.

Although the number of comic books in Canada is infinitely smaller than in the United States, the problem was recognized there with far more seriousness. Mrs. T. W. A. Gray, chairman of a special committee of the Victoria and District Parent-Teacher Council, was in the midst of an extensive investigation when the Watson comic-book murder was committed. To her it was another of many instances of the detrimental influence of comic books on children. She had collected cases, studied the literature, communicated with other parent-teacher organizations -- eventually reaching the provincial and national level -- looked into the industry and its experts, and last but not least had studied the comic books that children read. She reported these samples from one comic book:

1) As the American army is returning home, and the flag is going by, an old gentleman asks three men to remove their hats. They reply: "If he's so patriotic he might as well die for his country," and one of them stabs the old man to death.

2) An honest alderman tries to protect the public and is killed. The hero says: "Bullets are better than ballots!"

And the commentator says: "Ah! That impulsive boy! He's absolutely fearless! Why can't everyone be like that!"


Mrs. Gray did not permit herself to be sidetracked by the industry or by those who wanted her to include all kinds of other reading and entertainment. She unflinchingly isolated one evil and pursued it. Her campaign was endorsed by the British Columbia Parent-Teacher Federation and then by the National Federation of Home and School. Damning evidence against crime comic books accumulated from all over the country. There was a striking similarity in youthful delinquencies which became more violent and involved ever younger children.

My advice was sought off and on by various Canadian organizations and it was interesting to see where the chief difficulty arose in the attempt to protect children. This became part of my own investigation of the general social aspects of the comic-book question.

Modern child psychiatry, mental hygiene and educational psychology are in a crisis. Far from being leaders, they are behind the times. Some of their literature is filled with vagaries and generalities. When confronted with a new phenomenon like comic books, they do everything except study the books. They make pronouncements without first learning the objective facts and, without bad intent, repeat the same old arguments which the crime-comic-book industry -- aided by its experts -- had culled from the psychological verbiage of the day.

That is precisely what happened in Canada. The parents knew there was something very wrong, teachers and others who had directly to do with children knew it, and Minister of Justice Garson, after going over a great deal of evidence, said that crime comic books are "nothing but hack-work filth." But the leaders of mental hygiene, who stood idly by while comic books gained increasing influence over children, pooh-poohed the whole thing. It was not in Freud, it was not in mental hygiene books, and it could so easily be explained away like other social evils. The medical director of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (Canada) told a convention: "A child may ascribe his behavior to a comic he has read or a movie he has seen. But such explanations cannot be considered scientific evidence of causation." (Note that in Canada, as in the United States, it is not the children who "ascribe" their behavior to comic books, but those adults who really study the facts and the comic books.)

Here, it seemed to me, was one of the points where my comic-book study -- just because it was so focussed on one element -- led me to a clear perception of a much larger problem. Some modern psychiatrists and educational psychologists have done a lot of harm with their pseudoscientific drivel. In this instance, a newspaper evidently more in contact with life than the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (Canada) commented editorially: "This may not be considered 'scientific evidence of causation.' It is significant to note, however, that the Montreal Star and the Montreal Gazette, commenting on the unsuccessful attempt of a ten-year-old to hang himself, both state that the youngster was imitating a scene in a comic book open beside him." And the editorial went on to mention another similar case with a fatal ending.

The same medical director wrote to a parent-teacher group the usual generalizations favoring comic books, obviously without knowing anything about them or the real effects they have on children. He asserted that only "children who are deeply disturbed, unhappy, rejected and fearful, are attracted to comics of this type." Make clear to yourself how far we have gone astray in relying on the official mental hygiene of the day if a leader makes a statement according to which tens of millions of children would have to be considered "deeply disturbed"! What an alibi for the corrupters of children! What a boon to private practice! His final pronouncement about comic books is "control by legislation is not the device of a truly democratic and mature society." If the law is not the device of a democratic society, what is? The dogma of an expert who has not studied the subject fully? Other mental-hygiene officials made similar statements.

But it was the democratic process which proved a better safeguard for truth, science and the health of children. While in the United States parents and parent-teacher associations were stalled, confused by the experts and the maneuvers of the comic-book industry, the Canadians persisted. The Parent-Teacher Association of Kamloops (B.C.) asked its representative in Parliament, Mr. Edmund Davie Fulton, to bring the matter to the attention of the House of Commons.

There were full discussions on several occasions. Mr. Fulton, rising to introduce legislation to control crime comic books, took issue with the director of research of the National Committee for Mental Hygiene (Canada), who had wired the Minister of Justice to say that legal banning would be a confession of failure on the part of parents and educators to raise the child.

"That may be true," Mr. Fulton said, "but from all those who have spoken to me and from articles I have read I know that parents and teachers are literally at their wits' ends to find a solution .... They are powerless to prevent the tremendous circulation of these crime comics."

The member from Kamloops, who had accumulated a great deal of material (including some of mine) won the respect of everybody by making his points very definitely and precisely. He clearly separated comic books from newspaper comic strips; he concentrated on crime comic books and did not let himself get inveigled into talking about movies or other things; he did not include only the current crop but mentioned the harm already done and continuing to be done by the old ones. In the course of various speeches in the House of Commons, he gave credit to the many parents', women's and teachers' organizations. He said:

The man of violence is portrayed as acting directly, quickly and forcefully. In this way the sympathies of children are directed toward the wrong side.

Even if there were only one case of a crime, the commission of which was influenced by crime comics, even if the enactment of the bill only prevented one murder, one crime of violence being committed by a juvenile, I would say that the act, if passed, would have served its purpose.

I have received many communications from humble men and women, parents who were desperately concerned with the welfare of their children, and conversations I have had with those parents moved me greatly. I know the deep anxiety with which mothers and fathers have viewed this matter, recognizing in it a frightful threat to which their children have been exposed. It was an exposure which was beyond parental control, because these crime comics were available in such large numbers and in so many places.


The debates on the Fulton bill were extensive. Among the speakers were judges, members of school boards and others who evidently had gone carefully into the subject. Mr. Hansell, from Macleod, held up one comic book: "On the cover is the word" 'CRIME' in large letters. I think, Mr. Speaker, you can read that from where you are sitting; but I will bet a million dollars that you cannot read the type underneath which says 'does not pay.' It is so small it is almost negligible."

He gave statistics of the contents of one book:

punch or bludgeoning with a blackjack or something else: 11 times

burning or torturing: 8 times

blood running: 2 times

guns depicted: 14 times

corpses depicted: 4 times

drinking bouts: 5 times

somebody in the electric chair: 2 times

poisoning: 3 times

gassing: 1 time


"I ask any reasonably minded man," he went on, "is that the sort of thing our young people should be reading? The publishers circumvent the law by using the words 'does not pay.' You see, we all know that is only a way of getting around the law."

Mr. Browne (St. Johns West) spoke of his experience as a judge interested in juvenile delinquency: young people are "prone to fall victims to the temptations which come to them through reading literature of that sort." He cited cases.

Mr. Cavers (Lincoln) spoke of the influence of comic books on gangs: "I am told young people buy these comics, and then form voluntary circulating libraries, passing them from one to another, so no matter what supervision there may be in the home, it is difficult to stop such a practice."

Mr. Goode (Burnaby-Richmond) characterized crime comic books as the "offal of the magazine trade" and described one as "the most filthy book that I have ever seen on a magazine stand." He was referring to an ordinary comic book, like millions on the stands in the United States right now.

Mr. Rodney Adamson (York West) took issue with the familiar argument that delinquency is often caused by family and home conditions and that "then the crime comic book got in and did its work." "That," he said, "reinforces the argument of my friend the honorable member for Kamloops [Mr. Fulton]."

Mr. Low (Peace River): "The best teaching in the world in the home, the wisest guidance in the home, cannot always protect youngsters when they are subjected to such alluring things every time they go to a store. Any time a child goes in to buy an ice-cream cone or an all-day sucker he is faced with the alternative of these very compelling pictures and colors, and very often a lot of good salesmanship in displaying them."

Mr. Drew: "We know as a matter of actual experience that if these books are available, they will be read, and if they are read, they have a certain influence. Only two weeks ago, a mere boy of sixteen was sentenced in one of our courts to be hanged, and the evidence demonstrated clearly that his mind had been influenced by books of this kind." He called crime comics "an extremely harmful poison to the minds of our young people."

The Minister of Justice, the Hon. Stuart S. Garson, summed up the debates: "When publishers and disseminators of various kinds of crime comics and obscene literature are heartened and emboldened by this concern of ours for the preservation of literary and artistic freedom, and become steadily more impudent in their degradation of that freedom so that they transform freedom into license, the time comes, and I think we all agree that it has come, when we must take further action to curtail their offences."

No debate on such a high ethical plane, with proper regard for civil liberties but with equal regard for the rights and happiness of children, has ever taken place in the United States. Was the widening periphery of my investigation into the effects of comic books leading me to the problem of where and why the democratic process is being corrupted here, to the detriment of the most defenseless members of society, the children?

The Fulton bill to outlaw crime comic books by an amendment to the criminal code was passed unanimously by the House of Commons. Then it had to come before the Canadian Senate. The Senate referred the bill to one of its standing committees. At the committee hearing, two representatives of the comic-book trade gave evidence. They were eloquent and made their usual persuasive arguments. They said that far from having an adverse influence, crime comic books are highly moral and have a very good influence on children. They almost swayed the committee.

But they made one error. They handed around some free samples of comic books. Some of the Senators had been inclined to listen to the plausible arguments. But after taking a good look at the samples selected by the industry itself to show its worth, they were aghast. The Senate passed the Fulton bill by the overwhelming majority of 91 to 5.

After the Fulton bill became law, a committee representing publishers, distributors and printers decided that comic books affected by the definition of the new law should be discontinued. Twenty-five crime comics, every one of which had figured in my Lafargue and Queens Mental Hygiene Clinic investigations, disappeared from the Canadian newsstands. Canadian parents lost nothing in the way of freedom of speech. Their children were protected from one of the influences which had made it harder for them to grow up decently. Said Mr. Fulton: "The new law imposes an obligation of self-censorship on the publisher and makes certain that what he publishes is not harmful, and this is a perfectly fair duty to impose upon those who derive profit from literature for children."

This pioneer legal experiment in the protection of childhood has been played down as far as American public-information goes. Spokesmen for the industry have proclaimed that it does not mean anything, that the law came about only because my writings had stirred up Canadian parents. There is little merit in that flattering argument. The resistance against American crime comics is going on all over the world. It is a fair statement to make that most civilized nations feel threatened by them in their most holy possessions, their children. One of the worst crime comics boasts: "Distributed in over 25 countries throughout the world!" -- while a picture on the opposite page shows a U.S. Federal Agent knocking a man down with a rifle butt to the words: "Boy, that's the sweetest sound on earth."

While the American taxpayer is paying a lot of money for propaganda, including the Voice of America, and information libraries abroad, parents in most civilized nations have seen comic books right in their own towns and villages. It has gone so far that people all over the world believe that American civilization means airstrips and comic strips. Comic books are our ill-will ambassadors abroad. Whatever differences there are between the Eastern and Western countries of Europe, they are united in their condemnation of American crime-comic books.

What are these nations doing about it? In Sweden, American crime comic books cannot be imported any more. On the other hand, it is reported that American-type comic books "are circulating in alarming numbers" and that there is "a campaign against them." In Holland also American crime comic books cannot be imported. Some comic books are published in Holland, but there is a wide revulsion and agitation against them. There have been articles severely criticizing them, and I have received letters from writers and others who have studied the subject: "Comic books in our country are responsible for an increase in juvenile criminality by inducing boys to play rather funny games of beating, throwing and maltreating each other, kidnapping girls with more or less sexual intentions and stealing money to buy comic books."

In England importation of American comic books is restricted. Many are published in England from plates or blocks fabricated in this country. They are often called "Yank magazines." From articles published in England, from correspondence, from American travelers to England and British travelers here, I have learned that very many people who have directly to do with children are greatly worried about them. "The volume of public protests is growing," writes one of my British correspondents.

People are more concerned about the subtle distortion of children's minds than by cases of violent forms of delinquency and murder, although there were enough of those comic-book delinquencies, too. One of these was seriously commented upon and featured in headlines as "The Boy Who Thought Crime Could Pay." This teen-ager burglarized jewel shops and pubs, tried to stab a policeman and finally shot one. Those who knew him best, his father, mother and some neighbors, described as his outstanding characteristic his reading of comic books. "Always reading that Yank stuff with gangsters and gun molls," said his father. A neighbor described how the boy had lent him crime comic books and how he had taken from them the role of a gangster: "He looked like a gangster. He talked on the side of his mouth like a gangster." He used comic book vocabulary: "They're not goin' to get me alive. I'll get as many of them as I can before they get me." Or (about work): "This is too hard a way to earn dough." His mother told pathetically how he was always quiet and read these crime comic books: "I thought there was no harm." He collected knives and guns and air pistols such as are advertised in comic books. When finally cornered, he would not surrender and was shot in a battle with the police. A Sten gun and a crime comic book lay beside his body.

British children have also been playing the type of game directly taken out of comic books. One little boy, for instance, was tied to a tree and left to roast beside a bonfire, a typical comic-book performance.

The current agitation in England against American and American-style comics is toned down a little because there are interests which spread the idea in Great Britain that to be against comic books shows anti-American sentiment. It is certainly an important fact that among wide sections of the population of the British Commonwealth crime comics can be identified with American civilization. In my correspondence with British people I have done my best to explain that in my opinion American mothers are just as anxious to free their children from the stifling encroachment of comic books as are the mothers of any other nation.

Many British organizations devoted to child welfare have come out strongly against comic books and asked that the government do something about them. The National Federation of Women's Institutes says of the effects of comic books on "young growing minds": "[They] terrify, stimulate morbid excitement and encourage racial prejudice and glorification of violence, brutal and criminal behaviour."

The Glasgow Association of the Educational Institute of Scotland asked for a government ban: "An unhealthy and distorted view of life is presented in these comic books. Crime and lawbreaking are considered as the normal state of affairs." The Association condemns the Superman type of comic books with their implication of the extermination of inferior races and points out that power and riches are described as "the most desirable things in life," while honesty and hard work find no place.

The National Union of Teachers called American comic books "lurid, debasing, sadistic and immoral" and asked that the government ban their import and printing in Britain. A resolution by schoolteachers asked the executive committee of the Association of Assistant Mistresses in Secondary Schools to take steps against United States comic books. The resolution speaks of "these pernicious and degrading publications" which are "calculated to have damaging effect upon young people, both morally and culturally."

The issue of comic books was also raised in the British House of Commons several times. In answer to a question about the harm comic books do to children, a government representative said that he would certainly consult the Home Secretary and the Minister of Education on the subject. On another occasion the member for Coventry displayed comic books and read from them and said that the most sinister thing about these publications was that they introduce an element of pleasure into violence and encourage sadism in connection with unhealthy sexual stimulation. He pointed out that magistrates have found that certain juvenile delinquents who engaged in violent acts used this type of so-called comics as their favorite reading matter. He added: "One of the most alarming facts of this particular situation is the tremendous amount of profit which exists in their sale ... " and demanded: "Children should be protected from the insidious and pernicious effect of this type of reading." A headmaster and member agreed and added that such brutalizing and degrading reading matter was probably not unconnected with the 28,000 crimes committed by children under fourteen. Another member stated: "[Comic book reading is] causing a great deal of anxiety among the parents of this country and many of them just do not know what action to take." She felt that the Government should "take active steps to stop the poisoning of the minds of our children and of our adolescents."

Following this debate (and on other occasions) letters against comic books were published in newspapers. A typical one to the London Times says: "This [better education] is being jeopardized by those comics which are of a particularly vicious kind with the nastiest sort of appeal to the changing instincts of adolescents ... the onus is on officialdom to show at least that these comics are not a contributing factor [to juvenile crime]. Since these publications are universally recognized as pernicious what objection can there be to their prohibition? ... It is, I know, a matter of grave concern to many headmasters in areas where these comics are being distributed and local education authorities are of course helpless in the matter. In an age of uncertain values and deficient faith the least that society can do is to extirpate obvious evils." (Neville Sandelson, Lincoln's Inn.)

During another debate on comic books in the House of Commons a woman physician and member said it was quite impossible for parents to exercise control over the reading matter of adolescents and asked the Home Secretary to look into it again.

In 1953 in the House of Commons immediately after prayers a member presented a petition signed by thousands of people. It asked Parliament to take steps to ban the production, import and distribution of American and American-style comic books. It said that the "so-called comics which have as their theme horror, crime, violence and sex, which are exposed for sale or for view throughout the country" are "dangerous and unsuitable for children."

The Hampstead Borough Council of London debated a proposal to ask the London County Council to look into the effects of comic books on the minds of children. The National Association of School Masters carried a resolution, by an overwhelming majority, against the published and imported comic books as "a menace to the mental health of youth": "What we are against is that type of children's book in which there are constant references to people being beaten up, in which cruelty is looked upon as strength and terror is regarded as an every-day emotion."

At a conference of educational associations at King's College, the Warden of Bembridge School, Isle of Wight, showed some typical comic books "illustrated with half-naked women" and the text in "balloons with handles." He said: "None of these is worthy of a place higher than the gutter. Their contents are contemptible. I do not know how to express my indignation at the fact that this stuff should be allowed to come into this country."

At the annual conference of the British Federation of Psychologists at Bournemouth, a resolution was passed favoring restrictive legislation against comic books which "glorify crime, brutality and lust." At a meeting of teachers and mothers in London, American comic books were taken up and it was pointed out that "most of the comics our children read are brutal and sadistic. Ninety-nine out of a hundred covers particularly are sexy and show scenes of violence."

A new society, the Company of New Elizabethans, has been founded by Miss Noel Streatfeild, author of many books for girls, to combat the "vicious, degrading contents of modern so-called comics." She believes that too many parents are unaware of the real character of comics, which show acts of cruelty and sadism in revolting detail. The Plumcroft Parent-Teacher Association expressed itself as "extremely alarmed at the increased number of these comics in circulation."

The chairman of the Royal Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals put some of the blame for increase of cruelty by children on American comic books: "We do not want to prosecute children, but certainly cases during the last year were so bad we had no alternative but to bring them before the juvenile courts." The Association of Optical Practitioners issued a report on the bad effects of comics on children's vision. And so on and on.

France has been swamped with comic books imported or published there, with French legends, from American sources. It took some time for the public to realize what was happening. Then a resistance movement set in on the part of writers, teachers, child psychologists and experts on juvenile delinquency. Helene Scheu-Riesz, a pioneer in good children's literature, wrote about the first Treasure Chest sent by children of the United States to the children of France: "It contained so many comics that the French teachers, in dismay, begged us to desist from sending such books, for French children began to picture America as a country of gangsters and robbers where shooting, killing and torturing were everyday occurrences." Newspapers printed illustrations from crime comic books showing deeply decollete girls hanged in a setting of lascivious sadism and other brutalities. "With such methods," wrote one paper, "hardly different from those used by the Nazi regime, were S.S. men made."

Dr. Henri Wallon, leading French child psychologist, enumerated "the sad characteristics" of the comics: "the false science which is used only for murder, sexuality linked to cruelty, the pin-up girl with the knife [la pin-up au couteau], bestiality, race hatred, libidinous and perverse monsters, the Fascist notion of the superman, solitary avenger." Evidently the French doctors cannot understand that some of our child experts recommend all this for children.

A series of instances of juvenile delinquency "where children had aped episodes and techniques of violence shown in comic books" helped to crystallize public opinion. The government appointed a commission to protect children against harmful publications. The law was clearly aimed at American and American-style crime comic books. The commission includes two juvenile-court judges, representatives of the ministries of education, public health and justice, delegates of authors, illustrators and youth organizations. (What! no crime-comic-book publishers?) According to the new law, unanimously accepted by the National Assembly, this commission is to supervise comic books sold to children and adolescents. It provides penalties up to one year in prison and 500,000 francs fine. The commission forthwith instructed twenty-five concerns to modify their children's comic-book publications and to stop the sale of the issues then current. According to this law, publishers who intend to bring out publications for children or adolescents must submit the titles and lists of their directors -- before publication.

It is interesting that in a bill so near to censorship (although of course it deals only with the protection of children) the extreme Right, the extreme Left and the Middle found themselves in complete agreement.

Here are some indications of what is happening in other countries. In Italy, as reported by Barrett McGurn, American comic books with Italian legends have made great inroads on children. Such words as Crash, Bang or Zip have become a part of their vocabulary. The newspaper L'Osservatore Romano called the children's comic books "sensational, frightening and encouraging to instincts of violence and sensuality." A survey was conducted among 6,219 grammar school boys and girls. Twenty-six per cent liked comics "in which violence abounds and women appear largely as gun molls and never as normal housewives." Twenty-eight per cent preferred as comics characters "bandits, gangsters, outlaws, millionaires or movie stars." One Italian child commented, ''I'd like to be a bandit because they win all the time and then fight until they are killed."

