There are two important articles here, check them both out:
New York Times from 1911 and
Fred ric Wertham, Saturday Review of Books, 1948
My good friend and occasional troublemaker, Kid Robson, prompted
me to accelerate my postings when he wrote, “Seduction of the Innocent” was
released to a public (1954) already teeming with anti-comics sentiment.”
Well, Wertham was attacking the culture of comics way before then. Here is one article from 1948. Please
also read the letters to the magazine that came after his article was
published. See if you believe the first writer is truly what the editor says he is."..
Of course he is not, but it sounds great. There is too much research, too much knowledge of the 1800s to believe this was written by a 14 year old in 1948, but the magazine does not check it out. Perhaps because it agrees with their point of view. Please see Michael T. Gilbert's great article at the end!!!
In support of the Kid's point of view, comic bashing was here before WERTHAM. Check out the New York Times article from 1911 first. It doesn't attack comic book because they were not “invented” yet. Instead we see the same sort of attack on the Sunday color comic sections of local newspapers, thirty years before the comic book, as we know it, made it to the stands.
In support of the Kid's point of view, comic bashing was here before WERTHAM. Check out the New York Times article from 1911 first. It doesn't attack comic book because they were not “invented” yet. Instead we see the same sort of attack on the Sunday color comic sections of local newspapers, thirty years before the comic book, as we know it, made it to the stands.
“I am inclined to think that it would be a
benefit to the community if the comic supplement should softly and silently
vanish … and the whole scheme of a funny annex to the Lord’s Day should fall
into innocuous desuetude.”
Comics can’t win. Kids should always be
doing something more productive with their time, reading classics, studying, helping their parents or observing the religious aspects of Sunday. Somehow reading for enjoyment is something children should never be encouraged to do. Note that they never mention that adults were reading and enjoying these comics, as if that was a dirty secret.
New York Times: 1911: A mass meeting under the auspices of the League for the Improvement of the Children’s Comic Supplement, in the Auditorium of the Ethical Culture Society, acted much in earnest last night Percival Chubb presided. He read letters from educators, literary men and women, and artists which condemned as vulgar the comic supplement sheets which for a part of most Sunday newspapers here and in other cities.
Norman Hapgood, editor in chief of
Collier’s Weekly, was the principal speaker. He took this occasion to commend
the Sunday photographic supplement of The New York Times.
“I think the standing of The New York Times
in the community has been clearly raised by its illustrated supplement, in
which it depends for its interest among children and adults upon the best
results of modern photographic processes. I think it was distinctly fortunate that
The Times conceived the idea of presenting in this way simple and beautiful
things of interest for themselves or for their timeliness. I think people
should encourage that kind of thing, and show their disapproval of the other
sort of supplements by supporting the right kind of endeavor rather than by
doing anything radical.
Mr. Chubb read a letter from a newspaper,
the name of which was not announced which offered to place its entire comic
section on a given Sunday at the disposition of the Executive Committee of the
league. The newspaper offered the services of its staff of artists and
mechanical force to carry out the ideas of the committee for the improvement of
its comic supplement.
George De Forest Brush, himself and artist,
offered an explanation of the poor quality of the Sunday supplement humor.
He said that the artists were worked to
death, and that when an editor contracts to get humor for a period of years
from an artist, the time was bound to come when the artist would he worked out
and the editor would get only drool. He said that overproduction was degrading
“the fine arts and that public taste was being degraded by annual exhibitions
in the fine arts, where so many new pictures were shown.” The comics were
offensive and ridiculous, while the fine arts were being followed by too many people who have no
talent to begin with and no disposition to apply themselves. He appealed to
members of the Union League Club, if there were any present, to prevent the
scheduled exhibition of the so-called “insurgent painters.” He said he saw the
insurgent exhibition last year and “ seriously now, it should have been closed
by the police.”
John Alexander of the National Academy of
Design took a more favorable position toward the comic supplement. He said that
children’s minds were naturally clean and that they do not get harm from
pictures. He said that In Germany the children have in the books of Wilhelm
Busch pictures which no New Turk editor would dare to print in his comic
supplement.
Mrs.
John Martin said: “We gain nothing by closing our eyes to facts, and there are
two notable facts connected with the question before us. First, that these
things which we object to, this comic supplement and these columns of horrors,
the people like and will pay their scanty pennies for day after day. Second,
that according to all American traditions, they have as good a right to like
them as we have not to like them, no good a right to their opinion as we have
to ours. They raise no objection to our reading Emerson or Browning or becoming
addicted to works on ethics or philosophy. Why then, do we assume to interfere
with their pleasures, their tastes and their habits?
“I admit freely that the newspapers are bound
to give the people what they want. But I should not be here to-night, I should
net raise my voice this meeting of protest, did I not believe that too, am a part of the people, and did I not
know that I am not getting what I want.”
The Test and Way of ‘Reform.
Miss Lillian Wald, head worker of the
Nurses Settlement, said that persons who care for children should encourage and
support the newspapers which are sensitive to the demands of such readers as
were gathered before her. Many children from five to twelve, she said, obtain their
instruction in art, in humor, In story, through the pictorial Sunday
supplement, and these were the years when the moral nature was in process of
formation. “Test the pictures or stories” said she. “ by the primary
requirements of child culture, and if they stimulate the fun of disobedience,
of tricks and practical jokes on elders, ridicule the unsophisticated, or
depict mock heroism, you may have some measure of their effect for good or bad
upon the impressionable mind of the child. “ If the people who care for the
children core enough about this to encourage and support the newspapers that
are sensitive to the demands of their readers, we would see the thing that we
bare met to criticize unfavorably become a children’s traveling library and
museum, educationally worthy of gratitude and respect, untainted by false
standards of art and humor.”
