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 : Since the dawn of
civilization, every society has possessed its
"unmentionables", its taboos, and those who choose to practice anything
that doesn't fit the average mold is likely to be persecuted. Today,
this topic is more relevant than ever with the growing specter of
government involvment in the media (all forms included). There are
those
who would like to filter their belief system unto us by deciding what we
see, hear, say, and think. Many lives and careers have been ruined by
such people.
Their names live on in infamy: Hitler, McCarthy, and Stalin are but a
few. Comics have not been immune to attack either, as the story of a
man, Dr. Fredric Wertham, and a book, Seduction of the Innocent, sent the
American comic book industry reeling for
decades to come.
 : To any
knowledgable
comic
book fan or opposer of censorship in any
form, he has remained a malovent phantom, a prime example of what can
happen when hysteria, misinformation, and sheer ignorance are combined.
His ideas that the comic book could release the bestial side of
humanity, especially in children, incarnated itself as Seduction, later
Senate involvement, and finally an organization known today as The Comics
Code Authority.
 : To be frank, our
goal is not to demonize Dr. Wertham , but explain
what he did, why he did it, and most importantly, how very wrong it was.
Though the rest of this page has displayed a more light-hearted approach
to explaining comic art and its
long history, here the subject is a grave one, indeed. This may be one
of the most important features of Comics: The Language of the World.
: Dr. Fredric
Wertham
(born Fredric Werthheimer) was born on March 20,
1895 in Nuremberg, Germany--a place that would later house the trials for
several of the most brutal Nazi war criminals. After recieving his MD
from the University of Wurzburg in
1921, he moved to the United States a year later and began his psychology
career at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at John Hopkins University. In
1926, Wertham began his later infamous writing career with The Brain as
an Organ, a book that would earn him
the honor of being the first psychiatrist ever awarded with a National
Research Council grant. Shortly after becoming widely recognized and
being named senior psychiatrist at Belleview, a hospital in New York, the
comic book industry in America was taking
flight with classic heroes like the Batman, Superman, and Captain
Marvel.
: Before Seduction
the
industry was
already taking some stiff
criticism from newpapers and such, but it was quite harmless when
compared to all that was to come. Those critics were taken seriously by
some comic book publishers and Detective Comics
(DC) created an advisory board which included psychiatrists and child
welfare experts, among many. This was effective in smoothing out the
rough waters for a time. After the second world war, comic book
publishers realized that adult readership had grown respectively, as many
GI's had taken up comic book reading during their time away in Europe.
Companies began to shift their efforts away from superheroes and into the
gritty world of crime stories and horror. EC Comics, which had once
published strictly educational books, came out on top, but their success
would be short-lived.
: Wertham
continued
with his writing with two more books, Dark Legend
(1941) and Show of Violence (1949), both dealing with extreme violence
and deliquency. Legend's true life tale of a teenager murdering his
mother moved readers through shock and was later made into a play. He
greatly supported the idea that a patient's environment was entirely
responsible for his or her actions, noble or evil. This argument still
rages on in today's crisises over internet, television, and motion
picture "cleansing." He first became interested in the idea that comics
were a primary cause of delinquency while working at his Lafargue Clinic
in Harlem. Constantly surrounded by the underpriviliged and poorly
educated people of that particular neighborhood, his thesis merely
strengthened. Becoming the literal "spearhead" of the anti-comics
movement, Wertham published articles in Collier's and the Saturday Review
of Literature, both explaining and defending his views. The nation
became caught in a frenzy, holding mass comic book burnings to destroy
what some believed preached communism, polluted a child's good judgement,
or even promoted homosexuality. The latter would become evident in this
passage from Seduction which attacks the Batman comics:
"Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform
with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on
earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often
stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident"
: In an attempt to
salvage their dwindling reputation, EC and Lev Gleason
(the most successful publisher of crime comics) formed the Association of
Comics Magazine Publishers, or ACMP. The organization was a total
failure because other companies like
DC, Dell, and Timely (later known as Marvel) had already taken their own
actions to keep business alive.
: To make matters
worse, Fredric Wertham "clones" began popping up, some
with far more extreme hypothesises on the supposed relationship between
comics and juvenile crime; most notably Gershon Legman. The comics
industry did have a bit of an ally in Dr. Frederic Thrasher, who
believed that Wertham's ideas were too extreme and lacked any validity.
The final crippling blow from the good doctor came in 1954 with arrival
of his most notorious and controversial piece of work, Seduction of the
Innocent. In it, Wertham stated that crimes taking place in the
fictional world of the comic were being copied by the children that read
them. Those particular children apparently "confessed" that comic books
were indeed the culprit Suddenly, there was a massive surge in comic
book-related criminal acts. Probaby, the children who commited such
crimes had discovered that blaming their misbehavior on comics was a far
easier way of escaping punishment and winning the sympathy of others.
Wertham used "guilt by association" to further incriminate the
publishers, despite the fact that the majority of children who read
comics displayed perfectly normal and mild-mannered behavior.
: Sorry to
interrupt,
but I have an interesting
factoid concerning Dr. Wertham. In Show of Violence, one passage read:
"Only very rarely are fantasy and action linked in a deadly chain. As Clarence Darrow said, most men haven't killed anybody, but they have read obituaries with pleasure."
It would seem that he'd forgetten that earlier conclusion.