In the Italian Parliament American crime comic books were vehemently denounced in a debate that lasted almost a week. The speakers agreed that American comics familiarize children with violence. Nobody got up to suggest that it was the children who were violent first. They also agreed on the need of defending Italian children against the American comics which "promote violent instincts ... or foment sentiments of hatred among citizens, people or races."

In Belgium, educators and psychologists are also attempting to stem the tide of comic books. As one school principal said, "We have started to fight to protect our pupils." The reaction in Switzerland is similar, and American bubble-gum pictures -- which are just like crime-comics drawings -- have been banned as too "bloodthirsty." In Portugal, American crime comic books abounded, until they were banned by a law which forbids them as "exploiting crime, terror and monstrous and licentious subjects."

It is remarkable when one reads the professional and lay literature about child welfare, how many people abroad speak of "the invasion by American comics." In the face of all this, the comic-book publishers reacted just like comic-book publishers. They did everything as before.

According to the published reports, "officials of the United States military government are boiling mad at the insistence of Economic Cooperation Administration officials on bringing American comic books to Western Germany." One official said, "If E.C.A. wants to waste its money on such tripe that is its business, but the taxpayers are certainly being milked." "This is exactly the sort of material we've been screening out of the books," said another. According to Edward R. Murrow, one comic-book publisher (who publishes some of the worst comics) had asked for guaranteed convertibility of currency for a shipment of "10,000 assorted comic books a month." W. Averell Harriman, then chief E.C.A. official in Europe, said that a proposal to use Marshall Plan funds to guarantee sales of comic books was ridiculous and would not be approved by his office. At that time Francis J. Bassett wrote to the New York Times: "Making available American crime comic books to Germans with E.C.A. funds does not seem the soundest way to demonstrate the advantages of our democratic society.... They present the worst and most distorted aspect of American life.... We casually send along publications that highlight murder, sensuality, crime and superman. Have the Germans not had enough of supermen?" In line with this, the director-general of the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, Dr. Bodet, former Mexican Foreign Minister, criticized the Superman type of crime comic book as giving children "false ideas."

In all East European countries, including Russia and Eastern Germany, crime comic books cannot be displayed or sold. West Germany was the recipient of large quantities of American crime comic books. Thoughtful Germans who did not need de-Nazification and were afraid of re-Nazification tried to stop them. In several places large numbers were held up. In Stuttgart, for example, officials of the Red Cross, which had received 20,000 comic books, were afraid that they would "teach violence to the German children." The dilemma of Europeans who would like to believe in true democracy and then encounter it in questionable forms is well symbolized by this episode. The officials did not know what to do. They felt that they could not give the books to the children, they did not want to burn them on account of old associations and they could not send them back. There were also protests in Austria. One magazine had an article against American comic books under the title "Caution Poison!"

In Mexico, writers, parents and teachers have made a large-scale attempt to have the government stop the importation of American crime comics. Here as in other countries this has had a bad effect on importation of other magazines from the United States, the legitimate defense against crime comic books spreading to other publications. Here, too, apologists for comic books have attempted to sell the old story that they are good for reading, with much-resented slurs on the literacy of the Mexican population. At the end of 1953 the sale of American comic books which sow race hatred against Asiatic people was forbidden by law in Mexico. In Australia newspaper articles criticizing comic books have appeared with typical comic-book illustrations. The Australian Journalists Association has asked for a ban on the importation of American comics. In the Union of South Africa their importation has also been prohibited. The law there specifically includes old issues. Voices against comic books have also been raised in Brazil and Egypt, in Indonesia, in India and in South American countries. It is a chorus of dismay.

Newspapers in the United States have reflected very little of this widespread concern abroad and of the many attempts of parents there to protect their children from American and American-style comic books. Lincoln Steffens has shown how newspapers can create a crime wave. I have found that they can make ruffled waters appear calm, too. The more I followed the reactions abroad, the more I realized that, like the export of narcotics, crime comic books have become an international problem.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Wed Dec 11, 2013 12:23 am

PART 1 OF 2

12. The Devil's Allies

The Struggle Against the Comic-Book Industry

"Neutral men are the devil's allies."
-- E. H. Chapin


Suppose a child comes to me with a gastro-intestinal disorder. I examine him carefully and come to the conclusion that the cause of the trouble is an impure well. I give some medication for the child and tell him not to drink that water any more. A little while later another child comes to me with the same condition, and after that still another. In each case my clinical judgment traces the trouble to the same well. What under such circumstances is the doctor's job? Should I wait until more and more children from this neighborhood come to me? Should I listen to those who say that after all there are children who have drunk water from this well and not got sick? Or to those who say it is good for children to get sick to the stomach occasionally, to "adjust them to reality"? Or should I listen to the owners of the well who claim first that children do not drink from their well, secondly that the well water is good for them and thirdly that interfering with the owners' right to use the well in any way they please is against their constitutional liberties?

I should certainly not be influenced by the child's opinion that he likes this well, nor by the assertions of those in the pay of the well-owners who claim that this particular well satisfies a "need" in children. It seems to me that my duty as a doctor is to make sure in the first place that these children have been drinking from this well. And then to be guided by an expert determination whether this well is sufficiently contaminated to have caused the trouble.

That is exactly what I did with comic books.

My conclusion as to the harmfulness of crime comic books got an ever larger foundation as my case material increased over the years. In the Lafargue Clinic, in the psychiatric service and the mental hygiene clinic of Queens General Hospital, in the Quaker Emergency Service Readjustment Center, in practice and in consultation, some five hundred children a year came to my attention. In the clinics I built upon intimate relationship with the community so that I had frequent contact with practically every public and private agency in New York that deals with mental-hygiene problems of children and young people. My associates and I gained a survey of children of all classes and dealt both practically, and scientifically with all factors known to influence children adversely, from physical to mental.

At the beginning of our comic-book studies, crime comic books were not recognized as a pathogenic factor. As we went along we had the advantage that we could study them in the setting of an all-inclusive mental-hygiene approach and in their interaction with all other psychological and environmental factors. Comic books transcend all class lines, all intelligence levels, all differences in home conditions. But there is no doubt that the long-range harm is greater and more insidious in all those children less well-endowed materially, intellectually, educationally and socially. The much-abused concept of the predisposed child is misleading in any such study. It is far more scientific to use the concept we worked out at Lafargue, of the endangered child.

I have testified six times under oath on the harmfulness of comic books. On only three of these occasions were comic books the original issue. On all six occasions comic books and/or photostats of comic-book pictures were received and filed as evidence by the court or the legislators. In all but one case (in which I testified in affidavit form), I was subject to searching cross-examination. In all six cases the issue was decided in accordance with my testimony, and for the side for which I testified. This sounds very optimistic, but that is not how it turned out in the long run.

At a Post Office hearing in Washington I had to give a psychiatric analysis of what constitutes obscenity. By way of comparison with nudity in art and photography, I introduced comic books which I called obscene. I pointed out that the picture of a nude girl per se may be the opposite of obscene, as compared to one of a girl in brassiere and panties about to be tied up, gagged, tortured, set on fire, sold as a slave, chained, whipped, choked, raped, thrown to wild animals or crocodiles, forced to her knees, strangled, torn apart and so on.

The people present evidently had not looked much at comic books, though they were bought by their children and on sale at stands within a stone's throw of the building. I suggested that as a test I would go out to any of these stands, and most of the comic books on sale would have episodes like those I had enumerated. From those I had with me, three were picked at random and marked and received in evidence.

The hearing was conducted with great fairness. Its result: "In view of the testimony adduced at the hearing," the Post Office reversed its previous ruling according to which a magazine for adults had been barred from the mails.

It was on a similar problem that I testified about comic books next, but on this occasion I was not the one who introduced the subject. The first novel of a young writer, published by a respected firm, had been accused of being obscene according to the law. A quantity of copies of the book had been seized in a raid on the publishing house. I appeared as a witness for the defense at the trial and gave it as my opinion that the novel was not obscene and the ban should be lifted. While waiting to be called, I sat outside and analyzed the contents of comic books. When called to the stand, I thrust them hastily into my brief case.

In the course of the cross-examination the prosecuting counsel suddenly pointed his finger at my face and demanded:

"Let's get to another subject -- with regard to comic books. You were the chairman of a meeting at the New York Academy of Medicine a short time ago, weren't you?"

"'Yes."

"And in the course of your remarks you referred to the sexual content of comic books, Doctor?"

"Yes."

"And you condemned them thoroughly as having a demoralizing and injurious effect?"

"Yes."

"Now if one kind of book would have an effect, another book would?"

I reached into my brief case and pulled out one of the comic books and handed it, open to a typical sadistic illustration, to the judge. My cross-examiner objected to the introduction of a comic book as evidence. But, as the lawyers say, he himself had opened the door for it, by bringing up the subject. I used the opportunity to defend the character of the novel in comparison with comic books and made three points.

In the first place, the novel is for adults, while this type of comic book (according to my studies and as shown by the advertisements) is read mostly by children.

Secondly, the accused passages in the novel had to do with normal erotic relationships while comic books glorify such perversions as sadism, and all kinds of violence in relation to sex.

Thirdly, this novel belongs to the realm of literature and art and reaches a relatively small number of readers, while these comic books are mass produced and just trash.

The judge had been looking at the comic book, first with disbelief and then with dismay.

"Who says these comic books are good?" he asked me.

"The defenders of the comic-book industry," was my answer.

A few weeks later he handed down his decision, freeing the novel and dismissing the complaint against it.

Following a meeting of the Association for the Advancement of Psychotherapy at which some of my associates and I presented scientific results of our study -- the content analysis of comic books, the varieties of harm they do to children, case examples and the theoretical principles involved -- the question of a remedy came more and more into the foreground. I have little patience with those who, when they hear of something wrong, immediately and without knowing the details ask, What should be done? First one should know. Pathology comes before therapeutics.

My writing and speaking had had at least one effect: parents began to look at comic books. I received letters and inquiries from all over the country. Many had the refrain expressed by one mother: "We who care about such things feel so helpless."

That crystallized for us a wider problem of comic books. It was no longer merely a question of what they do to children but what they were doing to the relationship between children and parents. Why in a democracy should parents feel "helpless?" Parents, I knew from many instances, had made all kinds of attempts to shield their children from comic books. Some had forbidden them. That did not prove to be a good method because it led children to the ubiquitous temptation to get or read them anyhow. Believe it or not, children do not like to lie. But we tempt them and almost force them to. That was very apparent from our studies. In the beginning children were all too eager to tell us all about the crime comic books they had read. They were proud to tell us all they knew about the crocs (crocodiles) and crooks, the stranglers and the supermen, the machine guns and gun molls. But as knowledge and therefore condemnation of comic books spread, children knew more clearly what they had only unconsciously sensed before, that reading crime comic books was a half-forbidden pleasure. So they lied to their parents and became evasive with the many questioners who suddenly sprang up all over the country in the false belief that you can find out about a child by springing a lot of questions on him. Now, when questioned about comic books, children are apt to tell you how they read about floppety rabbits and Bugs Bunny and Donald Duck. But when their parents leave the room, or when you gain their confidence, they will take you wide-eyed into the "walls of horrors," "chambers of misery" or "ambushes for massacres."

Some parents went over their children's belongings and confiscated or destroyed hundreds of books at a time. That did not help either. Or they tried earnestly the advice handed out by numerous amateurish child experts: Why don't you read the comic books first and select the good ones? Many children read so many comic books that a housewife could get little else done if she tried that. Besides, who was going to tell her that if Batman were in the State Department he would be dismissed, and that Superman does not belong in the nursery? Can we put on mothers the burden of determining how many murders a child should have a week, or the job of evaluating in each new comic book the ethics of the jungle?

Not that there are no children who are influenced in the right direction by thoughtful parents with enough time to spend. The four-year-old son of one of my associates was taken to an infectious disease hospital with scarlet fever. There the nurses, to make him feel at home, gave him some comic books. But he earnestly refused them, explaining to the startled nurses that his father had said they are not good for children.

There was of course the possible remedy that the publishers would clear up the well. But I soon found that this was a naive belief. The very comic books that contained the ingredients that we found harmful were the most widely read. The publishers knew what they were doing and why. They had employed experts who justified the situation and fought off criticism.

So one day when I was in the country and saw how this locust plague had settled on a group of nice children whom I knew well, the idea came to me that the only honest and effective remedy would be a law or an ordinance against crime comic books.

I had been invited to speak about comic books at the 1948 Annual Congress of Correction of the American Prison Association in Boston, at a joint meeting of the National Conference of Juvenile Agencies and the National Probation and Parole Association. So I presented there an analysis of comic books and of clinical cases. I pointed out how harmful comic books were to the healthy development of normal children and how in some they produced anxiety and in others an obtuseness toward human feeling and suffering. Where one child commits a delinquent act, many are stimulated to undesirable and harmful thinking and fantasies. Some of the worst, I said, are marked "Approved Reading," "Wholesome Entertainment" and the like. The net effect of comic books, I stated, is anti-social: "Children who spend a lot of time and money on comic books have nothing to show for it afterwards. Many of them have gotten into trouble of one kind or another. The crimes they have read about in comic books are real; the people who supposedly triumph in the end are often very unreal superman types. How many more cases like the eleven-year-old comic-book addict who killed a forty-two-year-old-woman in a holdup do we need before we act? The pure food and drug law, the ordinances against spitting in the subway and about clean drinking-cups protect bodies. Surely the minds of children deserve as much protection. I do not advocate censorship, which is imposing the will of the few on the many, but just the opposite, a step to real democracy: the protection of the many against the few. That can only be done by law. Just as we have ordinances against the pollution of water, so now we need ordinances against the pollution of children's minds." I suggested a law that would forbid the display and sale of crime comic books to children under fifteen.

The response to my proposal was widespread. Dozens of towns and cities -- eventually over a hundred -- passed ordinances against the very comic books whose harmfulness I had indicated. In a number of states anti-comic-book laws were introduced in legislatures, but the comics conquered the committees, and the laws did not come off.

The most serious and efficient attempt to pass a county law was made in Los Angeles County in California. The County Counsel, Harold W. Kennedy, read about the proposal I had made in Boston about a law and framed one according to which the sale of comic books in which crime and violence were prominently featured could not be sold to anyone under eighteen. The Board of Supervisors passed this law. Then it was of course contested by the comic-book industry. Mr. Kennedy asked me to give detailed testimony for use in the courts, which I did in the form of a lengthy affidavit.

In it I described the clinical results of our studies showing how crime comic books have had a bad effect on the mind and personality development of children -- including normal children.

I gave detailed examples of cases and of comic books, and described the absence of regulation in the sale of crime comics to children as a state of anarchy which could be remedied only by a law. My affidavit was accompanied by twenty-nine exhibits, photographs and photostats of comic books sold to children.

The law won a great deal of acclaim in and beyond Los Angeles County. One large chain drugstore which sold many comic books, on the day after the ordinance was adopted, and with full knowledge that it would not be effective for thirty days, voluntarily removed from its shelves all the comic books in question.

Mr. Kennedy was no novice in devising such a law. In twenty-two years he had personally participated in the framing of no less than 389 bills that have become part of the statutory laws of California. It seemed to me significant that the 389th law was the Air Pollution Control or Anti-Smog Act, a good preparation for working on a comic-book law. "After all," he stated, "we don't feel that it is the true sense of the law that these publishers have the right to pollute the minds of young people under the guise of funny books and adventures and crime stories."

The subsequent legal history of this law was most involved, with the real issue of its clinical justification not taken up at all. The newspapers reported briefly that the law had been declared unconstitutional. The spokesmen for the comic-book industry have repeated this so often that many people, including lawyers and legislators, really believe that such a law was declared unconstitutional in California and would be unconstitutional anywhere else. But that is not how it was.

The comic-book interests (from New York) challenged the law through local attorneys as violating the freedom of the press. It was first a civil suit. In that phase the Appellate Department of the Superior Court, sitting as a trial court, denied a preliminary injunction sought by the distributors. The reason for the request of the injunction was the constitutionality of the law, so this court in denying the injunction did not consider the law unconstitutional. Then through two arrests for violation of the county ordinance, the stage was shifted to a criminal court. The two defendants were represented by the same firm which brought the civil suit. They were guided by the New York lawyers and needed their approval for every step. The question of whether crime comic books were bad for children was never allowed to come up. The final ruling of the Appellate Department of the Superior Court, consisting of three judges, was against the ordinance. But the reasons for their decision are interesting:

JUDGE NO. 1: The wording of the ordinance is too vague for the federal constitution, but it does not conflict with freedom of the press as guaranteed under the state constitution.

JUDGE NO. 2: The wording is not vague at all. But it deprives the publishers of their freedom of the press.

JUDGE NO. 3: The law is not too vague and does not deprive them of the freedom of the press.


Analyzed, what does this mean? On each of the two questions, namely whether the law was too vague and whether it was against the freedom of the press, the judges had given a favorable vote of 2 to 1 for the law. Yet the case as a whole was lost and the law could not stand. More important still, the appeal on behalf of the people to the Supreme Court of the United States in Washington which Mr. Kennedy had planned was prevented by a further technicality: Since no two judges thought that the ordinance violated any guarantee under the federal constitution, no such appeal could be made!

To somebody not versed in the law all this seems absurd. The publishers of course were jubilant. They had worked hard to get such a result. They won. The children lost.

Despite the fact of these adverse court decisions and despite the fact that twenty-seven comic-book bills all over the country were killed in committee, the public -- or rather, mothers -- continued sporadic protests. The comic-book industry answered with a magic word, a "code."

About a month after my views were summarized in a national magazine a new code was announced. Let us decode these codes. They are not spontaneous expressions of self-improvement or self-regulation. They are determined efforts at defense. They do not stand alone, but are part of an avalanche of arguments thrust successfully at the public by the comic-book industry. The arguments go like this. First, any specific criticism of comic books is "not true." If proved true, it is only an exception, it slipped in and the man who drew the picture "has just been fired." Moreover, comic books are for adults, and besides they are very good for children. And then there is a code. If it is shown that the code is not adhered to, it is because they have not had time to put the code into practice; that will take another "three months." If after these three months the criticism is repeated, there will be announced a new code which is even better.

Comic books may be a little subject, but they have given me an insight into one of the more terrifying aspects of our social and political life. I have learned from studying what happens with them how easy it is to propagandize a whole nation against its most treasured interests, its children. Editorial writers all over the country accepted the codes at their face value! Everybody thought something had been achieved.

What do the codes all add up to? The one announced in direct response to my criticism said that sexiness, "glorification of crime," "sadistic torture" and "race ridicule" would henceforth be left out. In other words, this is no longer just what I say. This is what the industry itself concedes. Why has all this gone on for over ten years? They indicted themselves by saying that now they would stop.

Here again the cynicism of the publishers breaks through. When I pointed out that a comic book had on its inside cover a code according to which blood was not to be shown any more, and yet one page later shows a close-up with blood streaming from a man's face, the publisher announced that he had not had time yet to put the code into practice. Suppose a candy factory sells lollypops and one batch of lollypops is bad. A respectable firm would immediately recall all those lollypops that had been distributed. And the lollypop factory would not get away with getting out a code saying, "No poisonous lollypops will be sold by this firm in the future," -- meanwhile letting the children vomit over the bad ones "until the code is in operation." (Incidentally, I have seen children vomit over comic books.) I looked for the following number of this comic book, after the one that had the code on the inside cover. Did they leave out the blood? No, that was shown again in four consecutive pictures. They left out the code.

But what about the "good" comic books? Whenever the industry is challenged by parents, teachers or mothers' clubs, it forgets all about the "good" comic books and relies on legal technicalities to ward off any attempt to regulate or force it into self-regulation. That happened in Chicago, in Detroit, in Los Angeles County and in New York. But "good" comic books are important because in some naive way many parents think that the "good" comic books are the answer to any problem that presents itself. So critics of the industry should look into the question of what they are, and how many there are of them, even though this is a question the industry itself always shuns.

Among the "good" comic books whose quantity counts at all are usually reckoned the animal comics, the Disney comics and their imitators, classical books in comic-book form, comic books that are reprints of newspaper comic strips, some teen-age girl comics and some boys' sport comics. The mainstay of the "good" comic books are the animal comics and a few of the relatively innocuous related comics.

It is estimated that at the present time (1954) the number of comic books fluctuates around 90 million a month. There are estimates which are lower; there are others of 100 million a month and more. According to The Wall Street Journal (1953) there were 840,000,000 units a year, 20 per cent more than four years earlier.

Precise figures, which of course would have to be based on records of printing orders, are not available. One has to estimate carefully from all available data the numbers printed, published, distributed and actually read. One has to take into account that crime comic books are traded so often and for so many years and are handed around to so many people and read so repeatedly. One must consider also that some crime comics have larger editions of each title than the "good" ones, and have more issues per year. On this basis I have concluded that the animal and related comics containing no harmful ingredients amount at the most to no more than between one and two tenths of the whole. That is what all the fuss about "good" comics boils down to.

