My intention was for these series of posts on censorship to be published a lot closer together but here we are a few months after the first post, finally, coming back to it and posting the second one.
In the first one I wrote about moral censorship and how it infects everything. There's another aspect that I think it's important to understand. Those who want to censor (most often conservative and religious forces), tend to object to forms of media that are new and different and genres that stray from the norm. That's why they objected to films (horror and sci-fi in particular), to comics, to TV, to rock 'n' roll, to rap and hip-hop.
It's seldom talked about these days, but many classic novels that are now considered classics of the literary form were first published in serialised form and they were also criticised and denigrated as low brow and banal fare.
Every new art form and genre is usually denigrated and despised when they're new and different to the norm or what the white establishment likes. This is where the classic, "it's not literature," "it's a B grade movie," "it's not music," and other similar expressions come from. It's not the safe, homogenised book/movie/music I'm attuned to, therefore it has no value. From there, they jumped into virulent attacks, claiming these new art forms and genres are dangerous to children. They always used protection of children as an excuse.
Sadly, they still do. Still today, a lot of the censorship they're promoting is couched on the "we need to protect children" argument. And, unfortunately, it takes a long time to change those perceptions.
In this post I want to focus on censorship of comics in the 1940s and 50s in the U.S. and in the next post (which I promise will come out soon), I will explore the censorship of comics in Australia. I've found some newspaper articles from the 1950s in Australia and can't wait to share them.
COMICS AND READING
Comics are popular and they are loved all over the world.
Yet, despite how much they're loved, they're also hated and prejudices against them are present everywhere in, both, overt and subtle ways.
They are misunderstood by some who hold on to old prejudices and misinformation. Seemingly unable to accept different storytelling mediums.
Working at the library, we sometimes hear, what I assume are parents with good intentions, say, "no comics, I want you to read real books." Then, the child who had a huge pile of comics in their hands walks back to the graphic novels section of the library, looking down and defeated. They leave the graphic novels that they were so excited to read on a trolley and in a totally grumpy mode, they pick up a book that their parents will approve.
Whether they'll read it or not, who knows. But one thing is clear, that child who was so excited to read a whole pile of books will come to resent reading. They will come to associate it as something imposed.
Instead, if the child had been allowed to read what they wanted, in their chosen format, they would come to associate reading with pleasure and they would seek more books, more reading.
So what does all this have to do with censorship?
The answer is everything. That well meaning parent is imposing a form of censorship. The child wants to read, but clearly the parent objects to the chosen format of story telling because the words come with pictures. And this form of censorship is the result of decades of misinformation and poison that parents, teachers, and librarians have internalised against comics as a medium.
The idea that comics are not literature, that they're not books, that they're not even art, even though pages are filled with words and drawings, is not new. But, one thing we can sure of is that comics are art (commonly referred to as the ninth art in France) and comics are multimodal texts rich with multiliteracies. No matter what the naysayers say.
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| Frederic Wertham survives the reading of a comic |
COMICS CENSORSHIP IN THE 1950S
You may be aware, that comics were heavily challenged and attacked in the 1950s in the United States. The story is generally well known, but here's a brief summary of the main brushstrokes.
In the U.S., Seduction of the Innocent by Fredric Wertham was published in 1954. Its main contention was that comics were dangerous because they corrupted young minds and turned children into criminals.
The book became popular, despite the absurdity of Wertham's arguments, and it created a panic. In the U.S., senate hearings ensued where comics were demonised. The censorship fervour spread to other countries around the world who adopted similar tactics and attempted to ban comics.
In the U.S., the famous Comics Code Authority was established with very strict guidelines that made comics squeaky clean. In the aftermath, comics sales plummeted nearly killing the comics industry in the United States and comic book creators and readers had a new villain the loved to hate. The end.
I haven't done justice to that whole tumultuous period but that will have to suffice. In a nutshell, Wertham was clearly on a crusade and other community and religious groups used his book as a blunt instrument to further their censorship lust.
WERTHAM EXPOSED
Wertham’s arguments were thoroughly disproved by Carol L. Tilley, professor on the faculty of the School of Information Sciences (formerly, the Graduate School of Library and Information Science) at the University of Illinois, in a 2012 study and paper that exposed his dubious methods, manipulations and exaggerations: Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics. If you have not read this paper, I can't recommend it highly enough.
In 2010 Wertham's documents and first hand drafts and writings were made available. Tilley decided to evaluate his methods. What she found in those documents revealed that Wertham often conflated different children into one, misrepresented what they said and actively chose to highlight some of their statements while disregarding others to fit them into his arguments and narrative.
Ironically, Carol didn't go into Wertham's documents looking to discredit him. She was "more interested in the intersection of libraries, reading, kids, and comics," but as she says once she started reading the ways he had distorted what children had told him by misrepresenting their words she felt compelled to correct the record.
"For many hard-to-articulate reasons, I didn't want to write the scholarly paper on Wertham and the problems I found in his evidence, but not to write it seemed a disservice to the young people whose words and experiences Wertham distorted to help make his case against comics. That many of these young people were socially and culturally marginalized – living in poverty, abused, of color, learning disabled, and the like – makes it more important to correct the record." Tilley, 2013
Ironically, the publisher's note at the start of Seduction of the Innocent said the book was "the result of seven years of scientific investigation." It also said that Wertham was providing "expert opinion ... based on facts, facts that can be demonstrated and proved."