: The final nail in
the proverbial coffin was placed there by a United
States senate subcommittee shortly after Seduction's publication. There
to testify were William Gaines (publisher of EC comics), representatives
from many of the other large companies, and several men who handled the
business aspects (distributors, retailers, and so on). Three members of
the National Cartoonists Society, Walter Kelly (Pogo), Milton Caniff
(Steve Canyon), and Joe Musial (The Katzenjammer Kids) also attended the
proceedings, but not defend their comic book cousins. The actual purpose
of their role in the investigations was to distance newspaper strips from
comics as much as possible.
: While Wertham
presented his case clearly and flawlessly, the
businessmen from the various companies didn't fare quite as well (with
the exception of Gaines, who held a teaching degree). The doctor had
chosen his weapons well, though. Upon displaying several covers and
panels from various EC comics, including a scene of "zombie baseball" and
a man holding a decapitated head (the actual point where the head had been
severed was hidden from view and the only indication of what had happened
was the unfortunate woman's legs in the backround).
: The subcommittee
finally reconviened in June and had reached its
verdict. Perhaps a lowdown of exactly what was said can better explain:
"(Senator Robert C. Hendrickson) I think I speak for the entire
subommittee when I say that any action on the part of the...publishers of
crime and horror comic books, or upon the part of the distributors, ...
whole-salers, or dealers with reference to these materials which will tend to eliminate from..production and sale, shall receive the acclaim of my colleagues and myself. A competent job of self-policing within the industry will achieve much."
Soon after this decision, on October 26, 1954, the Comics Code Authority
was established to create a set of guidelines that a comic must follow in
order to bear their seal of approval on the cover. EC, the once
unstoppable giant of the industry dropped many of its titles until
eventually going out of business. Many other publishers soon succumb as
well. The only two companies that escaped with much of their business
intact were DC and Timely, which today still remain the top two
publishing giants.
: Before his death
in
1981 at the age of 86, Dr. Fredric Wertham wrote
three more books, the third of which, The World of Fanzines (1973), was
rather odd considering his previous books. Fanzines were amateur
publications based on either comics, science fiction/fantasy, or a mix
which were distributed (usually for free) to other fans who shared
similar interests. In World, he praised these magazines, realizing that
those children whose lives he thought would be forever ruined because of
comic books, had grown up into normal and healthy people. He claimed
that they actually had benefited from reading fiction. It would seem
that the fans had fortunatly proved him wrong--and they had.
: Of course it
wasn't
smooth sailing from 1954 to the present. In the
70's (an era where pop culture fads were abundant in comic books),
companies began to test the waters a bit. Marvel Comics was the first to
dive in, printing an issue of The Amazing Spider-man without the seal.
The reason for this was because the hero of the same name would be
fighting a gang of drug dealers. Not long after, DC's Green Arrow would
discover that his sidekick, Speedy, was a heroin addict. During the 80's
and 90's, more and more social issues found their way into the pages of
comics books. In the 400th issue of The Incredible Hulk, one of Bruce
Banner's (the Hulk's alter-ego) good friends lost a long battle with the
AIDS virus. The cover of that issue was printed
strictly in black and white, with the exception of a large AIDS ribbon
at the top. Other comics, such as Terry Moore's Strangers in Paradise
and Neil Gaiman's cult favorite book , The Sandman also tackled the
issues of HIV and AIDS. Quite recently, Spider-man (a spin-off of
Amazing) featured a two-part story, titled "Something About A Gun", where
a boy finds a loaded gun dropped by a fleeing criminal and contemplates
what he could do with it.
: I'd like to move
on
now to an equally disturbing topic concerning manga
(Japanese comics) and the abundant myths that have surrounded it in
America (anime included). In countless poorly researched articles by
magazines, television shows, and others, this art form has been labeled
"permissive" and some believe that anime and manga are nothing but adult
material. This is ENTIRELY untrue. Manga and anime cover countless
genres including science fiction, comedy, romance, action, drama, etc.
and while there is adult-oriented manga (and anime), it is a strong
minority among the others and not as abundant in the U.S. as you might
think. It has simply gained the most notoriety. We have to wonder
exactly how much those who write these shoddy reports
have actually seen.
: In the United
States
a furor arose among manga fans when news reached
them that two pages had been ommitted from the American release of
Masamune Shirow's cyberpunk epic, Ghost in the Shell. Angry readers
accused Toren Smith (head of Studio Proteus,
who distributed and translated Ghost., of the deed). They were shocked
to discover that Shirow himself had chosen to delete the pages in
question. In reality, they had nothing to do with the overall storyline
and their removal didn't change the story one bit. Shirow had been
receiving flak even in Japan, where there cultural taboos are a bit
lighter than ours in certain aresas, and decided he didn't need the
headache. Had those two pages been kept in, a strong "Mature Audiences
Only" label would have been required on both the cover and the
mail-order catalogs. In truth, these labels can often kill a book.
Other imported manga such as Gunsmith Cats and 3x3 Eyes have also
undergone edits to reach a wider audience on the American market.
: The reason is
simple, American and Japanese cultures have their
differences. As in Europe, casual nudity isn't considered a problem and
can even be found in a few children's shows across the Pacific. In the
1980's a ruckus was started when Viz
cut out a page from Mai the Psychic Girl because it featured an innocent
bathing scene.
: It is safe to say
that censorship is one of the worst things that can
be done in society, but combating it is such a daunting task because
there are those who agree with its policies. We must remember to keep
our minds open and never forget how one
man, or a book, or a simple and pointless taboo could alter your life
forever, and not likely for the best...
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