The much-vaunted animal comics are read only by the very young, and are bought mostly by parents. They are showpieces prominently displayed where parents or teachers are apt to be shopping or passing by. They are the only ones occasionally read aloud by parents. If a child tries to trade rabbit stuff with other children, he is jeered at because the only comics traded are killer ones.

Frequently the "good" comics have bad features, too. They sometimes show cruelty. Ducks shoot atomic rays and threaten to kill rabbits: ''I'll kill the parents, I'm a hard guy and my heart is made of stone."

They have advertisements for "throwing knives," for pistols shooting steel darts and of course for crime comics. The "good" comics are the pacemakers for the bad ones.

When one looks at these "good" comic books two things strike one: The ingredients of crime comics, the violence and sadism, break through in some "good" ones, too, no doubt through the processes of contagion and competition; and one becomes aware how blunted the tastes of the public have become with regard to what is proper children's reading.

Henry, a boy of six, had frightened a little girl when he tried to scratch her leg under her dress with a piece of glass. His mother, a very intelligent woman, felt the ordinary comic books were not good for children and selected only the harmless animal ones for him. During playroom therapy the boy showed another boy one of his comic books. It was an animal one, but he grew very excited when describing the exploits in it: A little boy with his companions were fighting all kinds of animals. He had a little spear with which he poked one animal in the nose and another in the mouth. Into the face of still another he thrust a flaming torch. But the real high point was our old friend, the injury-to-the-eye motif: one character in the story directs a sharp-pointed spear at an animal's eye with the words: "... I'll put your eye out!"

Children have shown me a comic book which mothers must think is "good." It is produced by one of the biggest comic-book publishers, is given away free by a famous-brand food manufacturer and has the name of Hopalong Cassidy on it. It shows an "insane" barber running loose with a sharp razor. He ties an old man to the barber's chair, brandishing a razor.

The old man: "He's stropping the razor! And he's got that mad look on his face! He'll cut my throat! GULP!"

A close-up follows with the face of the old man bound to the chair, the face of the barber, the knife and the neck. The same scene is shown a second time, and a third. Then comes Hoppy, twists the barber's arm backward and knocks him out so he sees stars: "WHAM!"

I have talked to children about this book. They do not say this book is about the West, or about Hopalong Cassidy, or about a barber. They say it is about killing and socking people and twisting their arms and cutting their throats.

Take one that looks even more harmless, Howdy Doody. I discussed this with a group of white and colored children. Their reaction was partly giggling, partly inhibited. The book depicts colored natives as stereotyped caricatures, violent, cowardly, cannibalistic and so superstitious that they get scared by seltzer tablets and popping corn and lie down in abject surrender on their faces before two little white boys.

The same theme of race ridicule is played up in the good animal comic book Bugs Bunny. Colored people are described as "superstitious natives" and you see them running away. The injury-to-the-eye motif is added, Bugs Bunny being shown throwing little diamonds into the eyes of the colored people. They are "big enough to blind a feller!" says Bunny. "Awk! I can't see!" says one victim. Is that not the same crime-comic-book ingredient adapted to the youngest set?

"Very young children," says the child psychiatrist Dr. David Levy, "have no prejudice. Their later antagonistic reactions to those who are different are regarded as the result of parental or group indoctrination." Has there ever been a greater and earlier and more insidious indoctrination with race hatred than American children are exposed to in comic books, "good" or bad?

Among other "good" comic books are those that teach history. Typical is one called Your United States. It devotes one page to each state and, although on bad paper and as smudgily printed as the others, it really contains some instructive information. But practically every state, although it gets only one page, has a scene of violence; if one doesn't, that is made up for in other states where there are two or three such scenes. For instance, a man hanged from a tree by a "vigilance committee"; Negroes in chains; corpses and dying men; a girl tied to a tree, her bound wrists above her head, her skirt blowing up in the wind and a coy facial expression of fright as in a sadist's dream; a girl about to be raped or massacred. Is that what you want your children to think is the history of "Your United States"?

Here is another comic book dealing with history and education, especially sent to me as a shining example. It has a feature about the Olympic games: "The Olympic games were the greatest sporting event of the ancient world. But any ladies caught watching them were thrown over a cliff." Here I have gone all these years without knowing that! And lest the child miss the point, an illustration shows it: A well-developed girl with the same coy expression of alarm runs along a steep cliff hotly pursued by a he-man in a helmet. Another item for the child's information is that there was "fixing" in the Olympic games. One could call this the contemporary approach to ancient history.

Inaccuracies in historical comics are common. People are hanged during the French Revolution (when the gallows had been abolished), the trial of Edward Floyde, important in the fight of the Crown against Parliament, is falsified; the end of the Boer War is wrongly presented, while the story has such choice bits as "You dirty British swine!"

A good summary of comic books in which "history emerges from balloons" was given by May Lamberton Becker in the Herald Tribune: "I can't say I think much of any of them. If you try to meet Superman on his own ground, you will be beaten unless you jazz up history until it isn't history at all."

There are publicity comic books to influence adults. Sylvia F. Porter, the financial columnist, writes about a comic book got out by the American Bankers Association: "The aim is not just to amuse you. Not by a long shot. It is to mold your thinking in a specific way." If that is true of good comic books for bankers, isn't it true, too, of bad comic books for children? They mold a child's thinking in a specific way.

Political comic books are the exact opposite of crime comics. In The Story of Harry S. Truman, for example, characters who might well be featured in a crime comic book are suppressed. Boss Pendergast is not mentioned. And instead of him, there is at the beginning of the Truman saga this domestic scene: Young Truman coming home and saying to his wife, "Bess, the boys at the Legion meeting were talking about having me run for county judge."

Those who attempt to use comic books for educational purposes forget that crime comic books have set up in children associations which counteract their efforts. An educational comic book for teen-agers on juvenile drug addiction cannot do any good to adolescents who have been stimulated by other comics about a girl's dreams "of murder and morphine."

I have never seen any good effects from comic books that condense classics. Classic books are a child's companion, often for life. Comic-book versions deprive the child of these companions. They do active harm by blocking one of the child's avenues to the finer things of life. There is a comic book which has on its cover two struggling men, one manacled with chains locked around hands and feet, the other with upraised fist and a reddened, bloody bandage around his head; onlookers: a man with a heavy iron mallet on one side and a man with a rifle and a bayonet on the other. The first eight pictures of this comic book show an evil-looking man with a big knife held like a dagger threatening a child who says: "Oh, don't cut my throat, sir!" Am I correct in classifying this as a crime comic? Or should I accept it as what it pretends to be -- Dickens' Great Expectations?

Elizabeth V. Brattig, a high school teacher, asked children as a class assignment to read the comic-book versions of classics and then compare them with the original book. In the case of George Eliot's Silas Marner the children laughed "at the droll discrepancies in the story and the incongruities in the illustrations": "Silas is represented as senile and hoary, somewhat like the Ancient Mariner throughout"; "the flavor of George Eliot, the warm human touches, the scenes of matchless humor, had been completely ignored by the Classic Comics."

The idea that by giving children something good to read, crime comics can be combatted, purified or eliminated has proved naive wherever it was tried. It does not take into account the mass character of the seduction, which is precisely why crime comic books are an entirely new phenomenon not equalled before at any time nor place. You cannot clear up the muddy water in a stream by planning a clear brook that flows in the opposite direction.

I had an opportunity to watch an experiment showing the hold of the crime-comic-book industry on the market and on public opinion. One day Wally, a five-year-old boy, went home to his parents in Mamaroneck with a comic book filled with half-dressed jungle queens and all kinds of sadistic exploits and cruelties. His parents, like millions of other parents, had thought he had been reading Donald Duck and other such animal comics. That experience gave Mr. Henry H. Stansbury the idea of combatting bad comic books with really good ones.

With eleven other fathers -- having altogether forty-nine children -- who had had similar experiences, he started a small publishing venture. There was to be a series of good comic books. The first, which has been called the only good comic book in existence, was the beautiful story of The Nightingale by Hans Christian Andersen. It is illustrated by the well-known watercolorist Dong Kingman and printed in beautiful colors. The paper is of much better quality than the usual comic book and the printing is good and clear. Although it cost ten cents The Nightingale was not a regular comic book because the dialogue was not in balloons. And it did not conform to the comic-book formula according to which a story is so abundantly illustrated that the action can be followed almost without reading any of the words.

With this series Mr. Stansbury hoped to deal a blow to the onslaught of crime comics. But how to bring this about by getting the project before the public? A national magazine, the Woman's Home Companion, was enthusiastic about it. They had already prepared a layout for an article dealing with this new comic-book series. But at the last moment Mr. Stansbury was told by the "child care expert" of the magazine, herself a senior staff member of the Child Study Association of America, that he must first "submit" the comic books to the Consultant of Children's Reading of the Child Study Association of America, who (according to the Kefauver Committee) is in the employ of the comic-book industry. Mr. Stansbury pleaded with the editors who had liked his plan and The Nightingale so much. He asked why he must go to "somebody whose name appears on some of the most objectionable comic books." But that is what had to be done before they would print his article. He refused, and the Woman's Home Companion never printed a word about the project. That is how things are sewed up in the comic-book field. The industry won again, and the children lost. I know many other similar examples. They show how unrealistic it is to think that the flood tide of crime comics can be stemmed by trying to launch good comics. The public, of course, does not know about these connections.

The whole question of "good" comic books can be summed up in this way: Crime comic books are poisonous plants. The "good" comic books are at best weeds.

Some "bad" comic books are universally acknowledged to be bad. These are the frankly pornographic little booklets which made their first appearance during the depression and have flourished ever since. In relation to real comic books their number is of course small. They are all caricatures of newspaper comic strips. For example, there are Burma, Flash Gordon, Blondie, Uncle Bim and Millie, Major Hoople, Popeye, etc.

Whereas in regular comic books the publishers remain in semianonymity, in pornographic ones the anonymity is complete. I have had a number of these books brought to me by adolescents, juvenile-aid officers and others who have to do with children. They are sold widely in schools and the authorities seem to pay little attention to them. One fifteen-year-old boy explained to me:

"I got this from a friend. They usually cost anywhere from a dime to half a dollar. The small kids pay more. They have never seen anything like it; they think it's great stuff! Guys in school sell them. You have to ask for a 'hot book.' There is a big traffic in it if you have time to peddle them. There are thousands of these books around. These guys sell them to certain kids and these are the kids that peddle them around. Girls buy them, too. I have shown them to a girl."

Apparently it is generally believed, and educators have told me so, that these pornographic comic books deal with sex while ordinary comic books do not. This is a greatly mistaken opinion. Both types of books are sexy. The difference is in the kind of perversions. This division is complete. The pornographic ones contain no violence. Children's crime comics abound in the perversions of sadism, masochism. flagellation, fetichism, and pedophilia. The little pornographic books have orogenitalism (mouth erotism), intercourse in unusual kinds of positions, including triolism (sex practices between three people), and anal erotism. Whereas in ordinary comic books virility is indicated in the advertisements and in inflated masculinity of supermen in tight uniforms, in the pornographic comic books the oversized erect penis is featured; whereas in the ordinary children's comic books the would-be raper grabs the half-nude girl violently and says: "You have your choice -- come as my prisoner or I'll choke the life out of you!", in the little pornographic comics everything is done voluntarily.

It is strange that educators and child psychologists regard the first set of perversions as manifestly harmless in helping the child to get rid of his supposed aggressions, while the second set is not so condoned. Actually, my studies have shown that the first set of perversions are more injurious to fantasy-life and mental health in the long run. Violence is not a normal substitute for sex, but a morbid one. Moreover, when unscrupulous adults seduce and use children for sexual and criminal activities, they do not use these little pornographic comics, but shower the child with the ordinary crime comic books. In this way children have been softened up by adults for the numbers game, the protection racket, drug addiction, child prostitution (female and male); and girls have been softened up for crimes where they serve as decoys. A special way in which children are being used nowadays by adults is as "watchers." Adults who have sexual relations in a park engage children as young as seven to watch for policemen.

Many years ago, when the British House of Lords debated a law to abolish capital punishment for the theft of five shillings, the Lord Chief Justice remonstrated: "My Lords, if we suffer this Bill to pass we shall not know where we stand; we shall not know whether we are upon our heads or our feet. No man can trust himself an hour out of doors.... " This is the kind of opposition I encountered when I asked for a crime-comics law. I have been astonished by this aversion to law. Does not our whole social life exist and progress in the framework of laws? Yet again and again I have been told that legislation is the last thing I should think of in my efforts to protect children against crime comic books. For instance, the legal counsel of the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers declared: "The problem is not solved by a quick easy panacea like legislation." Is that what lawyers want us to think, that legislation is "quick," that it is "easy," that it is a "panacea"?

Other totally different groups seem to think along the same line. I was invited to speak at an annual conference of the American Civil Liberties Union. I outlined there my clinical objections to crime comic books, described the present comic-book situation as an irresponsible anarchy and suggested legislation as a social remedy. A law that would forbid the display and sale of comic books to children under fifteen, I explained, would preserve the civil liberties of adults to buy the goriest crime comic books for their children if they wanted to. The official summary of the meeting was as follows: "The discussion of comic books brought out strong support for curbs upon the type of material directed toward adolescent minds unable to determine good from bad. The sense of the group was to oppose censorship by legislation, but to support pressure on the industry to establish standards prohibiting publication of objectionable material." But how does one bring pressure on a hundred-million-dollar business without a law? And how can children bring pressure? As I listened to all these serious-faced reformers objecting to the only effective curb of crime comic books, I thought of David Low's cartoon: "Gad, sir, reforms are all right as long as they don't change anything!"

Since the lawyers seemed so opposed to new laws, I studied the various laws that existed already pertaining in any way to comic books. And that led me to what seemed to me a startling discovery: As it stands, the law is heavily weighted against children, and in favor of adults, including of course the comic-book industry. This may appear unlikely, but is easily proved. I include in this statement existing laws that apply directly to this subject and others that apply more indirectly or whose application is more controversial, the whole judicial process with its appeals and lack of appeals, the administration of the law and even the penological aspects. Of the fact itself there can be no doubt. The law as it applies, or might apply, to crime comic books leaves the child unprotected, while it punctiliously safeguards the material interests of the adult.

Although in many children's lives comic books play a role, no adult court, no children's court, has ever made or ordered a full inquiry in a child's case. But when the publishers of the comic book Eerie sued the publisher of the comic book Eerie Adventures for using the word eerie on the cover, the New York Supreme Court gave a learned and comprehensive opinion bristling with details and citations: Justice Frank arrived at the truly Solomonic verdict that both publishers could use the word; but that the second publisher must print it "reduced in size." If the psychological effects on children would receive the same meticulous concern as the financial interests of publishers, some court would have long since ordered that what has to be "reduced" is not the eerie title but the eerie contents!

It would be senseless to blame an individual or a court. Law, as Justice Benjamin Cardozo said, accepts as the pattern of its justice the morality of the community whose conduct it assumes to regulate. The defect of the law and of the community is shown up by its complete unpreparedness to deal with something entirely new like crime comic books. Through their unprecedented quantities, which dwarf all other present or past publishing figures, and through their literally endless repetition of the sex-crime-superman-horror formula, crime comic books are something entirely new. That is why they could grow to such an octopus before they were scientifically challenged. The law was as unprepared as the parents and the child psychiatrists.

The many attempts all over the country to curb crime comics show that the community by sound instinct has at the very least grave doubts about them. What are the laws that give this commodity legal sanction and permit it to get away with so much?

The example of the copyright laws is very instructive. They exist to safeguard the property rights of those who produce works that might be pirated without authorization. It surely is equitable that such rights be protected. But this law as it is being used in the case of comic books works entirely against the interests of children.

I began to realize that there is an important principle at work here. A good law, when applied to something new or to a new set of circumstances, can lend itself to grave abuse. The greatest prop of the crime-comic-book industry was the silence with which it took over the children's market. When it was already established, and writers began to wish to inform the public of what was going on, the publishers forbade reproduction of drawings from comic books. That of course made it almost impossible to inform the public. Quite a number of national magazines wanted to print such illustrations, but were refused permission. This was the more misleading because the publishers' full-page advertisements in magazines contained special drawings of a very different kind, totally misleading as to what crime comic books are like.

The best example of the extent to which this abuse of the copyright law goes is presented by the Journal of the American Judicature Society, a learned journal read by judges, lawyers and legal scholars. This journal made comic books a topic of its discussions. It would have liked to secure an illustration or two, "but could not get any publisher to consent." It is obvious that no financial loss whatsoever was involved. The copyright law was used just to prevent a professional public from seeing what these books really contain.

Although comic books are not really magazines, and although even their defenders admit that many are objectionable, they enjoy second-class mailing privileges with the Post Office. This is under a law which applies to circumstances almost a hundred years ago (1879). Do not those who administer the law or the legislators who are supposed to bring laws up to date realize that they bestow a premium, a privilege, on those who mail objectionable material and that they make the taxpayers pay for the corruption of their own children? There are high officials in the Post Office Department in Washington who are fully aware that many comic books are harmful and who "have long deplored the fact that many of these publications enjoy the second class privilege under which they are transported in the mails at a considerable loss to the postal service."

The comic-book industry uses the second-class mailing privilege also as an alleged proof of the worth of its product. The general manager of one of the largest publishers has stated that since he has to submit every comic book in order to gain second-class mailing privileges for it, that shows that they are all right "so far as morals are concerned."

The Post Office also has laws against fraud. For example, they can interfere with a publisher who has misleading advertisements. But here, too, the comic-book industry seems to be immune. The Pure Food and Drug Act passed in 1906 seems to me to apply to the medicine advertisements in comic books for children. They have been severely criticized by a local department of health. But no health law has interfered with them and they get bolder all the time.

There are laws to control the sale and carrying of dangerous weapons such as guns and knives. One would expect that such laws would protect children. Just the opposite is the case. Children caught with guns -- converted toy guns -- or switchblade knives face the severest penalty, however young they may be. "Any boy," a judge said recently, "who comes before me for having a gun will be treated as a gangster.... When we come face to face with gangsters this court will give no consideration." But in millions of advertisements the possession and use of guns and switchblade knives is made as attractive as possible and the youngest child can buy them from these advertisers by mail. Is this not an instance where the law punishes the victim who falls for these advertisements while the instigator who advertises and sells them goes scot free?

A special case consists in the laws about B.B. air rifles. The penal law of New York makes it a punishable offense to offer and sell these "to any child under the age of 16 years." It also makes a child of sixteen and under "guilty of juvenile delinquency" if he merely possesses such a gun. Actually, official agencies have repeatedly warned against these weapons, because they have "resulted in many accidents causing loss of sight or serious eye injuries." But in this respect also the superman purveyors of Superman and the other crime-comic-book publishers and the experts endorsing them are immune, although these comics bristle with the most glamorous ads for these forbidden weapons.

Not long ago I saw a thirteen-year-old boy who was arrested for shooting an air gun from a window. In psychiatric examinations and psychological tests no abnormalities were found. This boy was under the Children's Court, and I have seen a number of similar boys who have been sent to reformatories for long stretches. In this case there was the usual description of the arrest in the form of a petition to the court: "N.N., detective, alleges that Joseph Smith, aged 13, is a delinquent child for the reason that he violated a law of the State of New York in that he was in possession of a dangerous weapon, to wit an air pistol, in good firing order, together with six darts and a quantity of lead pellets which may be fired from said air pistol."

In such cases I am often tempted to make a petition of my own: "F.W., psychiatrist, alleges that the publisher of the N.N. comic book and the experts endorsing the said comic book are delinquent adults for the reason that in concert with one another they violated a law of common decency in that they published and lent their names to a publication for children which advertises dangerous weapons, to wit air pistols, in good firing order together with steel darts and lead pellets which may be fired from said air gun and may get the innocent child who falls for these advertisements into terrible trouble with the Children's Court."

The Federal Government has laws restricting interstate commerce under certain circumstances injurious to the people. Could not such laws be made to include the shipment of objectionable comic books? Assistant District Attorney John E. Cone, who has investigated teen-age gangs, has stated as a result of his findings that crime comic books should be "done away with because not only do they list advertisements through which guns can easily be purchased by juveniles, but they give a synthetic thrill which kids cannot fulfill in real life without actually committing crime." The suggestion for Federal legislation to bar interstate advertisements and sale of knives and toy weapons that can be converted was made by Domestic Relations Justice Louis Lorence. Hundreds and hundreds of such illegal weapons have been confiscated by the police in New York. "For a number of years," Judge Lorence stated, "all over the city boys have approached other students in schools and have demanded money for protection. If money is not given, beatings often ensue. In the past two months, particularly, there were many cases in my court where parents complained of this protection racket." I myself have seen more than twenty-five children who have either been victims of such threats or have played the racket game themselves, usually with switchblade knives. Although switchblade knives serve no purpose except quick violence, they are still advertised in comic books for the youngest children.

There are laws according to which it is a punishable offense to "contribute to the delinquency of a minor." Yet the text, pictures and advertisements in crime comic books do that constantly. A 1936 amendment to the New York City Domestic Relations Court Act says: "Such court shall also have jurisdiction, whenever the issues involving a delinquent child are before the court, summarily to try, hear and determine any charge or offense less than the grade of a felony against any person alleged to have contributed to such child's delinquency and may impose the punishment provided by law for such offense."