But Tilley's analysis of his notes and writings compared to the text published in the books showed that:
"Seduction of the Innocent is filled with examples ... in which Wertham shifted responsibility for young people's behavioural disorders and other pathologies from the broader social, cultural, and organic physical contexts of these children's lives to the recreational past time of reading comics. Wertham played fast and loose with the data he gathered on comics." Tilley, 2012
Wertham used children and teenagers statements and lived experiences and totally ignored them. He didn't give context to their broken homes, membership in gangs and other similar social backgrounds. Instead, he focused on the fact that they read comics and then overstated, distorted and rephrased what they said about comics in order to suit his narrative. Again, I recommend reading Tilley's paper in full.
WERTHAM WASN'T ALONE
It's important to remember that it wasn't just Wertham and conservative/religious groups that pushed for censorship. As Carol writes:
"He was certainly not alone: teachers, librarians, parents, police officers, religious leaders, and other adults lent their voices to the anti-comics movement." Tilley, 2013
Margaret Martignoni, for example, who was the director of children's work at the Brooklyn Public Library wrote that Seduction of the Innocent was:
"'must' reading for thoughtful parents, teachers, librarians, social workers and all other adults concernced with children's reading and with child development." Tilley, 2012
This quote was used for the promotion of the book and Joy Elmer Morgan, who was the editor of National Education Association's NEA Journal, highlighted Seduction of the Innocent as the book of the year.
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| Chicago Daily New May 8, 1940 |
But attacks on comics were not new. Wertham was not the first one. Sterling North, who was a literary critic for the Chicago Daily News at the time, but had previously been (ironically) a member of the American Library Association's Committee on Intellectual Freedom, had already viciously attacked them back in a May 8 1940 editorial titled: A National Disgrace and a Challenge to American Parents.
The whole editorial is worth a read but here are a couple of my favourite quotes. He wrote:
Virtually every child in America is reading color "comic" magazines-a poisonous mushroom growth of the last two years.
Ten million copies of these sex-horror serials are sold every month. One million dollars are taken from the pockets of America's children in exchange for graphic insanity.
The prejudice is evident from the opening three sentences of the editorial. Putting the word comic in quotation marks, labelling their popularity as "poisonous mushroom growth" and then expressing his horror at their popularity. In fact, their popularity takes money from children's pockets. Like a thief, like a criminal.
A few lines later, rising to a fever, North writes my favourite part of the whole editorial:
Badly drawn, badly written and badly printed-a strain on young eyes and nervous systems-the effect of these pulp-paper nightmares is that of a violent stimulant. Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child's natural sense of color, their hypodermic injection of sex and murder make the child impatient with better, though quieter, stories. Unless we want a coming generation even more ferocious than the present one, parents and teachers throughout America must band together to break the "comic" magazine.
Towards the end of the editorial, North writes about the alternative which, in his view is to read children's books and classics. He points the finger at parents "who don't know and don't care what their children are reading." Then to "unimaginative teachers who force stupid, dull twaddle down eager young throats." And, of course, "the completely immoral publishers of the "comics" -guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents."
He concludes the editorial with stating that the antidote (meaning what he considers good, clean, children's books) can be found in any library or good bookstore and with the perfunctory statement that those who do "not acquire that antidote for his child is guilty of criminal negligence."
But let's be clear, throughout these years, some of the examples of immoral comics given were overstated and overblown. Totally sensationalised and taken out of context. I'm not denying there were also comics that depicted criminal and sexual acts. But that is not different to what movies and books were doing at the time. And, as always, what North and Wertham and their ilk never acknowledged is that most, if not all of those comics that he was talking about, were not conceived and printed for children.
Comics, received a special treatment because they were new, not what people like North and Wertham were used to reading, and because they were popular to the detriment of what they considered 'good literature.' In fact, during the time that Wertham at war with comics, evidence through market surveys suggests that more than 90% of children and more than 80% of teens in the United States read comics regularly. Or put another way, "the pervasiveness of comics as reading materials points to this medium as the most dominant cultural force in children's lives during the 1940s and 1950s," according to Tilley, writing on Seducing the Innocent, 2012.
WERTHAM: THE MAIN VILLAIN
All this to say, that vicious attacks on comics and comics readers were happening since the early 1940s but there's a reason why Wertham became the main figure in the Senate hearings of the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency and the one who nearly devastated the comics industry for, at least a couple of decades, and nearly destroyed it. As Carol identifies:
"Wertham was different from many of the others in that he had a scientific / medical background and could enrich his arguments with examples from case studies of children." Tilley, 2013
He manipulated children's words. He distorted and rewrote his evidence to fit his purposes and strenthen his arguments. There was nothing scientific about it but it was his medical and scientific background that gave him the status he acquired.
It’s important to remember all this history. After so many decades. After his work was totally discredited. Books are still being challenged in the U.S. and, of course, comics are being challenged too. Often with similar arguments to those Wertham first spouted so many decades ago.
Sadly, lots of people listened and not just in the U.S. but all over the world. In my next post, I will look at the less known story about the censorship of comics in Australia in the 1950s that started before Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent was even published.
In the meantime, go to the Library of Congress website and watch this fascinating panel (including Tilley) discussing censorship of comics and Seduction of the Innocent.
Tilley, Carol (2012) Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics, Information & Culture, Vol. 47, No. 4, 2012, University of Texas. Retrieved from here.
Tilley, Carol (2013) Comic books' real-life supervillain: psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, Boing Boing. Retrieved from here.
North, Sterling (1940) A National Disgrace: And a Challenge to American Parents, Chicago Daily News, first published May 8 1940. Retrieved from here.
Library of Congress, Censorship, the Comic Book, and Seduction of the Innocent at 70: A Roundtable Discussion, a recording from Thursday, June 6, 2024, retrieved from here.