The New York State constitution confers on the Domestic Relations Court jurisdiction "for the punishment and correction of adults responsible for contributing to such delinquency ... such courts may hear and determine such cases with or without a jury, except those involving a felony."

Similar laws against contributing to the delinquency of a minor exist in other states. But although children have so often been softened up for juvenile delinquency and although there are cases where it can be demonstrated that the delinquent child bought his first switchblade knife through comic-book advertisements, and learned from comic-book text how to use it, no district attorney, no judge, no complainant, has ever had the courage to make a complaint against a comic-book publisher. Thus comic books make cowards of us all.

There are also the "attractive nuisance" laws which have been on the books since 1873 and which have been upheld by the United States Supreme Court. If you have an attractive pool to which a child has access from the street, you can be held responsible if a child drowns in it. They may not apply directly to comic books, but they provide an interesting analogy. Parents of children who get into trouble from too much crime-comic-book reading and with .22-calibre guns or switchblade knives purchased through comic-book advertisements could at least try to hold the publishers responsible.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Wed Dec 11, 2013 12:23 am

PART 2 OF 2 (CH. 12 CONT'D.)

Trial by jury and legal counsel are a right of adults. Children are being sent away to reformatories undefended and sometimes without even having their guilt properly established. I know of cases of children sent to reformatories when I was convinced that they were not guilty. In some cases familiar to me the police, needing a solution, have obtained confessions from innocent children by tricky and unfair methods. They include serious crimes, even homicide. In the procedure in the Children's Court we find again the principle that good laws and procedures may turn into their opposites. Children's courts were a great step forward; but nowadays they have to deal with such serious delinquencies that it would be more in the interests of children if the procedure were less informal -- and a little less routine. The safeguards for children in court have turned into a danger for them. The secrecy in children's courts, in itself commendable, has prevented the public from knowing what it should know. It also was a progressive step that children were not fingerprinted. But this law has also to some extent turned against the interests of children. At the very time when murders and violent crimes by young children have become a serious social phenomenon, the Federal Government has no accurate statistics on them.

Even the libel laws can be and are used against the interests of children. Writers and editors are really frightened that the powerful comic-book industry will use these laws against its critics. I had two experiences of my own. I had written that in the "good" comic book The Mysteries of Paris blood shows beneath the bandage of a man whose eyes have been gouged out. The publisher demanded a retraction. But I stood my ground, because the blood was there.

The other instance also involved a "good" comic book. I had written an article for the National Parent-Teacher Magazine at their request, on "What Are Comic Books?" in which I said, "It is a great error not to realize that 'Western' comics are just crime comics in disguise. The comic book Tom Mix, for example, has the story of an insane killer who hacks off people's hands, with the bloody details fully illustrated."

After this article appeared I received a long-distance call from the editor in Chicago. She had been visited by a representative of the industry and also by their lawyer. She also received several letters. "They persist in threatening me with a libel action. They said that on account of the article they were losing a million a year." Later she sent me their letters. They objected to the one sentence in my article, calling it a "libelous reference," "untrue," "untruthful" and "inaccurate." They said the story was all about a "dummy." They demanded "a public retraction and correction," and threatened to turn the matter over to their attorney for libel action.

Naturally the editor was alarmed. So I wrote her describing the comic-book-story sequence in detail:

Early in the story "Hands Off" in Tom Mix Western there are three pictures showing a box in which are the hacked-off hands of a real man (not a dummy). One little boy, looking into this box, says: "GULP! IT'S A PAIR OF HUMAN HANDS CUT OFF AT THE WRIST!"

The sheriff says: "JUMPIN' RATTLESNAKES! SOME LOW-DOWN MURDERIN' VARMINT CUT OFF A PORE FELLOW'S HANDS!"

In four pictures you see the human corpse (not a dummy), the hands of which were in the box.

The insane killer knocks out Tom Mix (in person, not a dummy) by socking him on the head (CONK in large yellow letters and a big splash of color) with a gun, hangs him (in person, not a dummy) by the wrists from a tree and holding in his hand a big ax red with blood says: "... I'M AGONNA CUT YORE HANDS JEST LIKE I DID FRISCO FRANK'S!"

In the next picture you see a further close-up of this hanging-by-the-wrists man (not dummy), a bloody ax swinging, and all.

After some more struggle and fighting and kicking, with more talk about cutting off the (real) man's hands, Tom Mix gets free. He constructs a dummy -- which in the pictures is of course indistinguishable from a real man -- and you see two close-ups with the insane killer and his ax, in two of which the hand is actually cut off. In two of them again the ax is red-stained, presumably with blood. And the dialogue reads: "HA! HA! THAR GOES ONE OF YORE HANDS, MIX! AND NOW TUR CUT OFF THE OTHER!"

It's only in the fourth picture before the end, in one balloon, that it is stated: "YOU JUST CHOPPED THE HANDS OFF OF A STUFFED FIGURE!" (Of course this is lost on the many children who just study the pictures and do not read the text.)

I ended my letter: "Far from retracting what I have written, I reaffirm that this Tom Mix story is a bloody crime story disguised as a 'Western' totally unfit for immature minds. And I hope that this example will help parents to see the methods by which the comic-book industry continues the corruption of children's minds. In a democratic society there is no other way to cope with such an evil than a law -- even if in one story, one of two handless corpses is a dummy."

This letter was not published in the Parent-Teacher. The editor told me later that she telephoned to the publisher, telling him what it said, and told him that "if you people persist in threatening us, we will publish Dr. Wertham's letter in full."

Later she received a letter from the publishers which ran true to form for comic-book stories and comics publishers: "It [the Tom Mix story] is not a representative story and was purchased several years ago." The letter also conceded that some of the comic books on the newsstands "are shocking, a disgrace and probably harmful to children."

The trouble is that all this, except for my original article, is unknown to the public. There is another point, too. Supposing it had been true that an insane killer had only hacked off the hands of a dummy, would that be suitable for children?

Whenever there is any court action stemming from comic books the question of what is in comic books does not come up at all. The industry relies then on the constitutional guarantee of free speech. It draws people's attention away from the real issue and veils the business in an idealistic haze. The framers of the Constitution and its amendments would certainly be surprised if they knew that these guarantees are used to sell to children stories with pictures in which men prowl the streets and dismember beautiful girls. The industry regards selling books to children as its prerogative, that is to say as a right to be exercised without external control. To use constitutional rights against progressive legislation is of course an old story. Theodore Roosevelt encountered it when he campaigned for pure food laws.

In these assertions of freedom in the case of comic books, just the opposite is concealed. "We are allowing ourselves," said Virgilia Peterson, "in the name of free speech (oh, fatal misuse of a high principle) to be bamboozled into buying or letting our children buy the worst propaganda on the market. It is a tyranny by a handful of unscrupulous people. It is as much a tyranny as any other on the face of the earth."

What is censorship? The industry has obscured that by claiming that the publisher exercises a censorship over himself. That is not what censorship means. It means control of one agency by another. When Freud speaks of an internal censor in the human mind, he does not mean that instinctive behavior can control itself. He specifically postulates another agency, the superego, which functions as censor. The social fact is that radio, books, movies, stage plays, translations, do function under a censorship. So do newspaper comic strips, which all have to pass the censorship of the editor, who sometimes -- as in the case of the Newark News -- rejects advance proofs. Comic books for children have no censorship. The contrast between censorship for adults and the lack of it for children leads to such fantastic incongruities as the arrest of a girl in a nightclub for obscenity because she wrestles with a stuffed gorilla, when any six-year-old, for ten cents, can pore for hours or days over jungle books where real gorillas do much more exciting things with half-undressed girls than just wrestling.

It is a widely held fallacy that civil liberties are endangered or could be curtailed via children's books. But freedom to publish crime comics has nothing to do with civil liberties. It is a perversion of the very idea of civil liberties. It has been said that if comic books for children were censored on account of their violence "you couldn't have a picture of Lincoln's assassination in a textbook." Would that be such a calamity? There are many other pictures of Lincoln's time and life that would be far more instructive. But the whole inference is wrong, in any case. A picture of Lincoln's assassination would be incidental to a book expounding larger themes. In crime comic books, murder, violence and rape are the theme.

There seems to be a widely held belief that democracy demands leaving the regulation of children's reading to the individual. Leaving everything to the individual is actually not democracy; it is anarchy. And it is a pity that children should suffer from the anarchistic trends in our society.

When closely scrutinized, the objections to some form of control of comic books turn out to be what are psychologically called rationalizations. They rationalize the desire to leave everything as it is. The very newspaper, the New York Herald Tribune, which pioneered in comic-book critique, said editorially later: "Censorship cannot be set up in this one field without undermining essential safeguards in other fields." The example of Canada alone, and of Sweden and other countries, has shown how spurious this argument is. A committee set up by comic-book publishers stated at their first meeting that censorship is an "illegal method." That certainly confuses things. An editorial in the New York Times entitled "Comic Book Censorship" says on the one hand: "We think the comic books have, on the whole, had an injurious effect on children and in various ways"; but goes on to say: "Public opinion will succeed in making the reforms needed. To wait for that to happen is far less dangerous than to abridge freedom of the right to publish." How long are we supposed to wait? We have now waited for over a decade -- and right now there are more and worse crime comic books than ever before. And would the forbidding of mad killers and rapers and torturers for children abridge the freedom of the Times to publish anything it wants to? Why should a newspaper that stands for the principle of publishing what is "fit to print" make itself the champion of those who publish what is unfit to print?

While the industry wants to put all the burden on the children to protect themselves as best they can against injurious influences, John Kieran has expressed his belief that books for little children should be censored: "They have their foods selected for them, and the same applies to books. If the right books are given very young children to read, if the reading habit is started early, then when the children grow up they can select their own books."

In the comic-book field the alternatives to censorship have been fully tried. Self-regulation -- to the extent that it was really attempted -- has completely failed. In connection with parent-teacher organizations and other similar groups there have been local committees evaluating comic books. Most of their work of wading through hundreds of comic books was originally undertaken with enthusiasm, but has of course bogged down. So would the work of a committee that had to sample all the items in a local drugstore to see that nobody gets harmed.

What must happen to the minds of children before parents will give up these amateurish extra-legal committee activities and ask for efficient, legal, democratic protection for their children?

Legal control of comic books for children is necessary not so much on account of the question of sex, although their sexual abnormality is bad enough, but on account of their glorification of violence and crime. In the reaction to my proposals I found an interesting fact: People are always ready to censor obvious crudity in sex. But they have not yet learned the role of temptation, propaganda, seduction and indoctrination in the field of crime and violence. Psychoanalytically we know a great deal about the repression of sexual impulses. But to apply that directly to the psychology of criminal and violent impulses is far too simple. The reading of corrupting literature is a significant contributing factor in the causation of criminal and violent acts of juveniles. How many more cases like those in California, in Canada, in Chicago, in Maine, in Pennsylvania, in Germany, in Australia, in New York, in England, must we have before we acknowledge scientifically and legally what the good sense of the people is recognizing more and more?

Whenever you talk to a lawyer about the legal curb of crime comic books he more likely than not will answer you: "Yes -- but don't forget the Winters case." I heard this case mentioned so often as an argument (or rather, instead of an argument) that I decided to study it myself.

The Winters case is for the crime-comic-book industry what the lawyers call the case of main reliance. A bookdealer in New York was selling a magazine for adults containing articles with such titles as "Bargains in Bodies." The content of the magazine was nothing but crime and bloodshed illustrated with gruesome pictures of victims and other such material. Two thousand copies of this magazine were seized under a section of the penal law which prohibits publications "principally made up of ... pictures or stories of deeds of bloodshed, lust or crime."

It took eight years from the time of the sale of the books to the final decision of the United States Supreme Court in Washington, which had the case for more than three of those years. The bookdealer was originally convicted. The conviction was upheld in higher courts and then reversed by the United States Supreme Court. When the United States Supreme Court reversed the decision it overruled the opinion of no less than seventeen (17) judges. And if one includes the dissenting judges of the U.S. Supreme Court, six (6) judges outweighed twenty (20). This does not indicate that some judges are good and some bad, or some right and some wrong. It does show that the judiciary with changing times has come up against a new social problem; namely, the necessity of censoring not only obscenity but also violence as well. The division of the Supreme Court is the reflection of a social conflict. It is the expression of the growing pains of democracy. The conflict pertains to the social control of what I have called the new pornography, the glorification of violence and sadism. It also pertains to the root problem of my studies, the protection of children against temptation, seduction and unfair punishment after they have succumbed.

In the Court of Appeals of the State of New York, Judge Loughran, expressing the opinion of the majority, wrote: "Collections of pictures or stories of criminal deeds of bloodshed or lust unquestionably can be so massed as to become vehicles for inciting violent ... crimes...." He clearly distinguished this type of social harmfulness from the ordinary objections to sexual obscenity. He took into account the question of free speech and pointed out that the interest in controlling social harm far outweighs any value such a publication might be construed to have.

In the United States Supreme Court the majority overruled this opinion. They made the dubious assertion that such words as "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, indecent or disgusting" are "well understood through long use in the criminal law." In contrast, they held that massing stories to incite crime and stories of deeds of bloodshed and violence is too "vague" and unclear. If they had looked into this literature for children, sold not in 2,000 copies but -- at the very minimum -- in 250,000 copies, they would have found fifty-two murders and patches of blood in one book and eighty-one acts of violence in another. There is nothing "vague" about that. In other words, they did not take into account fully Judge Cardozo's concept of the "morality of the community" because they did not know what was going on in the children's segment of the community. They actually objected to the New York law because it "does not limit punishment to the indecent and obscene"! They rejected the emerging new-morality expressed by the New York State Court of Appeals.

I have no doubt that the next generation will regard Justice Frankfurter's dissenting opinion in the Winters case, in which Justice Jackson and Justice Burton concurred, as one of the great documents of legal and social philosophy of our time. He pointed out that the majority opinion could have been written by anybody who had never read the magazine in question. It is like playing "Hamlet without Hamlet." (Remember that this is exactly what the comic-book industry is doing and is permitted to do all along, with every legal case.) Justice Frankfurter pointed out "the bearing of such literature on juvenile delinquency." He took full account of the acknowledged fact that there is uncertainty about the alleged "causes" of crime. But as I understand his opinion, since one does not know exactly the causes of crime and juvenile delinquency, that does not mean that one should not act. On the contrary, since one cannot be absolutely precise one should play safe with regard to dangerous influences on children.

Justice Frankfurter pointed out the heart of the problem when he considers it wrong to find "constitutional barriers to a state's policy regarding crime, because it may run counter to our inexpert psychological assumptions or offend our presuppositions regarding incitements to crime.... " That is exactly what happened in the case of crime comic books. Psychiatrists and lawyers were so convinced that delinquency must have obscure, hidden and complex causes that they closed their minds to my findings that simple factors may touch off complex mechanisms. Justice Frankfurter expressed that in this way: "It would be sheer dogmatism ... to deny to the New York legislature the right to believe that the intent of the type of publications which it has proscribed is to cater to morbid and immature minds -- whether chronologically or permanently immature. It would be sheer dogmatism to deny that in some instances, deeply embedded, unconscious impulses may be discharged into destructive and often fatal action." As an example Justice Frankfurter referred to a youth barely seventeen who killed the driver of a taxicab in Australia. This case came before the High Court of Australia which -- more progressive than some of our courts -- took into consideration that the boy "had on a number of occasions outlined plans for embarking on a life of crime, plans based mainly on magazine thrillers which he was reading at the time. They included the obtaining of a motor car and an automatic gun." I was surprised to find in the High Court of Australia and in the United States Supreme Court in Washington an acceptance of facts which troubled children, weeping mothers, impatient fathers and eager young psychiatric assistants had brought to my attention over and over again in the dingy basement rooms of psychiatric clinics at Lafargue and in Queens!

Justice Frankfurter made it clear that such a law would not interfere with freedom of speech and certainly not with that of the legitimate writers, their publishers and booksellers, including those who write fictional or fact stories of crime: "Laws that forbid publications inciting to crime [are] not within the constitutional immunity of free speech." He tersely expressed the sense of the type of law that I had asked for in Boston with regard to children when he says that the state gives notice "that it is outlawing the exploitation of criminal potentialities."

When I asked for a law against children's crime comics I expressed the logical result of my clinical studies. But at the same time I was crystallizing and giving expression to the vague gropings of the more enlightened part of public opinion which seeks a curb on the rising tide of education for violence. Justice Frankfurter admirably translated this vague groping into verbal clarity by assuming that the legislators who framed the statute on which the Winters case is based had expressed their reasons in words. This, Justice Frankfurter said, is what they would or could have said:

"We believe that the destructive and adventurous potentialities of boys and adolescents and of adults of weak character ... are often stimulated by collections of pictures and stories of criminal deeds of bloodshed or lust so massed as to incite to violent and depraved crimes against the person; and ... we believe that such juveniles ... do in fact commit such crimes at least partly because incited to do so by such publications, the purpose of which is to exploit such susceptible characters ... such belief ... is supported by our experience as well as by the opinions of some specialists qualified to express opinions regarding criminal psychology and not disproved by others ... in any event there is nothing of possible value to society in such publications, so that there is no gain to the State, whether in edification or enlightenment or good of any kind ... and the possibility of harm by restricting free utterance through harmless publications is too remote and too negligible a consequence of dealing with the evil publications with which we are here concerned."

From this legal document I derived courage in what through no wish of mine, but by its own logic, had developed into a contest with the crime-comic-book industry. What respect they had for freedom of expression I could see from one of the minor episodes. As my material accumulated I decided to put it in book form. One day one of the most prominent experts for the defense visited my prospective publisher and told him what an error it would be to publish a book by me. This expert said I was "completely wrong" in my ideas about comic books and that I "stand absolutely alone" in my opinions about them. It is certainly fortunate that there are still publishers whose respect for freedom of expression takes other forms than those of the comic-book industry!

In my attempts to formulate the principles of a children's crime-comics law, I realized that it is necessary to introduce scientific public-health thinking for the protection of children's mental health. A large part of the mental-hygiene movement exists solely on paper. Concrete measures like those against comic books come up against all kinds of conventions and interests. There is a lot written and said about mental hygiene; but one point is usually forgotten: the mental-hygiene movement as a whole has not been very successful so far. We have not less, but more alcoholism. We certainly do not have fewer neuroses. We have more and more violent juvenile delinquency and drug addiction has invaded the schools. The reason for this relative failure is that mental hygiene has separated itself so much from other fields and has succumbed to an ostrich policy with regard to concrete social evils, explaining them away rather than helping to fight them. The intricacies of parent-child relationship explain a great deal, but they alone cannot carry the weight of a really dynamic mental hygiene. The influences from outside the family must be added.

Laws in the service of preventive medicine do not necessarily deal with criminal intent. They cope with what the lawyers call public welfare offenses, dealing with food, drugs and sanitation. What I wanted to accomplish in these years was to add mental health to these categories.

Speaking of the food, drug and cosmetic act, an editorial in the Journal of the American Medical Association points out that legislation in these fields "stemmed from the unusual responsibility held by those who produce and handle such essentials as food and drugs." What I submit is that mental health is an even greater responsibility. That is why I advocated a public-health approach to the comic-book problem.

What should a public-health law accomplish? Its purpose is not the punishment of crimes, although as an example that may be necessary. When proposing a comic-book law I have often been told: "You can't make a law unless you enlighten the public first." Or: "Good laws cannot help when there are bad attitudes." Can't they? Over and over again the objection has been made to my proposals that you have to educate the people first. But if you look over the history of social betterment you will find that the law is the best instrument of adult education. If nothing else, a comic-book law would make people think. It would inform them that there are responsible people who take seriously the subtle harm that crime comics do. One of the functions of law is to inform the public.

The progress of public-health legislation has not been easy either. Theodore Roosevelt and LaGuardia, when they came out for laws controlling drugs and food, faced the same counterarguments made now against comic-book laws. A good example of the obstacles in the path of public-welfare laws is a court case of 1892. A landlord had failed to provide running water on each floor of a large tenement house. That seems to us now a self-understood requirement of public health. But at that time the Court of Appeals ruled: "There is no evidence, nor can the Court judicially know, that the presence and distribution of water on the several floors will conduce to the health of the occupants .... There is no necessity for legislative compulsion on a landlord to distribute water through the stories of his buildings; since, if the tenants require it, self-interest and the rivalry of competition are sufficient to secure it."

This is like what the comic-book industry and its experts and legal defenders say now: How can a court judicially know that a child needs good reading? Why not leave it all to the competition of the good books (leaving out the defenselessness of the tenants in the one case and of children in the other)?

It is no argument to say that many people have been exposed to a public-health hazard, as children are exposed to crime comics, without suffering any harm. Many people speed in automobiles, pass others on hills, ignore red lights, have defective lights and brakes, live in unsanitary dwellings, drink untested water or milk, eat uninspected meat, are exposed to all kinds of infectious diseases, are not vaccinated, and still are none the worse for it. But that does not do away with the need for safety and public-health laws. Public health aims to prevent possibilities, not to count casualties.

Mental health is just as important as physical health. Its protection should be based on the same kind of scientific clinical thinking as public health. The individualistic thinking in psychology becomes unscientific when applied to a mass problem of social life. Public-health legislation is not directed against the past injury to an individual, but against the potential future injury to all.

The threadbare argument that only the predisposed are potentially harmed by comic books is without merit from the point of view of public health. In the first place, it is not true. I have seen many troubled children and juvenile delinquents who were predisposed to achieving good things in life and were deflected from their course by the social environment of which comic books are an important part. Postulating beforehand who will be harmed by what, has long been replaced in public-health thinking by scientific observation. During the great flu epidemic of 1918 we learned that many regular subway riders and slum dwellers were immune while strong young men from the country succumbed. There is not only a psychopathology, there is also an epidemiology of juvenile delinquency.

In public health we also have little sympathy with the claim that we do not have to prevent illness because if we rule out one factor people would get sick sooner or later anyway, if not with this disease then with something else. Yet that is how the comic-book industry and its experts reason.

Attention to the individual in mental hygiene is not decreased, but increased, if the mass effects of social causes are given their due. Preventive work is trying to bring it about that the circumstances injurious to people do not occur. In public-health thinking the generalization cannot be postponed until every detail is established. The clinical fact of the harm to some is the signal of the potential danger to all.

I had occasion to try out these ideas of mine in a totally different field -- although at one point comic books were involved there, too. I was giving expert testimony in Wilmington in the Delaware test case concerning segregation in elementary and public schools. I presented to the court in detail the thesis that regardless of the quality or inequality of the physical facilities, the fact of segregation itself constitutes a definite hazard for the mental health of children.

Segregation in school is only one factor in the social context of other factors, I went on. One cannot postulate a fixed hierarchy of factors operative in every case. The very fact that these children are exposed to race prejudice in other spheres highlights the school segregation. In this connection I mentioned the race prejudice taught in comic books. The court accepted my public-mental-health point of view and ordered the children admitted to the schools from which they had been excluded.

The analogy with the comic-book question is obvious. But whereas in the case of school segregation something new was accomplished, with crime comic books the same reasoning did not work.

One obstacle was the attitude of some writers, editorialists and columnists on child welfare whose minds are closed to something new. They regard juvenile delinquents as if they were totally different from other children. Even liberal writers write of "the mark of Cain which an evil destiny brands on some of our children." They believe that emotionally strong children are unaffected, while only emotionally insecure children are exposed. This is pure speculation. It means the distinction between an invulnerable elite and a vulnerable common group. Reflect what snobbishness is involved.

He is a naughty child, I'm sure --
Or else his dear papa is poor.


Even when they write about comic books -- asserting that they have nothing to do with normal children's troubles or with juvenile delinquency, however -- they admit that comic books are "lurid enough to chill the blood"; that they have a "potentially adverse effect on juvenile culture generally"; that they show a "sly, smutty suggestiveness"; that "sadism" is a "key motif"; and that comic books "demonstrate pictorially to the child reader how to gouge eyes with the thumb, kick in the stomach, bite ears" and other such "dangerous information." These quotations are from a book on juvenile delinquency by Albert Deutsch. Despite all these admissions, he denies firmly that comic books may be a "significant factor in child delinquency" and even denies that they have anything at all to do with the violent forms of delinquency.

Juvenile delinquency cannot be regarded as a self-contained entity. Children's behavior does not fall into such rigid classifications. If you take a hundred delinquent children and a hundred non-delinquent children, you will find that the difference between them is not one of ingrained emotional make-up, but one of socio-psychological circumstances. It is only human (and scientific) to realize that just a hairline separates the child who does not get into trouble from the one who does. The belief that delinquent children are totally different from others is one reason why they are so harshly treated. Even the difference between a mild delinquent act and a serious one is not the difference between black and white. I have seen children at every stage of this sequence: A young boy experiments in talking about sex with a little girl; he has the impulse to inspect her; he experiments; he wants her not to tell; he threatens her with one of his comic-book-bought knives; he really harms her. Is it reasonable to assume that each act has a different causation, the serious act a "very deep" cause and the mild act a very superficial one?

Deutsch states that "emotionally healthy children are unharmed by them." If sadism, as he himself says, is a motif of this children's literature, must the children be emotionally unhealthy to get sadistic ideas from it? That is contrary to all human and scientific experience.

He also uses the ostrich argument that the child-delinquency rate "was actually declining." It was not. Moreover, delinquency statistics are most unreliable. Whenever a social or private agency needs more appropriations or contributions to combat juvenile delinquency, the delinquency rate goes up; when they make reports accounting for the money spent, the rates go down. The rosy statistics offered by the New York City Youth Board in 1953 are a case in point. About three facts there can be no doubt: Delinquency rates are at present very high; the nature of the delinquencies has become more violent; the age of the delinquents has become lower.

Harper's magazine, in its "Personal & Otherwise" department, has been taking up cudgels for the comic-book institution. The statement that the increased brutality in juvenile delinquency and the mass production of crime comic books are related "got our blood pressure up," they admit. As a doctor, of course I deplore that, not only for their sake but because the injustice done to children both before they commit delinquencies and afterwards needs calm reflection as well as knowledge of the facts.

The violence is, in P. & O.'s opinion, the "product of a moral and social confusion." How can one better defend the status quo than by blaming something so vague and general, to the exclusion of concrete facts? P. & O. reproaches me for oversimplification and states that I neglect socio-economic conditions. Does he think that comic books drop from heaven? They are a clear expression of economic conditions and are a part of the social environment of these children.

P. & O. finds my case against the comic books "full of holes." One of these holes is that they do not contain any more violence than Uncle Tom's Cabin or The Last of the Mohicans. For a literary critic in a good magazine this is a shocking statement to make. Are girls strung up by their ankles in these books? Are their acts of violence fully illustrated so that you can see blood gushing, cut-off shapely legs, and corpses disposed of in every conceivable manner? More important, these books are art, they have nuances of descriptive narrative and they have a theme which is not the theme of violence. P. & O. also defends the thesis of so many other writers in connection with comic books, that demonstrably bad reading matter does not have demonstrably bad effect on children. I have found that it does.

When such writers defend crime comic books so vehemently, what are they actually defending? The very inconsistency of their arguments makes one wonder. Crime comics are a severe test of the liberalism of liberals.

And so it went. The writers discussed the "problems," the public thought comics were getting better, the industry flourished. One day in the Queens General Mental Hygiene Clinic I was visited by an older and very influential professional friend. After some friendly preliminaries he hesitated and cleared his throat.

"You know," he said, "you do it all wrong. Why do you have to keep on doing this work with comic books? The research is all right. But why do you have to talk about practical solutions? That is bad for your reputation. It is petty. You have stated your results. Now if you do absolutely nothing, the people will come to you for advice. But you go on and want to change something. You have written articles about comic books. Why do you have to ask for a law and get into the fight? If you keep on acting like this, you'll be marked."

It really seemed for quite a while that Superman had licked me. But then, as so often happens, things took a new turn. It came in the form of a telephone call from Washington. Would I be willing to confer with the chairman of the U.S. Senate Committee to Investigate Organized Crime on the subject of crime and juvenile delinquency? I agreed to do so and a few weeks later the senator came to my apartment, for what turned into a long conference. He told me that while his committee was mainly interested in organized crime in interstate commerce, he was concerned about children. He had inquired in Washington whom to consult and several high officials had given him my name. He added that President Truman had urged him especially to look into the childhood roots of criminal behavior.

I had on my desk a speech President Truman had made a short while before in which he asked for "prevention and cure" and for "wholesome recreation." "If those children," the President had said, "have the proper environment at home, and educationally, very, very few of them ever turn out wrong.... I am particularly anxious that we should do everything in our power to protect the minds and hearts of our children from moral corruption .... We must not permit the existence of conditions which cause our children to believe that crime is inevitable and normal."

"You know, Senator," I said, "there is a strong organized force in our society which does exactly the opposite of what the President wants. It provides unwholesome recreation, it claims that many children will go wrong whatever influences they are exposed to, it exposes them to moral corruption and leads them to believe that crime is normal. Why not investigate this force, the crime-comic-book industry?"

"Oh, I've heard about them," he replied. "Those horror books that describe the perfect murder or some other crime, ostensibly for educational purposes."

The senator combined a certain dignity with what seemed to be a sincere homespun friendliness, and he seemed eager to do something for children. I told him that for a number of years I had been making clinical investigations on the subject in three different clinics.

"Can you show me some of your material?" he asked. I showed him comic books, clinical records, converted toy guns. We spent some time going critically over the evidence in a manner that reminded me that he was a lawyer.

He explained to me the tremendous power that his committee had. They could subpoena anybody and anything, question witnesses under oath, trace business transactions and scrutinize whole industries. What could the committee do about this? Was there anything the Federal Government could do?

"The Federal Government does not even have accurate statistics on murders and violent acts committed by children," I said. "Any child who can write his name can order a dangerous switchblade knife from comic books' advertisements. With these knives countless children have been threatened and coerced and injured. The Federal Government seems to be the only agency with the power to ascertain the truth. How many crime comic books are there that glorify crime? I don't mean guesses and propaganda figures, but actual printing-orders, sales, shipments abroad, and so on."

"Could something be done with interstate commerce?" he asked.

"That has been suggested," I said. "For example, Nevada has passed a resolution requesting Congress to regulate comic books by law." And I explained that I thought the evidence would show the necessity for a law -- possibly on an interstate commerce basis -- that would prevent the sale and display of crime comic books to children under fifteen.

Then and there he appointed me as psychiatric consultant to his committee. I made my co-operation dependent on some conditions: that the far-flung propaganda of the industry would be scrutinized; that there would be a careful legal investigation of tie-in sales, juvenile drug addiction and childhood prostitution; that the recruiting of children for work with adult gangs and racketeers be investigated; that illustrations from comic books would be used.

He agreed to all that, reiterating the enormous powers he had and his paramount wish to do something for children. His final inquiry was whether I thought the public would be interested in such an investigation.

Soon afterwards he wrote to thank me, sent me messages and conferred with me by telephone from Washington. Aides of the committee came to me and I outlined for them in detail preliminary steps. I can't say that I expected this to lead to a curb of the industry, but I did think that there would be at least some kind of an investigation.

Questionnaires went out to a number of people. Then the whole thing stopped abruptly -- or maybe it was just that it took a different direction.

I was on vacation when I got a wire saying that the committee contemplated publication of a report on juvenile delinquency and wanted a written contribution from me for inclusion in the report. Of course I refused, replying that such a hasty publication without investigation was certainly not in the interests of the public.

The next thing I heard was a news broadcast from Washington: "Crime Comic Books have nothing to do with juvenile delinquency, Senator Kefauver reported today." Next day there were front-page headlines: STUDY FINDS DOUBT COMICS SPUR CRIME, and: COMICS DON'T FOSTER CRIME, and: FBI HEAD DISCOUNTS HARMFUL EFFECTS OF CRIME COMIC BOOKS. Editorials elaborated. The Times editorial stated that the majority opinion of child-guidance experts was "that there is no direct connection between the comic books dealing with crime and juvenile delinquency"; that "the facts show that some comic books are read more by adults than by children" (it did not mention whose "facts"); and that "it is the emotional make-up the child brings to his life experiences that conditions his reactions to them" (in other words, it's all the child's own fault again).

The Sunday News editorial commented: "It's a pleasure to pass along the news that Senator Estes Kefauver's Senate Crime Investigating Committee has now gone deeply into the subject of the crime comic books and has brought up a mass of testimony which ought to spur the earnest souls to look around for something else to worry about.... The Kefauver Committee took its testimony largely from unprejudiced sources. . . . The verdict of the majority gave a clean bill of health to the comics. So we hope that the public has heard the last of this earnest-soul gripe."

Why is it a front-page story that comic books do not have any effect?

Ironically enough, it was I who had inadvertently given the crime-comic-book industry the biggest advertising it had ever had!

I got hold of the published report of the Senate Crime Investigating Committee and studied it. At the taxpayers' expense it prints statistical charts on the frequency of juvenile delinquency prepared by -- the comic-book industry! It reprints the whole comic-book issue of the scientific journal edited by one expert for the defense, with contributions by three experts for the defense (and one article entirely devoted to newspaper comic strips, which has nothing at all to do with comic books) and with one article devoted only to attacking me. It contains unchecked statements by crime-comic-book publishers, some of whom brazenly defy the most modest requests made by the committee: "Our organization has published hundreds of titles and issues of comic magazines during the past ten years, and it would be an impossible task to begin to answer .... " (this in reference to questions about circulation and income from comic books). There are no illustrations, although I had been assured there would be.

The report gives the opinions of eight "child guidance experts." Two of them are not and do not claim to be child-guidance experts. Both are lawyers. One of the other experts is designated editorially in the report as a doctor, although she is not, and as a psychiatrist, which she is not either. Five of the eight experts, according to the report itself, are or have been employed by the comic-book industry -- some for as long as ten years! It is these five experts who say that comic books are all right. The three independent experts condemn comic books severely. The division is clear-cut: Those connected with the comic-book industry defend comic books; those independent of the industry consider them harmful. It needed no Senate inquiry to tell us this.

The report also contains replies to a questionnaire from probation officers and other officials, most of whom had never thought of studying the influence of crime comic books. They had not even asked prisoners or children in their charge about comic-book reading. Some of them speak unblushingly about "the consistent decrease" of juvenile delinquency. There are some condemnations of crime comics, including the case example of the little boy comic-book reader who leaped from a telephone pole believing himself to be Superman.

The report bristles with all the cliches and platitudes that have ever been uttered in defense of comic books: that they are too simple an explanation; that the children would do it anyhow; that comic books are here to stay; that they give release of aggressive instincts; that children who do something wrong have "definite antisocial tendencies" in the first place; that only unstable children become unstable and comic books have "no effect on the emotionally well-balanced boy or girl"; that a judge calmed a child witness down by handing him a pile of comic books; that comic books make an impression only on "impressionable minds"; and so on and on. And all this is published without comment, without analysis, without any investigation whatsoever, and with only a minimum of editing -- and that mostly wrong.

Omitted from the report are items that would have belonged there. For example, the answer to their inquiry by the president of the Newport Council of Social Agencies, a psychiatric social worker with a great deal of experience with children, which states that from her contact with children in Washington, D.C. and in Rhode Island she had become increasingly aware of the link between comic books and delinquency and had had "contact with non-delinquent minors whose cultural background seemed solidly rooted in this literature." Omitted also is the testimony before the committee of one of the most experienced criminologists and penologists in the country, Mr. James V. Bennett, secretary of the Criminal Law Section of the American Bar Association and director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons. He had told the committee that crime comic books are connected with crime and asked for an investigation into the business of crime comic books, "the traffic in which now amounts to seventy million copies a month ... " (this was in 1950).

After the report was published one of the senator's aides telephoned me that the senator wanted me to know that "his whole statement had been twisted in the press," that I "should have faith in him" and that "he's determined to do it the way he said to you." That was the last I ever heard.

A few weeks after the report was out I received a letter from a prominent member and committee chairman of the American Bar Association. "I was very much disappointed," he wrote, "in the publication of the Kefauver report. And I think a serious mistake has been made in its publication. It is unfortunate that so much of it is from media sources and from persons in the employ of or under obligation to the media."

As for me, I learned a great deal from this report. It taught me that comic books really are a test of the reaction of a society not only to children's literature but to children themselves. Assume for a moment that a senate committee with such unlimited powers had investigated the raising of hogs. Would they not have informed themselves and the farmers a little better?

The further history of the Kefauver Committee's crime investigation is well known. It was referred to in television circles as "the biggest hit of the season." Arthur Miller wrote that he was struck by "the air of accomplishment among the people that is really not warranted by the facts." I do not entirely agree with this. I think these hearings actually did accomplish something: They demonstrated not only the link between politics and crime, but also the link between politics and crime investigation.

I kept on with my studies as before. There were always new comic books and always new children. I was not in the mood to participate in any more investigations. But my telephone rang again: The New York State Legislature had appointed a Joint Legislative Committee to Study the Publication of Comics. Would I collaborate with them as a psychiatric expert, help them in their investigation and testify on the effects of comic books on children?

I had become a little skeptical of investigating committees. Superman always seemed to get the best of them. So I asked to be excused. But later on when the committee got in touch with me again I changed my mind and agreed. I had convinced myself that this committee had gone at its work seriously and sincerely. They wanted to get at the facts and in all fairness had given the comic-book industry every break. They started with the premise that no law was necessary and gave the industry more than two years' time to make some kind of improvement by self-regulation.

During one of the first conversations I had with members of this committee to study comics, one of them said to me, "The general counsel of the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers said to me, 'Somewhere right now a little boy has a gun and reads crime comics. That boy will be president some day: What do you say to that?"

"All I can say," I answered, "is that that is precisely what I would like to prevent."

I testified for the committee, at length and under oath, on two separate occasions separated by an interval of a year. With many examples from comic books and children's cases I testified to what I had seen and found, what I had done and thought. The main bad effect of crime comic books on children, I said, is on their ethical development. I made it clear that I was not saying this as a moralist, but as a doctor who believes that orientation as to what is right and wrong is part of normal mental health. I explained that juvenile delinquency is only one part of the crime-comic-book question, although a very serious one. The greatest danger of crime comic books is to the normal child.

I answered the counterarguments of the industry, like the one about law and order winning. A typical crime story has this ending: "And so the story ends in blood, as it began in murder."

What about the crime comic books, I was asked, that are educational and teach children not to commit delinquencies? I have never seen one, I answered. If you find one, I shall be glad to return and modify my statements.

When I testified the second time the committee had convinced itself that the proclaimed self-regulation of the industry had completely failed and some legal control was necessary. On that occasion, again under oath, I pointed out that the cover of the comic book draws the child's attention to a crime, the text describes one, the pictures show how it's done and the advertisements provide the means to carry it out.

For years I had been seeing children who get into trouble with switchblade knives. I had bought several of these knives, signing a child's name on the order, in answer to comic-book advertisements. When I testified before this committee for the second time, I produced one of them quickly, as I was talking, flashing open its blade. A switchblade knife is a good symbol of the crime-comic-book industry as a whole. Then I outlined my idea about a public-health law against the threat comic books offer to the general mental health of children. The law is not concerned with what doctors think, but with what they can prove. Many comic-book stories are nothing but perverse and violent fantasies of adults and it is these perverse fantasies that are sold to children. Censorship legislation requires a "clear and present danger." My idea of a public-health law is totally different. Anything clear or unclear, present or future, which under any circumstances may cause damage or harm to health, can be controlled by legislation. There is only one question: Is it harmful or not? Such a law could enlighten the public, just as laws about hoof and mouth disease enlighten farmers about livestock. I am not a lawyer, but from a medico-legal point of view I would suggest that the sale and display of crime comic books to children under fifteen be forbidden.

The committee, which had taken the testimony of sixty-two witnesses, accepted my findings and my suggestions. They issued altogether three reports. In the first "Interim Report," before I testified, they made this important observation: "It is strange but true that the questions heretofore propounded to individuals charged with greater or lesser crimes by probation officers have not touched upon the question of the reading of comics." (Compare with the Kefauver committee which published unanalyzed the uninformed opinions on crime comics of just such probation officers.)

The second report concludes that crime comic books "impair the ethical development of children" and are "a contributing factor leading to juvenile delinquency." It states that "the comics which sell best are crime comics."

The third report contained the committee's legislative proposals. The chairman, Assemblyman Joseph F. Carlino, stated that the bills were the result of the failure of the comic-book industry to "realize their public responsibility and, in the cause of common decency, take up the necessary steps to set up self-regulatory provisions."

The committee's report states: "The publishers and their representatives ... completely rejected and refused to recognize the reality that children are influenced and stimulated by what they read, see and hear in the same way in which adults are influenced or stimulated."

It calls crime comic books "a threat to the health of children" and concludes that the committee "has been obliged to recommend the adoption of legislative controls. It had no more choice in doing so than it would have in suppressing disease-causing acts which were found to be a threat to the public health or safety."

Before the law proposed by the committee was voted on by the legislature, it was publicly opposed by the Association of Comics Magazine Publishers, the New York State Council of Churches, the Mystery Writers of America, the American Civil Liberties Union and other organizations.

The technical aspects of the bill had been worked out most carefully by the committee. They had done research on the Winters case, the Los Angeles County case, the Chicago case and other legal cases having a bearing on such a law. Their legal consultant was Reuben A. Lazarus, an authority on constitutional law and on bill drafting. He had drafted more bills affecting the City of New York than any other person, living or dead, and is responsible for the present New York City charter. So if there was any legal authority to judge the constitutionality of the proposed law, it was this comics committee's legal consultant. The committee's bill was drafted and redrafted in many conferences; the head of the New York State Legislative Bill Drafting Committee, Theodore E. Bopp, participated and members of his legal staff passed on it.

When the crime-comic-book control bill came before the Assembly, they voted for it: 141 to 4. The Senate voted for it, too, unanimously.

So it really seemed that a step forward had been made. But Governor Dewey attended to that. He vetoed the bill, giving as his reason that "it fails to meet fundamental constitutional requirements." Superman has many disguises.

This decision was strange. When Columbia University Press published its educational comic book Trapped which deals with juvenile drug-addiction, Governor Dewey stated: "It is a superb job. I hope millions of copies are distributed." (They could not distribute more than 30,000.) If the governor thinks that a single "good" comic book can do so much good, should he not have refrained from interfering with the democratic will of the parliamentary majority which believed that hundreds of millions of bad comic books can do so much harm?

When I discussed this outcome with my associates in the comic-book research I was pleased to note that they were not discouraged by it. Nor was I. But I was bothered by something else. I had lunch one day with Henrietta Additon, an authority on delinquency and penology for whom I have the greatest admiration. She had another guest, the head of a civic committee on children and a woman with great influence in such matters. In the course of lunch I asked this guest what she thought about crime comic books. She answered, "I know there are people for them and people against them. I don't take any side. I am absolutely neutral."

At that moment it became clear to me for the first time that I was defeated. This business of not taking sides on the part of those who could help to make conditions easier for the young to grow up, was more deadly than Kefauver's desertion or Dewey's veto. Neutrality -- especially when hidden under the cloak of scientific objectivity -- that is the devil's ally.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Wed Dec 11, 2013 11:55 pm

PART 1 OF 2

13. Homicide At Home

Television and the Child

"They dare not devise good for man's estate. And yet they know not that they do not dare."
-- Shelley


To lump all mass media of entertainment together as if they were equal is often both erroneous and misleading. Of course they have many similarities, but they also have fundamental differences. That is very correctly recognized by the law, as in the decision of the United States Supreme Court in voiding the ban of a movie: "Nor does it follow that motion pictures are necessarily subject to the precise rules governing any other particular method of expression. Each method tends to present its own peculiar problems." A commodity like crime comics which is not a legitimate medium of entertainment for children can only profit if it is discussed not for what it is, but under the general name of mass media. It is true that some crime movies are as brutal as comic books, but these movies are not specifically merchandised for children. You can almost recognize a comic-book publicist by the frequency with which he speaks of "mass media," "mass media of communication," etc., when he is really just defending comic books. To class comic books in terms of mass media is to class starlings as songbirds. Of course songbirds and starlings are all birds.

A committee of the National Education Association, after studying "The Effects of Mass Media upon Children and the School Program," reported that "mass media including radio, television, motion pictures, comic books, current periodicals, and other communication means which have become an integral part of modern life affect human behavior to such an extent that it is the responsibility not only of the teacher and the parent, but also of all other community agencies to build a higher level of what we might call 'taste' on the part of the consumer." This is much too general and superficial to be of any use. Lumping all the media together has done some of them an injustice, while serving as a protective screen for crime comics. Legitimate methods of control of one may not apply to the other. Some media have done themselves considerable harm by making common cause with crime comics in opposing control of them. They feared, of course, that any control would spread to them. What does happen is that if the crime comics industry continues to lead a charmed life, the other media will be more exposed to the very censorship which they want to avoid. Pocket books are facing the danger of this creeping censorship right now. It is not censorship of children's crime comics, but its complete absence that threatens other media with unwanted controls. Quite apart from the fear of censorship, the defense of comic books stems from the inverted snobbishness of some who defend the right of what they consider the lower orders to read any trash sold to them.

In our studies we found marked differences between the media in their effect on children. The passivity is greatest in reading comic books, perhaps a little less with television, if only because often other people are present in the audience. In both, the entertainment flows over the child. Passivity is least in going to movies, where others are always present. The media have their maximum appeal at different ages. Movies seem to have the greatest appeal from eleven to twenty-one, television roughly from the ages of four to twelve. The time spent with different media varies, too. Comic books have the greatest hold on many children. Once in the Hookey Club when crime shows on television were discussed, an eleven-year-old boy said: "Television is bad, but it doesn't stay with you like a comic book." The mother of an eight-year-old girl said to me: "Television is not half so bad. It is the comic books. They are handy. They are ten cents. They are always around. They don't just read them once, they read and re-read them, from the bathroom to the kitchen and back." Children literally live with comic books.

What is said of one medium may be totally untrue of another. I know many people, children and adults, who have turned to read the original book after seeing an adaptation in the movies. The examples include such authors as Henry James, Tolstoy, Bernard Shaw, Jules Verne, Theodore Dreiser, Hawthorne, Emily Bronte. In all these years we have not found a single child who turned from a comic-book adaptation to the original. And yet experts for the defense of comic books, mixing together the media whenever possible, make this one of their chief claims.

Radio, movies and television are considered worthy of regular serious critiques in newspapers. Nothing like this exists for comic books. Nor is it even possible, for the few critics who have written about them find them subjects for toxicology rather than criticism.

Yet the different media are not mutually exclusive. Some of them blend very well; when they blend with comic books it is always in their worst aspects. There are radio comic books, TV comic books and movie comic books. But the great inroads that television was expected to make -- and for a short time seemed to have made -- have not materialized. The movies killed the dime novel, but television did not even wound the comic-book industry. The low order of literacy of television fitted in well with the almost total illiteracy of crime comics.

One can often learn about one medium from observation of another. My conclusion that children reading crime comic books often identify themselves with the powerful villain has often been challenged by wishful thinkers. It was borne out by a brilliant review of the television show "Senate Crime Investigation" by Fern Marja. This review was some of the best reporting of that memorable performance when for the first time organized crime was made a drawing card in a show with the criminals themselves and their prosecutors as the chief stars. "It is difficult to tell," she wrote, "whether the secret of the legislators' popularity is their identification with good or their necessary contact with evil. And Frank Costello is beginning to threaten the supremacy of Hopalong Cassidy as a TV attraction. . . . Is the racketeering boss hero or villain to the general public?" And later when the district attorneys were testifying she noted: "Imperceptibly, at first, the mood of the chamber changes. Here and there a yawn is visible. Mr. X and Mr. Y [the district attorneys] are men of good will, but they lack Costello's drawing-power. It is almost impossible to escape the conclusion that honesty bores the gallery.... A spectator stirs restlessly. 'Listen,' he says to an attendant, 'when's Costello coming back? That's what I want to see!''' If true of adults, why not of children? Others made similar observations. John Crosby, the New York Herald Tribune's radio and television critic, reported that it had been noted that "large segments of the population showed a tendency to sympathize with the witnesses, no matter how shady their past." And a newspaper editorial at the time wondered "whether these exhibitions will (not) add to the glamor of crime in many people's imaginations."

The study of comic books is indispensable for understanding what happens in less overt form in other media. If one has studied comic books one recognizes sadism for sadism's sake even if it is embellished with psychological thrills, as in some movies, radio and TV programs.

The mass media have power for good or ill, on society and on the individual. No amount of facile theorizing can explain that away. They present a new ethical problem. And if at present they do so much harm, the industries themselves by their own momentum evidently cannot remedy that. This became especially clear to me when I heard a high television-executive say that if all violence and horror were removed from comic books and television everything in the world would remain the same. That unethical type of argument has been made at every step of progress mankind has ever made, be it aseptics, vaccination or meat inspection.

One thing true of all the media is that many people glibly discount their influence on children. But they have a continuous impact on masses of children that would have been unheard-of in former times and they really mediate between the child and his environment. For example, in the most lurid crime stories the final defeat of the villain is supposed to cancel out his previous triumphs and achievements. That is psychologically naive. The lesson these stories usually convey to children is not that the villain should have been better, but that he should have been shrewder. In other media, especially in television, this extolling of the villain exists, too, although it is seldom as raw as in comic books.

The race ridicule and nationality stereotypes of comic books is also spread to some extent through other media. The mayor of the city of New York has commented severely on the race prejudice shown in television murder mysteries. (He did not mention the race prejudice in comic books which is much more widespread and harmful and about which he could do something, since they are sold on newsstands on city property.) The excuses for not interfering with this are the same for all media.

Whenever the question of the harm done by mass media is raised, the easy retort is that it is all up to the family. But the family itself is invaded with an all-round amphibious offensive. Take a peaceful American family on a quiet evening. Papa rests from his work and is reading Mickey Spillane. Junior has just come home from a movie with a "DOUBLE-SHOCK SHOW: The Vanishing Body and The Missing Head." He settles down to look at one of those good crime television shows where a man is beaten up so mercilessly that he is blinded for life. His older sister, just this side of puberty, is engrossed in the comic book Reform School Girl!, which blends sex, violence and torture in its context. (The advertisements in comic books have been worrying her about her development and she has just discovered the secret solution, the "BULGE-MASTER" [$5.98], advertised in this book.) Mama had been invited for the evening to see an avant-garde film. But when she read the title of the program, "Meditation on Violence," she decided to stay home instead and use the evening to keep abreast of the latest in child psychology. Recently she had attended the Illinois Congress for Parents and Teachers and heard the director of the Association for Family Living propound: "Hostility is one of the basic emotions and has to be expressed someplace. Home is the best place to do it." So she got herself two recent books on psychology. One has the title Children Who Hate, the other is a psychological textbook with twenty-five chapters in which the only psychological subject to which a whole chapter is devoted is "Hostility."

In other words, papa, mama, and the two children are all subjected to the impact of the same current fashion, the extolling of hostility and violence.

It is essential to recognize that the various media have an influence on one another although that is not generally realized. The newer medium may influence the older. It is well known that the movies have influenced the theater. We speak of a television-level melodrama in the movies and a comic-book-level show on television. The paradox is this: All the mass media together have influence on the child, but each follows separate laws. And the lowest medium, the only illegitimate one as far as children are concerned, the crime comic has in fact the greatest influence on all the other media.

In the last half-decade or so crime comics have influenced all the media in some degree. In that sense one can speak of a comic-book culture, especially for children. Comic books have been in competition with the other media not only with regard to money but with regard to children's minds as well. I have not found, as many would have us believe, that the good influence of the legitimate media makes comic books better, or restricts their circulation. On the contrary, comic books make the other media worse. It is true, as is always pointed out by comic-book defenders, that crime and horror shows existed long before comic books. But there is a new special touch -- blatant, crude and shameless -- that the other media now have to absorb, imitate and rival in order to be able to compete with the comic-book industry. Children's minds have been molded to strong sadistic fare. If he does not slap the girl around, what kind of a he-man is the hero? If he does not strangle her or poison her, where is the excitement? And if there is no murder, where is the plot? So it is not possible to improve children's shows on television or radio as long as crime comic books are left the way they are.

Some time ago I saw a Western movie in which the villain shoots the sheriff straight in the face. It was a children's matinee and at that point the children first laughed and then loudly applauded. This was not the so-called natural cruelty of children that adults like to speak about. This particular type of response was inculcated in these children by the most persistent conditioning in habits of hate ever given to children in the world's history.

There is at present in all the media, especially as they affect children, a pattern of violence, brutality, sadism, blood-lust, shrewdness, callous disregard for human life and an ever-renewed search for subhuman victims, criminal, racial, national, feminine, political, terrestrial, supernatural and interplanetary. Brutality is the keynote. It is self-understood that such a pattern in a mass medium does not come from nothing. There must be clues in real life as to why violence is in the air.

Children need proper food, vitamins, fresh air, games and schooling and love. Nowadays there is a dogma that they also need stories about violence and crime. Formerly hostility was concealed. Psychiatrists in those times would not admit that an ordinary boy could hate his father or a daughter, her mother. Bernard Shaw wrote about that, but the psychiatrists didn't. Now the pendulum has swung the other way. The same type of dogmatic person who formerly saw only sweetness and light and physical or hereditary causes now says that knowing about violence and sadism adjusts children to the world. What kind of a world, and what kind of an adjustment?

The quantity of violence in all the media is stupendous. It has become almost a national pastime for committees of women's clubs to count the murders in children's programs during a week. But quantity alone does not give the real picture. Hamlet is not just a play about violence. It has a plot, poetry, character development, philosophy, psychology. And yet, in the course of the play Hamlet kills five people. It is the context that counts, not the quantity.

Granted that this cult of violence originates somewhere in our social life, there is a dynamic reciprocal relationship between the audience and the creators of mass entertainment. The same influences come to bear on both producers and audience. Gradually, through constant reiteration, brutality is accepted and the producers can say that this is what the children (and adults) wanted in the first place. In speaking of children they use the refinement of a false argument by saying that this is what children need. The audience, on the other hand, feels that this is what it is supposed to like, in order to be virile and up-to-date. So there is a vicious circle, with normal business needing morbid audiences and healthy audiences spoiling normal business. The aberration becomes the norm and the norm creates the aberration.

What all media need at present is a rollback of sadism. What they do to children is that they make them confuse violence with strength, sadism with sex, low necklines with femininity, racial prejudice with patriotism and crime with heroism.

If one studies this phenomenon carefully, one will see that in this orchestra of violence the comic-book industry has set the tone and the rhythm. For a while, before 1945, it seemed that the crime-comic-book industry had a monopoly on the brutalization of children. Now it has some competition from television and the other media. So children may get the idea that violence is natural from any or all of the media, as well as from other children exposed to these media too. In the Hookey Club a boy once described a movie where the hero strangled the girl. "Why did he have to strangle her?" I asked. The answer was "Well, there has to be some adventure in the world." The story is told of the two little boys who had gone to see a romantic movie. "It was boring," said one. "Not to me," said the other. "I didn't mind. Whenever they kissed I closed my eyes and pretended he was choking her."

In a competitive way the media influence each other in the direction of the ritual of violence. Crime comic books influence television and radio, both of them influence the movies.

In all this consideration of other media one should never lose sight of the fact that, in complete contrast to comic books, movies -- and radio as well -- are an enormous educational influence, that they have given us unforgettable artistic experiences and that they are indispensable instruments of what could be best in our culture. To some extent this is also beginning to be true of television.

To trace the influence of one medium upon the other is as difficult as tracing influences in the history of literature. But there are clear indications which can be unearthed. Pocket-size books for adults have become a mass medium, too. Excellent books have been published in this form -- novels, stories, non-fiction, detective stories, etc. But here too a pattern of crudest sadism on the level of comic books is discernible. This is the announcement of one of these pocket-size books:

_____ was having trouble with women. The first one was dead -- strangled in her bed as she waited for her businessman-lover to come out of the shower. The second had a lovely name, a lovely face and an even lovelier bosom. The third was a frustrated widow. Her alcoholic strip tease in X's apartment left him cold -- but she was much colder later on, with a bullet through her heart ... a tasty dish for those who like their crime stories rough, tough and sexy.


Sounds like a children's book! Certainly it is a book for adolescent-minded readers brought up on crime comics.

Some pocket-size books express nothing but the pornography of violence, which derives from crime comics directly or indirectly. Some of the worst are to be found in places where juveniles buy candy and sodas and find large displays of the worst crime comic books. What do the publishers of these specimens do to justify them? They follow the trail blazed by the comic-book industry and have their most questionable products endorsed by a psychiatrist. In the book-publishing trade that is something new. It is a direct lesson from psychiatrist-endorsed comic books. One such pocket-size book has a brief endorsement by a "Renowned New York Psychiatrist." He writes that the book is "an authentic picture of nymphomania," it is "educational," it gives "a true picture of nymphomania," it is "clinically accurate" and "certainly the wider the knowledge of man's ills, whether they be of the mind or body, the greater the progress toward the cure."

The high point of the book is the detailed description of the heroine poisoning her lover. He is in horrible agony, shakes, falls and gets a series of convulsions. She watches all this with ecstatic joy. Every convulsion of the dying man is "like a virile thrust to her. Her own body twitched and moved spasmodically." When he finally dies, "... she reached her own paroxysm."

This is no isolated example. There are others offered to adolescents in which the obscenity is also as much in the endorsement as in the book. Here is one endorsed by an "Internationally Famed Psychiatrist." The endorsement says that this book also is an "educational experience," that it shows a disease "medically known as satyriasis ... based on one or more emotional traumas occurring in early life" and that such a person "will stop at nothing to gain his ends, not even murder." (Even medically that is entirely false.) In this book, girls are murdered, but the high point here is when the hero beats the heroine. She "enjoys the blows." "It was like the time she had watched the Negro being beaten and stoned and what she had felt then she was experiencing again." Sadism (or masochism) as sexual fulfillment -- that is the "educational experience" in these books.

A medium influenced by crime comics and rivaling them in viciousness is bubble-gum cards. Children collect them and they are widely distributed. I have quite a collection myself, contributed mostly by young children. They seem to have escaped the notice of child experts. Here are some sample pictures on bubble-gum cards:

1) A baby sleeps peacefully in his crib and an enormous serpent hovers over his head. There is also a dark-skinned native brandishing a big knife.

2) A card entitled "Desperation and Death" shows a huge exotic bird clawing at the middle section of a native. Of course you are shown blood where the skin is torn.

3) A man is bound to a kind of pillory, his hands tied and stretched out in front of him. Another man with raised sword is about to cut off his hands.

4) A man is kicked, his shirt is torn and there is blood on his forehead.


To influence children's parents, bubble-gum makers use the same methods that the crime-comics industry uses. There is a little magazine for juvenile card collectors. One number announces a new "Wild Man" series. At the masthead it says: "Dedicated to Child, Church, Home, School, Community." It is reported that bubble-gum manufacturers have more than $10,000,000 annual profits.

To some extent children's toys are a medium, too, and here the influence of comic books and other media is demonstrable. Toys are fitted into the school-for-violence pattern of child entertainment. For example, a central toy firm supplies many stores with toys. Its catalog has an elaborate chart showing what each toy "will contribute to development: mentally, physically, socially, vocationally." This is all tabulated for age and sex. If you look under "age group 2 to 4 years" you find holsters and guns, and more holsters and guns, some of which apparently contribute to the development of the child mentally, physically and socially, but not vocationally. One does not contribute at all, so evidently there are refinements in the education of children aged two to four which are not readily apparent. There used to be only about ten companies manufacturing toy pistols, knives and other such weapons for children. Since the boom of television, however, there are almost three hundred of them.

In the playroom we have often observed children delighted to get a chance to play with different types of blocks and construction sets. When we ask them if they have ever done this before they say No. When we ask what toys they usually play with they customarily answer: guns.

The fight against violent toys by mothers (and grandmothers) is an old one. When Goethe in 1795 heard that a miniature guillotine was being exhibited at the Frankfurt fair he asked his mother to buy one for his six-year-old son August. But she wrote him:

All that I can do for you I like to do and it gives me pleasure. But to buy such an infamous murder machine -- that I won't do for anything! To let children play with something so awful -- to put in their hands instruments for murder and bloodshed -- no, that won't be done.


What would the old lady have said about the present armament program for American children? Toys not only satisfy the child's imagination, they direct it. If we are really concerned about the growth of children's social feelings, we need a disarmament program for the nursery.

The violence which movies have been showing since the middle forties differs in quantity, quality and emphasis from the Jack London two-fistedness of the twenties. Canadian-provincial censors at a national convention have had the courage to say that sex in movies is a relatively minor problem, but crime and brutality is nowadays a major one. In some advertisements of movies the comic-book influence is noticeable.

The movie "Problem Girls" is advertised with the slogan "Nothing Can Tame Them!" There is a drawing beside the title showing a voluptuous girl hanging from her wrists which are tied together in typical comic-book fashion. She has long streaming hair, is barefoot and seems to be clad in a clinging nightgown. Next to her is a woman who is punishing her with a water hose. The whole setting has nothing to do with punishment or correction. It is strictly a perverse, sexually sadistic scene, of the type sold surreptitiously as obscene photographs.

Some time ago I saw a movie which had this episode: A young woman was nursing her baby; a man tears the baby away from her, throws it to the ground and kicks it away, then he hits the young mother over the head with a fence paling, knocking her over, and kicks her off the scene.

Sometimes children pattern their behavior after movies plus comic books. I saw a ten-year-old boy in the Clinic who had a long list of misdoings in school. He had pushed a little girl down an entire flight of stairs, which he got from the movies, and he twisted little girls' arms behind their backs, which he got from comic books. He did not tell me that as an excuse. He felt as guilty about his fantasies as about his acts.

Hollywood has been surprised that abroad some of its movies based on good books have been banned for minors. That happened, for example, in Sweden, despite the famous titles of the books. Of course it all depends on the ingredients of the movie. Swedish parents objected to too much violence (plus sex) for their children. Great Britain, Australia and other countries followed suit in attempts to keep movie violence and sadism away from their children. Recently a conference of British and American exchange teachers took place in the American Embassy in London, to discuss the effects of American movies on children. The headmaster of a London school spoke of the bad values these films taught his pupils. An American teacher made the typical defensive argument that the children could distinguish between entertainment and truth. This fallacious argument is heard frequently. Fiction and fact are not totally separated; there is a dynamic relationship between them. In this instance a British teacher answered that even many adults in England felt that the values in the movies applied to American life in general. All such criticism of American mass media is played down or goes unreported in the American press. It would be important for the public to know about it.

Some movie writers look in crime comic books for new tricks. For instance the producer of the movie serial "Atom Man vs. Superman," which was shown in about half the movie theaters of the country, is said to be "an avid reader of the comics, from which he gets many of his ideas."

Frequently different critical standards are used when people criticize media. Parents Magazine, whose publisher and some of whose advisory editors have been so defensive about comic books, says in a movie review: "A brutal whipping-scene prevents this from being a film for the children." In comic books this is a standard ingredient.

All the media have one characteristic in common: The mothers are fighting a losing battle with the experts. Many experts, self-styled and otherwise, say that children laugh all this off, or, if they don't, there must be something wrong with the children (not, of course, with the media). The book "Parents' Questions and Helpful Answers" by the Child Study Association of America gives the same stereotyped fallacies about radio programs that have been used to defend crime comic books: Eight-year-olds can take "a good deal of blood and thunder without any ill effects," it serves "as emotional outlet" and if a child is frightened by a program it is not the program that is at fault but "something more deeply personal." To a parent who asks about "trash on the radio" this book gives the helpful answer that it is like "folk and fairy tales." All this bad advice comes from the fundamental error that "the final judgment of values" is up to the child. That, of course, leaves it all to the child and then leaves the child helpless against adult seduction.

Quite apart from the mail I have received, I have polled hundreds of mothers on this and unless they repeat what experts have told them in lectures or over the radio or in articles, they feel the way Mrs. Walter Ferguson expressed it in her column "A Woman's View": "Every thinking mother knows how these outside forces (comics, movies, radio and TV) have influenced her family.... Today most children use their leisure to look at Westerns in movie theaters, to pore over unfunny comics which picture criminal activities or to listen to the same sort of thing over the radio. When television becomes as widespread as radio we can expect it to make a profound impression upon American children .... None of the women I have talked with believe these things are good for children. They only hope the impressions left will not be too deep." The more the pattern of violence becomes violent, the more experts are quoted to defend it.

Unfortunately psychiatry -- or rather, some of its modern practitioners -- has taken a defensive attitude about crime and sadism in the various media. They have provided a rationalization for that which they should help to prevent. There are three reasons for that. One is that hardly ever are these pronouncements made on the basis of actual study or even knowledge of what is going on. The same psychiatrists who will spend three years and hundreds of hours with an individual neurotic patient will pronounce on what happens to children from a ten-minute inspection of comic books (if that) or pronounce on children's movie programs without ever having been to a Saturday matinee with a child audience and with children's programs. Like educators, teachers and clergymen, psychiatrists were unprepared and not adjusted to the new impact of mass media on children, and as a result they have made themselves part of the education for violence.

The second reason is an over-individualistic outlook. On the basis of what they know of individual cases, psychiatrists pronounce largely on crime, delinquency, war, social organization and world peace, leaving out all mass-conditioning and all historical, social and economic forces.

The third reason is that the psychiatrist, despite his formal training, still remains a member of the society in which he moves and, as the whole crime comics issue has shown, is not so immune from the social pattern as he may think.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Wed Dec 11, 2013 11:56 pm

PART 2 OF 2 (CH. 13 CONT'D.)

***

Television is on the way to become the greatest medium of our time. It is a marvel of the technological advance of mankind. The hopes it raises are high, even though its most undoubted achievement to date is that it has brought homicide into the home. Its rise has been phenomenal. For every set in 1946 there are now (1953) more than two thousand. Television has a spotty past, a dubious present and a glorious future. That alone distinguishes it from crime comic books, which have a shameful past, a shameful present and no future at all.

Many people do not realize fully television's immense potentialities. That seems to hold true for some of the producers and, in the ascending line of power, the sponsors and advertising agencies as well. There have been some plays, news programs and documentaries which one can hardly forget in one's adult education. They are still experimental, but they vibrate with possibilities. There have been excellent children's shows, like Chicago's "Zoo Parade," "Mr. I. Magination," "Uncle Lumpy," "Mr. Wizard," "Kukla, Fran and Ollie," "Paul Whiteman TV Club," etc. Some good children's shows do not have a long life, or their time gets cut down. A survey conducted by Harold B. Clemenko, editor of the magazine TV Guide, shows the two programs most favored by parents for their children, "Magic Cottage" and "Mr. I. Magination," were discontinued. "Captain Video," most objected to by parents as making their children "nervous," stayed on. This sort of thing is what makes parents dismayed and they write letters to people, papers, magazines or the stations to try to get the good programs back. But the question is not so simple.

The trouble with television is that it has no vision. Formulas and felonies triumph over everything else. According to Norman Cousins, "the standardized television formula for an evening's entertainment is a poisoning, a variety show, a wrestling match." What more could anyone want? For one thing, a fuller exploitation of the possibilities. It would be quite wrong to blame the television industry alone for that. A medium cannot be better than the life it mediates. There was once an excellent program called "Rebuttal." Its purpose was to give people who in these tense times are under attack by supermen on subcommittees a chance to be seen and heard. This program lasted only for a few weeks. It was not the public nor was it the television producers who did not want to continue it. It was the lawyers of the various people under attack, who advised their clients not to commit themselves.

It is the bad things that television does that unfortunately command most attention. About one third of all programs for children have to do with crime or violence. Untrained viewers may miss this proportion because as in crime comics they do not realize that crime is crime and violence is violence even in the patriotic setting of a Western locale or in the science-fiction setting of interplanetary space. If you are looking for a realistically televised violent act your chances of finding one are statistically greater if you look for it on a children's program. Two different children told me excitedly that they saw on TV how molten iron was poured on a man. I asked each of them why that was done. Neither knew precisely. One said he guessed it was done for revenge; the other guessed it was done because the man knew too much. That is about the extent of motivation in these violence-for-violence's-sake shows. It is not the motivation, but the violence itself that makes the impression.

New York Times critic Jack Gould (not letting himself be sidetracked by the false theories of the psycho-publicity men) has very correctly objected to such scenes on the children's hour television screen as "the gruesome choking to death of a girl." But children have seen this hundreds of times in comic books and the harm is not that they find it "thoroughly unpleasant" but that they have been conditioned to get a thrill out of it and find it thoroughly pleasant.

One might assume that the violence on television is just an addition, an adjunct, to make stories more exciting. But not only does the whole structure of these shows contradict this, there is also internal evidence. An experienced TV writer gave an interview about the way it is done. "You have to work backwards," he says. "You're given a violent situation and you have to work within that framework." In other words, the violence is not an addition, but the hard core of what the television makers want. This revelation of technique is also an answer to the false view that so many people subscribe to, that the violence is there because it is something people want and children need. The brutality in TV crime shows is so insidiously glorified that many people do not recognize it as such any more and accept it as smart. Here, for example, is the famous detective who "fights crime without gun" and "can break a man's arm without wrinkling his gray flannel suit" (or his conscience). He also knows how to "break a bad guy's back if necessary." All this of course, just as in comic books, "as a method of self-protection."

The deductive approach to crime and crime detection, the Sherlock Holmes touch, has been supplanted on television to a large extent by sadism. We asked a nine-year-old television captive, who in telling about the programs seemed to distinguish between mysteries and thrillers, what the difference was between them. His reply: "Mystery is like a heavy amount of suspense, as much suspense as can go, like somebody comes with an axe in the dark and chops somebody up. A thriller is not too much suspense, but quite enough to give you a lot of thrill," To such children classic stories like the "League of Red-Haired Men" or "The Purloined Letter" would seem incredibly trite.

For the child television-viewer, as for the comic-book addict, a sweet smiling happy girl, who is not vicious, not scared, not the helper or victim of a murderer, is just silly or perverse. A series of stills of what is done to girls on TV is good raw material (no pun intended) for the cultural anthropologist or sexual psychopathologist. I have found that children from three to four have learned from television that killing, especially shooting, is one of the established procedures for coping with a problem. That undoubtedly is one of the effects of television on children. It is a most unhealthy effect.

Murders, gunshots and violent acts are as plentiful on TV as raisins in a raisin cake -- in fact some producers seem to think they are the raisins. An average child who is no particular television addict and takes what is offered absorbs from five to eleven murders a day from television. If he would confine himself exclusively to adult programs, the number would be less. It is obvious that the amount of violence offered children by TV derives partly from crime comics. More important than the amount, however, is the qualitative aspect, the connection of violence with other things -- family life, sex, daily living, absence of tragic feelings, etc. -- and the details themselves. A cartoon in Pathfinder magazine with a woman sitting before a television screen saying, "This one had a happy ending -- she finally murders her husband ..." is not just a joke. In a serious vein, the television version of Macbeth with the head cut off on stage and later shown in close-up is typical of the crudity of style and cruelty of content. Whether viewers are emotionally disturbed by such things or whether they are made indifferent and callous by them, they certainly are not elevated or introduced to Shakespeare. The Ford Foundation's Omnibus presentation of King Lear showed Gloucester's eyes being gouged out in such a way that Cue magazine commented, "It was the most ghoulish and revolting bit of business we have ever seen on any stage or screen."

In the face of criticism and in an effort to ward it off, the television industry, again following the example of the comic-book industry, has made widely publicized pompous announcements about a code. The code is pure in that it does not seem to have affected anything or been affected by anything. It is strictly on paper and not on the TV screen. But even the code puts the emphasis on matters which have not done the most harm, namely the specific crime-murder-terror formula. The code and what has been done about it reminds one of the patient who, when told by a physician that he must cut out wine, women and song, replied that he would follow the advice at once, and begin by giving up song.

Outside of the regular television critics, some of whom have stressed the harmful aspects, the literature about television and children is not very helpful. It can be summarized by saying that nearly all these authors want us to study the child, but not the television industry. It emphasizes the individual child (always abstractly) and the individual family, not the general aspects of what television actually does. The assumption seems to be that when anything goes wrong the child must be morbid but the entertainment normal. Why not assume, if such sweeping assertions must be made, that our children are normal, that they like adventure and imagination, that they can be stimulated to excitement, but that maybe something is wrong with what they are looking at? Why assume that they need death and destruction instead of assuming that their interests can be pleasurably directed toward constructive things? And why not assume that they have a latent curiosity about sex which can be satisfied decently instead of being directed toward sadism?

In one brief article "Television for Children," for example, I find no less than three times the phrase "indiscriminate viewing" on the part of the child. That reveals an anti-child attitude. If you repeat three times that the child "views indiscriminately" you might say at least once that what is there to view is offered indiscriminately. If a child is too fascinated by television programs the author suggests diverting his interest "with cookies and milk." I do not know whether the author, like the rest of us, indulges occasionally in any vices; but if he does, would he stop in the middle for "cookies and milk"? No wonder he comes to the standard conclusion: "Actually there is nothing to fear about what TV is doing to our children," the familiar comic-book formula which has served the industry so well.

Unfortunately some psychiatrists and child specialists have written in a similar vein, again as with comic books. Never before in the history of medicine have physicians been so sanguine about children's health as these psychiatrists, without any evidence from clinical research, are about the effect of mass media. One psychiatrist writes dogmatically that normal children are never seriously disturbed by routine experiences such as television. Why should something so new, so experimental and still so unroutine as television be accepted as "routine"? It is an intrusion into the home which from a mental-hygiene point of view still needs scrutiny and correction. He further states that the important thing is that television affects different children differently. That of course is the cheapest truism. The point is what do some television programs have in common that is, or may be, harmful to many children? To say that the average child is "in no way basically disturbed" introduces the loaded word basically. Is it "basic" if the child suffers from nightmares or if he begins to steal or if his character imperceptibly develops in the direction of an obtuse attitude toward the feelings of others? It is my belief that as physicians, especially when we make pronouncements affecting millions, we should have more regard for questions of prevention, whether the harm to be avoided is "basic" or not.

He also discounts the effect of television murder stories on children: "TV murders do not represent death to the pre-school child.... Many children take this synthetic death, blood and murder in their stride and remain undamaged by it.... They take it quite casually ... in order to become well-adjusted one will have to face the common experiences that are a part of the child's life." Is it really a common experience of children to see a bloody death?

The present director of the Child Study Association of America has stated: "Parents have found that the children can watch a half-dozen murders in one evening, get up, kiss mama and daddy good-night, go upstairs, sleep soundly and the next day get their usual grade in spelling." That is a most unclinical statement to make. They could do that if they had early stages of tuberculosis or some other diseases, or if psychologically they had been very badly affected by the "half-dozen murders." This is a crude superficiality in defense of violent television shows. Parents often do not recognize the harm done to children by crime shows. The director of Child Study goes on to say that if children get into trouble over sights on television "these children were sick before they ever saw a TV program." According to these people it is always the rabbit that starts the fight with the dog.

Lay writers have considerable difficulty in steering their way through the vast generalizations of the experts without becoming confused or getting misled. Robert Louis Shayon tried to do this in his book Television and Our Children. He comes to the conclusion that "what television can do to your child will depend on what your child is, what you are educating and guiding him to be before he looks at television." I think it is the other way around: What television can do to your child will depend on what television is, what you are allowing it and guiding it to be before it gets to the child.

My studies of the effect of television on children grew out of the comic-book studies naturally -- I might say inevitably. More and more children told me that they did not read so many comics because they were looking at television. A few children gave up comic books for television. Many combined both. The study of the effect of television on children is more difficult and I marvel at the glib generalizations that have been made about its harmlessness.

We have used with television the same individual and group methods we used with comic books. It is significant how a show is reflected in a child's mind, what his memory vividly retains and what he represses and brings up in later sessions. I found especially revealing what children draw when asked to draw anything they have seen on television. Typical of many others is the drawing made by a sweet little girl of six. The color scheme was massive red, a lot of black and a little blue. She said: "I drew the picture of a man in his hotel room, and someone came in from the window and he had a stick in his hand and he's going to hit the man over the head." And this is exactly what she had drawn, with even the room number over the hotel-room door.

To evaluate the time spent by children before the television screen is difficult. It varies so widely with different children and with the same child that statistical averages are misleading. I have seen a number of children who apparently spent as much as four or five hours a day.

Sometimes it is not easy to determine the influence of television with precision because so many children have been conditioned in similar directions either before or at the same time by comic books.

A ten-year-old boy sent to the Clinic for fire-setting brought us some of his comic books: Detective Comics, Planet Comics, Master Comics, Space Western, Batman. He said he liked TV and looked a lot at "Roy Rogers," "Sky King," "Captain Video," "Space Cadet," "Captain Midnight," "Space Patrol" and "Flash Gordon." A little thing like fire-setting did not rate with him.

During the last few years, when television has been growing so fast, children are sometimes not sure themselves whether they get some of their ideas from comic books or from television. Even so, many observations can be made. The later hours and going-to-bed problem has certainly become exaggerated in most families. I have heard about quite a number of nightmares which are without question attributable to TV.

Some children get overstimulated by violent programs. This happened to Ernie, a ten-year-old boy of superior intelligence much overprotected by his mother. She told me: "He gets very excited sometimes. While looking at television he gets so excited he smacks the girls."

We lead children on to look at the wrong things, then blame them if they develop a craving for what they see. Much as I have searched for it, I have been unable to find that crime and violence programs satisfy psychological needs in children. One would have to assume that the need for outlets of violent aggression in children has suddenly tremendously increased. My findings in this respect corroborate Helen Muir, children's book editor of the Miami Herald, when she makes a distinction between "the real needs and desires of children" and "just the superimposed synthetic so-called needs which are not needs but cravings." She goes on to say, "Sure, the children want TV. And if they started smoking marihuana they'd want marihuana." Mrs. Muir also puts the finger on the worst harm that many so-called children's programs do to children. They fill them up "with false values that confuse and trouble."

I have found that with regard to simple values necessary for social orientation, television has confused some children, troubled others, and made still others (who are not supposed to be affected at all) callous and indifferent to human suffering. Whether such a child then commits a delinquent act or not often depends merely on incidental causes. That was the case with thirteen-year-old Anthony who was a truant and who was questioned in the Hookey Club. He said: "I spend about six hours a day on television. My favorite programs are 'Lights Out' and mysteries."

"What happens?" he was asked.

"People get murdered. People kill for money, for property or for power. They kill women because they are going to tell on them or something. It may be the girl friend of the murderer or a crook that may be murdered. Sometimes the girls do the killing: They shoot them. There is one program where the man needed pills, he had a bad heart. The girl took the pills out of his reach, and moved his phone so he couldn't call anybody, and his pen and pencil so he couldn't write anything, then he died. She was married to him. She killed him because she was tired of him." (This was related in a matter-of-fact way, as if describing a self-understood circumstance.)

He went on: "I like the mystery programs very well. It is all more or less the same thing. The women or the men kill for money, power or they might get tired of a person or they love somebody else. There was a program where this man, he was old, and this girl he married was young. She fell in love with the first young man that came around, so she shot her husband."

About seven months later this boy was arrested for stealing. I examined him again and closed my report to the Children's Court with these words: "This is a typical case of a boy who has spent many hours a day looking at television programs, many of which glorify crime, violence, lawlessness, and depict these scenes in emotionally alluring detail. Under these circumstances, it seems to me not surprising that a boy succumbs to temptation and I believe that the adult world is more to be blamed than this individual child, who has made a good effort to adjust himself. I should point out to the Court that the observations of the bad effect of television programs on this boy were recorded on the chart several months before he was arrested for these delinquencies."

That the good ending of a crime story cancels out the effect of all previous mayhem in a child's mind is as untrue for television as it is for comic books. As a six-year-old boy told me about television, "the cowboys shoot the bad guys, the bad guys shoot the good guys."

The ideas children absorb from endless TV viewing are certainly not healthy. A nice little girl of ten was undergoing a routine examination at the Clinic, having been referred by a social agency. She was the kind of child who does not play and every day after school for hours she watched TV. I asked her, "What do you want to be when you grow up?"

"A nurse," she said, looking at me with big serious eyes.

Why?" I asked her.

"So that I can poison people" was her immediate reply.

For some children, television has one good effect, in contrast with crime comic books, which have none. I have not seen it mentioned, but children express it often in one way or another. Television gives a feeling of belonging. Adults get that when they not only hear but actually see in their own living room a famous star performing or a prominent figure interviewed on programs like "Meet the Press." Children get the feeling not only that they are taken into the adult world on the screen, but share the same entertainment with older children and adults -- even with the neighbors! This is of course totally different from the solitary overheated entrancement of comic-book reading. It is a positive and good effect of television and it shows how wrong the television industry is in identifying itself with the comic-book industry in its publicity.

Childhood used to be the time for play. Here television has made tremendous inroads. Children look at television (and/or comic books) and often do not play any more, or their playing time is markedly shortened. They get no positive constructive suggestions for their play. What they see on TV (except for a very few children's programs, such as Frances Horwich's "Ding Dong School") they cannot act out or imitate or work through in their play. If they would it would be dangerous play, hurting themselves or others. This, I believe, interferes to some extent with their healthy growth, because play is an important factor in normal development. Premature cessation of play in favor of the passivity of the television screen cannot well be made up for later on. The stereotyped repetitive stories create rigidity and poverty of ideas and fantasies. The two-gun heroes usurp the stage of the dreams of childhood. Instead of the spontaneity necessary for mental health there is a regimentation of feelings. That children imitate what they see on the television screen is undoubted. There have been cases where five-year-olds have shot at the screen with their father's gun to join in what they were looking at. An adolescent girl strangled a six-year-old girl with a stocking after watching a television mystery program. Boys have broken younger kids' bones, arms or legs with wrestling holds that they have learned from rough television shows. Juveniles have shot at girls in imitation of scenes on television. Of course those who prefer to hold that "deeper causes" (usually undemonstrated) rule out all precipitating, conditioning and inducing factors, bitterly contest the fact that watching television may lead to imitation.

Children's play on the street is now of a wildness that it did not have formerly. Children, often with comic books sticking out of their pockets, play massacre, hanging, lynching, torture. The influence of comic books -- and also of television -- is discernible in the nature of these games. Normal play has, I believe, curative forces. But if it gets too violent, these curative forces are extinguished.

The tales that children tell nowadays are also apt to show the influence of comic book-television lore. Three boys, ages ranging from six to eight, recently told the story that a man had grabbed one of their pals, had tied him up, beaten him, cut off his head and buried him in a vacant lot. Policemen were digging patiently for some time in the place the children pointed out, until it was finally realized that it was all made up. The details of the plot should have indicated to them that it was all comic book-television stuff. Even the police played the role assigned to them in comic books!

In television cases as in crime-comics cases I have found a law to be operative. All those factors seemingly insignificant or trivial coming from the child's previous life or from other media enter into the chain of causation if they tend in the same direction. Television has added one more agency in the bombardment of children with negative incentives.

There are many points of contact between much of television as it is today, and crime comic books. The form is different, but the content is similar. As one child said in a study by Dr. Florence Brumbaugh, director of Hunter College Elementary School, television programs are "really comics that move."

It is the faults of television that are like crime comics. Inherently the two are nearly opposites. Television is a miracle of science, on the constructive side of the ledger one of the greatest practical developments of scientific principles of physics. Comic books, on the contrary, are a debasement of the old institution of printing, the corruption of the art of drawing and almost an abolition of literary writing. Television is a signpost to the future. Crime comics are an antisocial medium that belongs in the past.

Television has taken the worst out of comic books, from sadism to Superman. The comic-book Superman has long been recognized as a symbol of violent race superiority. The television Superman, looking like a mixture of an operatic tenor without his armor and an amateur athlete out of a health-magazine advertisement, does not only have "superhuman powers," but explicitly belongs to a "super-race."

Like comic-book figures, crime-television heroes seem to have minds that function only when they draw a gun, prepare to kill somebody or foil someone else's plans. There is no doubt that the highly seasoned fare of children's programs has interfered with the reading of children's books. In one public library the children's department figured that, on account of television, children took out a thousand fewer books than they had the year before. Classic books, mutilated in comic-book form, have been adapted to the television screen. The passivity induced by both television and comics have some similarity. Parents have often told me that without comic books they could not keep their children quiet, and more than one woman has told me what one mother expressed like this: "Give him his TV set and he's perfectly content if he never goes out" -- but she was referring to her husband, not to her son.

The public has judged television much more harshly than it has comic books. That comes from the fact that adults actually see television, whereas as a rule they have no idea what comic books their children really read, or what is in them. When a famous TV star was criticized for plunging necklines, she pointed to the millions of girls in "bras and panties" in children's comics. Some time ago the television industry launched a high-pressure sales campaign. Parents were bombarded with big advertisements that played frivolously with both parents' and children's feelings: "There Are Some Things a Son or Daughter Won't Tell You" and "How Can a Little Girl Describe the Bruise Deep Inside?" This was to show how badly children need television sets. One expert proclaimed that children need TV for their health just as much as they need fresh air and sunshine. His column was dropped from one newspaper as a result, although he had taken his endorsement back. This whole TV campaign brought an outcry of indignation from the public. But what the TV industry and its experts had done was minute compared to the harmful and unscientific promotion campaign the crime-comics industry has been waging for years.

Of course television and crime comic books also meet when comic books are based on television programs. Take the example of Captain Video. This comic book is certainly as bad as other crime comics. There is a lot of assorted violence. Morbid fantasies are conjured up for children, like the one that suddenly mankind's legs do not function: "All of us have recited our theories and admittedly found them inapplicable! There is no hope for mankind's regaining the use of its lower extremities!" The treatment for this infirmity costs "one million dollars for each patient." The hero has a "dreaded electronic ray gun whose scintillating bolt results in complete paralysis." There is the superman cult of the "one man alone to stem the tide of frightening destruction, guardian of the world." The injury-to-the-eye motif is not missing, either.

When Pathfinder magazine wrote about this television show it had an illustration with the legend: "Gory after-dinner crime for juveniles defeats happy puppets" and classified the program as "a juvenile crime show." To this the advertising agency objected, writing (in a letter published by Pathfinder) that the program "is not classified, nor has it ever been classified, in the crime category." They wish to call it a "science fiction" show. That is the familiar comic-book-industry alibi. Anyone who wishes to do anything about improving television programs either from within or without must first realize that scientifically not the disguise but the content is decisive, that crime is crime, paralyzed legs are paralyzed legs, violence is violence and torture is torture, whether the time and place are now and here or in the remoteness of science fiction.

What is the future of television, especially for children? It should be almost impossible to keep it as bad as it often is now. More and more people will demand television instead of tele-violence. In contrast to the crime-comic-book industry with its hacks and hackneyed product, there are many gifted, wide-awake young men and women in the television industry anxious to show what they and the medium can do. I have spoken with some of them and I know that they would like nothing better than to devote their lives to the further development of television as a medium of entertainment, information and instruction. I doubt whether a medium like television, pregnant with the future, and commanding such superior personnel, can be held back in the long run.

The greatest obstacle to the future of good television for children is comic books and the comic-book culture in which we force children to live. If you want television to give uncorrupted programs to children you must first be able to offer it audiences of uncorrupted children.
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Re: Seduction of the Innocent, by Fredric Wertham, M.D.

Postby admin » Thu Dec 12, 2013 12:36 am

14. The Triumph of Dr. Payn

Comic Books Today and the Future

"When the remedy has been found, the next generation has difficulty in understanding how the old conditions could ever have been allowed."
-- Sir John Simon


When you first meet Dr. Payn, he is in his laboratory wearing a white coat. On a couch before him lies a blonde young woman with conspicuous breasts, bare legs and the lower part of her skirt frazzled and in tatters, as if she had been roughly handled in strenuous but unsuccessful attempts to defend her honor.

Next you see him lying in wait for another beautiful girl. He cuts off her shapely legs. You see her lying on the cobblestoned street without her legs while he rushes off on the sidewalk carrying them in his arms. Then you see him gloating over these lovely legs in his laboratory. The newspapers announce: BUTCHER-KILLER AT LARGE!

Two pictures show the police completely baffled. He stalks another beautiful girl and cuts her hands off: "Not my hands! Oh, No, Please Not my ... OHHHH ... "

Next you see the girl lying hand-less on the sidewalk and again: "Performing his deed of unspeakable horror, Dr. Payn scurried off carrying his GHASTLY BURDEN!"

His third exploit belongs to the psychopathology of hair fetichism. He cuts off a beautiful girl's long blonde hair: "HAIR! Lovely, perfect hair!"

Finally, through a most unlikely accident, he dies, and the police find him dead.

When the decision of Governor Dewey and the lack of decision of Senator Kefauver had given the green light to the comic-book industry, they went ahead full steam. Now no holds are barred. Horror, crime, sadism, monsters, ghouls, corpses dead and alive -- in short, real freedom of expression. All this in comic books addressed to and sold to children.

To whom is such a story as Dr. Payn addressed? This comic book has letters from readers. One says: "I enjoy your books very much and read them in bed at night before I go to sleep. I am eleven years old." When I read this I could not help being reminded of a typical defensive article about comic books in Parents Magazine in which the author says: "Maybe I just don't catch all these subtle symbols of erotism, sadism and worse which comics reputedly contain."

In the lust-murder story of Dr. Payn the criminal was a doctor. In another comic book the criminal is a police lieutenant. He kills his wife by deliberately running over her with his car. At the end he is undetected and completely unsuspected, and presumably lives happily ever after. Six pictures on one page show this policeman-murderer lighting and smoking a cigar, walking triumphantly, with the full knowledge that crime does pay.

He goes free because at the police station an innocent man is tortured into making a confession. The child reader is spared no details. The man is punched in the stomach, hit in the face, his arm twisted behind his back.

"It went on like that for hours! His clothes were torn -- his nose bleeding -- his face battered and bruised! Other detectives took over! They worked in shifts -- pummeling -- threatening -- cursing!"

"HE [the innocent man] LAY SPRAWLED ON HIS STOMACH, BLOOD TRICKLING FROM HIS TOOTHLESS MOUTH! THE BONES IN HIS NOSE WERE SPLINTERED! HIS SCALP HAD BEEN OPENED -- HIS HAIR WAS MATTED WITH STICKY OOZE! HE SOBBED --"

"N-NO-MORE! I ... I ... DID IT! P-PLEASE! sob ... sob! NO-MORE!"

The very last picture in this child's story shows the real murderer, the police lieutenant, smoking his cigar and "cleaning his wife's blood from his car."

Stories like this are now so typical that I could go on and on.

A very sexy-looking girl tells her husband that she is pregnant. He opens his jacket and the girl looks at him, horrified. He tells her: "You couldn't be expecting a child, now, could you? Not very well -- when your husband is a ROBOT!"

A young soldier "keeping watch in his foxhole in Korea" is exterminated by a ghost: "The fangs and talons of the evil witch sank deeper into the jugular vein and then came out, withdrawing rich red blood. The young man sank forward, face up, dead!"

A painter ties the hands of his model to the ceiling, stabs her and uses her blood for paint. (Flowing blood is shown in six pictures. )

An "autopsy" is performed on a man who is still alive and screams.

A man provides murder victims for his wife, who drinks their blood. He grabs a newsboy for her and she says over his bound body: "His throat is as white and soft as a swan's! So tender and youthful!"

Scholars will be interested in this new version of Shakespeare's Hamlet:

THE DEATH SCENE (Hamlet speaking):

Fear not, queen mother!
It was Laertes
And he shall die at my hands!

... Alas! I have been poisoned
And now I, too, go
To join my deceased father!
I, too -- I -- AGGGRRRAA!


In one comic book "the top horror artist in the entire comic book field" is confined in the "state home for mental defectives" where his little son goes to visit him. Dialogue at the gate between the guard and the boy:

Guard: "Yes, I know it's visiting day. But he's still too violent."

Little boy: "I -- I -- just wanted to tell him he's won the 'ghoul' for the most horrible comic book script of the year."

At a time when accusations of bacterial warfare cloud the international scene, children here in the United States and, through export, in many other countries, are instructed that the United States Government is carrying out secret researches on bacteriological warfare and that it is practiced on colored natives:

A man goes to a Government building marked "RESEARCH DIVISION." A scientist in a white coat tells him: "You are aware of the secrecy of these experiments. They are more deadly than the A-bomb!"

Showing him a syringe, he goes on: "There's enough minute bugs in this to kill everything in New York! Pollute drinking-water! Poison masses -- "

The man tells his girl: "Get a load of this Liz. Bacterial warfare!"

He goes to Africa to practice on the natives there what he has learned in the U.S. Government Research Building.

In one picture you are shown a book with the title Bacterial War. This is not propaganda abroad, but the comic-book industry at home.

The stories of murder go from the simple through the gruesome to the weird. One man kills his wife with a poker, another shoots a wolf which is his wife, a third becomes transformed into a huge crab and eats her.

The preceding examples are ordinary samples such as can be picked up at any newsstand or candy store. This is what the comic-book industry is putting out right now under what might be called the Kefauver-Dewey charter. Forgotten are the announcements of self-control and self-regulation. Anything goes. And all this is possible because many well-meaning adults live under the skilfully induced illusion that comic books have been getting better and better. Supposing you were to read in a history book that a distant nation in times gone by gave this kind of literature to its children to read. Would you not be forced to conclude -- whichever historian you follow, whether Gibbons or Toynbee, Spengler or Engels, Croce or Commager -- that here was a civilization poisoning its wellsprings?

One afternoon, after analyzing the content of the latest batch, I was riding on the subway. Across from me was a nice-looking little boy) totally immersed in one of the bloody thrillers I had just gone over. I found myself in a revery. In my fantasy I was addressing a huge audience of parents, doctors, legislators and officials. This is what I was saying:

Set the children free! Give them a chance! Let them develop according to what is best in them. Don't inculcate in them your ugly passions when they have hardly learned to read. Don't teach them all the violence, the shrewdness, the hardness of your own life. Don't spoil the spontaneity of their dreams. Don't lead them halfway to delinquency and when they get there clap them into your reformatories for what is now euphemistically called "group living." Don't stimulate their minds with sex and perversity and label the children abnormal when they react. Don't continue to desecrate death, graves and coffins with your horror stories and degrade sex with the sordid rituals of hitting, hanging, torturing. Don't sow in their young minds the sadistic details of destruction.

Set the children free! All they want is to play, to learn, to grow up. They want to play games of adventure and fun, not your games of wars and killing. They want to learn how the world goes, what the people do who achieve something or discover something. They want to grow up to raise families with homes and children and not revel in morbid visions of Batman and his young friend. They want to grow up into men and women, not supermen and wonder women. Set the children free!


But I caught myself. Ridiculous! Who would listen to that?

I had asked for a law, a simple sanitary law to protect children under fifteen. The children needed it, the parents wanted it, the legislators drafted it, the intellectuals opposed it, the pillars of the community slapped it down. What, I asked myself, happened in the past? How did the protection of children progress historically? I went to the library.

In ancient times children were sacrificed bodily. Henry Bailey Stevens writes in his book The Recovery of Culture: "The success of the blood sacrifice [of infants] was undoubtedly due to the fact that it was sponsored by the thinkers, the leaders. They could argue from evidence which they could claim to be scientific.... Instinctively no doubt many wholesome people recoiled from the practice. But the intellectuals could talk them down scornfully. Let us imagine ourselves in Carthage when the priests of Moloch are demanding the sacrifice of infants. Suppose that you object.... Your associates will suspect you of sentimentality and irreverence. All the political, the social, the educational and the religious world will be arrayed against you. You will be a part of a society that has become infected."

A century ago boys and girls of five and up had to work as chimney sweepers. They got skin diseases from the soot. The proposal was made that the practice of sending children up chimneys be stopped. You can well imagine what their employers would have answered if they had had the benefit of the type of experts the comic-book industry has now. They would have said that only those children who are predisposed get skin diseases, that it is the children's fault if they want to satisfy their need of motility by going up chimneys, that children who don't go up chimneys get skin diseases, too, and besides what better outlet for aggressive instincts is there than to climb up chimneys and do battle with soot? There being no such experts then, the Earl of Lauderdale stated that if something were done for the children by law through an Act of Parliament, private initiative for being benevolent and helping children would be affected and would disappear. And the Religious Tract Society joined in the anti-reform movement and urged these stunted and sick children to wash well on Saturdays, attend Sunday School and read the Bible: "Thus you will be happy little sweeps." It took the British Parliament ninety years to control this legally.

In 1892 children as young as six, and even five and four, had to work in coal mines in England. The parliamentary report about these conditions was illustrated with pictures showing children and nude adults doing their back-breaking work in narrow, low, mine passages. John W. Dodds, in his book The Age of Paradox, records how Lord Londonderry, a coal magnate, was indignant -- not at the facts, but at the pictures. He was afraid they might fall into the hands of refined young ladies. So, as Professor Dodds writes, "change came slowly."

The history of medicine records a controversy about whether young children who have to do industrial work at night need sunlight for their health. It is not yet a hundred years since a physician had to defend in detail that sunlight is good for the immature organism, and that at least part of the day children should have sunlight in order to remain healthy. He was in just such direct contradiction to the employers who made these children work long hours at night as I am to the comic-book publishers. Similar arguments took place on the question of whether children need regular meals, sleep, how old they should be for heavy work and how many hours they should work. Nowadays the intellectuals are just as anxious to guard the freedom of children to read crime comics. In those days, as Lord Elton writes, they were "eager to preserve the liberty of children of six to work eleven hours in the mines." Then they used to quote Bentham, now they quote Freud.

Huntington Cairns, in his treatise The Child and The Low, describes how difficult it was to make Federal laws regulating child labor, how a law involving interstate commerce was proposed, and how the Supreme Court held this unconstitutional. (Justice Holmes dissented, as did Justice Frankfurter in the Winters case.) Cairns quotes a poem published at that time referring to the 5 to 4 decision of the Supreme Court:

Five reverend, wise and gentle men
Have thrust the babies back again.


Child labor today is still a problem of legal control. One constitutional amendment on child labor has been waiting for the necessary state ratification for a quarter of a century. Only recently attempts were made in the New York State Legislature to introduce a law according to which children would have to work without provisions for any minimum age, maximum hours, or protection of health and welfare. The battle between profits and progress goes on.

The flood of new and bad comic books continued to rise. The psychological erosion of children continued. There was no denying the victory of Superman and the triumph of Dr. Payn. Then an important event took place. As reported by Life in "Newsfronts of the World": "The Pacific Fleet Command has banned the sale of most war comic books in ships' stores on the grounds that they are too gory for the American sailor." Military authorities had questioned comic books before, on the grounds of avoiding sale of material that "goes beyond the line of decency." There had been some question of control and some bickering with the industry. But this time there was a clear action, to protect adults. If these war comics which are widely read by children are too "gory" for sailors in an actual war, why is it permitted to display and sell them to boys and girls of six and seven?

We think it is progressive to follow the judgment of children and go by our own feelings of wishing not to be interfered with. In other words, we go by what children think and by what we feel, instead of going by what we think and what children feel. We neglect the corrosive effect of external factors, such as comic books, in favor of more and more abstract speculations about intrinsic factors. We pretend that hostility and destructiveness are ingrained in the child and need expression, and fail to recognize what is instilled in him from outside. We teach these wrong concepts to young doctors and teachers who on that basis in turn make wrong observations, confirming our false conceptions. At a conference of kindergarten and first-year teachers in New York, under the auspices of the Board of Education, this official recommendation was given: "It is necessary to stress the normality of hostility; all children feel it and it is psychologically and biologically sound. Teachers must appreciate also the importance of accepting hostility without attaching moral values."

You cannot accept hostility without moral evaluation. For hostility in itself causes a moral conflict in the child. A society which itself adopts the standards and point of view of comic books is bound to arrive at false conclusions.

Thus my studies had almost completed a cycle. I had started from comic books, had gone on to study the needs and desires of children and had come to adults. I had learned that it is not a question of the comic books but of the mentality from which comic books spring, and that it was not the mentality of children but the mentality of adults. What I found was not an individual condition of children, but a social condition of adults.

The conflict that I came across occurs on different levels. There is first the conflict between the child and the comic book. This becomes an emotional conflict within the child himself. While there are parents who are delighted that comic books keep their children quiet, that is a short-range view because comic books have led to many conflicts between parents and children. There is further the conflict between the mothers' good sense and the experts' dogmas. On a wider scale a conflict developed between active local groups of women's clubs, mothers' clubs and parent-teacher organizations and their inactive national leadership. In 1949 the president of the National Congress of Parents and Teachers described comic books "as a chief influence of today on the minds of the young." What have they done about it?

Underlying it all is the conflict between the surge of violence today, of which comic-book violence is just a reflection, and a new morality, as expressed in the dissenting opinion of the U.S. Supreme Court in the Winters case, which wants to stem the tide of education for violence.

The way people reacted to comic books is how they often react to other things, too. First they did not know -- but they thought they did; then when told, they did not believe it; then, when shown, they said that's an exception; and when that was disproved, there was an endless stream of excuses: that things were getting better and better, that the evil would voluntarily improve itself, that singling out one evil was just looking for a "scapegoat." Thus they can keep not only their physical comfort but their intellectual comfort as well.

People neglect the pre-violent manifestations of the trend toward violence. They forget what the philosopher Erwin Edman said: "It does not take long for a society to become brutalized." Comic books are not the disease, they are only a symptom. And they are far more significant as symptoms than as causes. They shed some light on the whole foundation of moral and social behavior. That, I began to feel, was the most positive result of our studies. The same social forces that make crime comic books make other social evils, and the same social forces that keep crime comic books keep the other social evils the way they are. Even the arguments to defend them are the same for both.

Whenever you hear a public discussion of comic books, you will hear sooner or later an advocate of the industry say with a triumphant smile, "Comic books are here to stay." I do not believe it. Someday parents will realize that comic books are not a necessary evil "which, but their children's end, naught can remove." I am convinced that in some way or other the democratic process will assert itself and crime comic books will go, and with them all they stand for and all that sustains them. But before they can tackle Superman, Dr. Payn, and all their myriad incarnations, people will have to learn that it is a distorted idea to think that democracy means giving good and evil an equal chance at expression. We must learn that freedom is not something that one can have, but is something that one must do.

One evening at the Lafargue Clinic a young woman came to see me. She was the mother of a boy who after some delinquency had been referred to the Clinic and been treated there. She told me that the boy had got into trouble again, this time picked up with a switchblade knife. He was now in a youth shelter and she had been told he would be sent to a reformatory. I remembered her as a hardworking woman who had given the best care and education to her children that she could. She was very distressed and I tried to console her. Then I called in one of the social workers and we made plans to get in touch with the authorities, either to prevent his being sent to the reformatory or, if that did not work, to try to have him released from there as soon as possible. "I know your boy," I said to her, "and the Clinic will take full responsibility for him again." She thanked me and went out.

About an hour later when the Clinic was closed, I left the office. Walking through one of the corridors of the building I saw out of the corner of my eye a woman sitting on a bench crying. I recognized the mother I had spoken to. It was late, and I was tired, but I went over to her and took her back to the office.

By that time she had managed to control her sobbing, but she could not talk. So I consoled her again and told her we would do whatever we could. Then I added, "I know what you have done for this boy. Don't think that it's your fault."

At that she looked up, all alert. "It must be my fault," she said. "I heard that in the lectures. And the judge said it, too. It's the parents' fault that the children do something wrong. Maybe when he was very young --"

"Not at all," I interrupted her. "You have done all that you could. I have the whole chart here and we know it from the boy himself. You are a good mother, and you've given this boy a good home. But the influence of a good home is frustrated if it is not supported by the other influences children are exposed to -- the comic books, the crime programs and all that. Adult influences work against them. We have studied that, and we know good parents when we see them. So don't worry about yourself. It's not your fault."

She seemed to come out from under a cloud. She thanked me and got up to go. When she was halfway through the doorway she turned slowly. "Doctor," she said in a low voice. "I'm sorry to take your time. But please -- tell me again."

I looked at her questioningly.

"Tell me again," she said slowly and hesitantly. "Tell me again that it isn't my fault."

And I did.
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