Supt. William Maxwell of the public
schools wrote: I have always felt that
our efforts were largely neutralized, if not nullified, by the pernicious
production of some newspapers on days of
the deck and of most newspapers on Sunday. If your league can do anything to
accomplish the reform of the comic supplement for children, you will have my
crest earnest sympathy and support.”
Cruel and Vulgar Jokes
Dean Thomas M. Balliett of the School of
Pedagogy of the New York University wrote:
“The effect on children of the practical
jokes, often cruel and sometimes vulgar, and of the buffoonery illustrated in
these pictures is very demoralizing. It has a bad effect not only on the sense
of propriety and their manners but gives them false ideals of life and has a
bad effect on their morals. It is surely possible to change the character of
these pictures so as to preserve the humor and interest, but in a refined form.
Nobody knows better how to accomplish this end than our newspaper managers
themselves. I am sure they will do it la response to the demands of a healthy
public sentiment.”
The Rev. Dr. Henry Van. Dyke wrote: "The
supplement as it now exists is a painfully ridiculous enormity. I am inclined
to think that it would be a benefit to the community if the comic supplement
should softly and silently vanish away like the Snark, and the whole scheme of
a funny annex to the Lord’s Day should fall into innocuous desuetude.
Fredric Wertham, Saturday Review of Books, May 29, 1948
The Comics . . . Very Funny!
FREDRIC WERTHAM, M.D.
AN ANXIOUS mother consulted me some time ago. Her four-year-old
daughter is the only little girl in the apartment house where they live. The
boys in the building, from about three to nine years old hit her, beat her with
guns, tie her up with rope whenever they get a chance. They hit her with whips
which they buy at the circus; they push her off her bicycle and take her toys
away. They handcuff her with handcuffs bought with coupons from comic books.
They take her to a vacant lot and use her as a target for bow and arrow. They
make a spearhead and scare her. Once, surrounding her in this way, they pulled
off her panties to torture her (as they put it). Now her mother has fastened
the child’s panties with a string around her neck so the boys can’t pull them
down.
What is the common denominator
of all this? Is this the “natural aggression” of little boys? Is it the
manifestation of the sex Instinct? Is it the release of natural tendencies or
the imitation of unnatural ones? The common denominator is comic books.
I examine in the clinic a buy of
eleven, referred because he fights in school and is inattentive. He says;
I buy comic books every week.
They kill animals, sometimes they kill people. One of the girls is the best
fighter, sometimes they tie her up and sometimes they put her in a snake cave
so that the snakes would kill her.
I examine a boy of fourteen
referred to the clinic for stealing. I ask him: “Do you think your stealing had
anything to do with the comic books?” He answers: “Oh, no. In the comic books
it is mostly murder.” This is like the arguments used by the experts under
subsidy from the comic-bank industry.
A boy of seventeen is referred
to me by the Juvenile Aid Bureau because in an argument he stabbed a boy of
thirteen in the right arm “with full intent.” He says: “I don’t read many comic
books—only about ten a week.
I like crime comics. Sometimes
they kill the girl. In one of the books the girl wanted snore money so they stabbed
her in the back.” Was it “full intent.” or was it perhaps imitation that
motivated him in his own actions?
A boy of thirteen is a problem
at home and at school. He is a real comic-book addict. He says: “They have some
kind of guns that shoot out a ray and kill a lot of people.” Is that a natural
fantasy? Is that a penis symbol? Or is it a kind of reality that a lot of
adults dread now and which these kids will have to face sooner or later?
A boy of fifteen took a boy of
twelve up a fire escape and threatened to push him clown if he didn’t give him
a quarter. He says: “I read two comic books a day.” A thirteen-year-old boy is
referred to me by the State Charities Aid Association. He was caught stealing
five dollars. When asked why he took it he confided to me that the older boys
in school got up a gang and threatened him. If he did not get them the money
they would beat him up. So he stole the money and gave it to them. (I verified
this later.)
The experts of the comic-book
industry tell us that what the children read in comic books is pure fantasy.
But when I examine these many children and adolescents they tell me what they
read in comic books, I ask myself with Bernardo in “Hamlet”:Is not this
something more than fantasy?”
THINK of the many recent violent
crimes committed by young boys And
girls. A twelve - year - old boy who kills his younger sister: e twelve - year
- old boy who kills his older sister; a thirteen-year-old burglar who operates
with a shotgun: seventeen-year-old boy who kills a thirteen-year-old boy and
leaves a note signed “The Devil’: a public school in New York City where two
police officers circulate on the grounds and in the corridors to prevent
violence; a mathematics teacher who has to give examinations with a policeman
present in the classroom: a thirteen - year - old who shot a nurse and was sent
to a reformatory (where, incidentally, she read more comic books); a gang of
adolescent bandits led by a fifteen-year-old. girl; two twelve-year-old boys
and one of eleven stopping a man on the street and shooting him with a
semi-automatic; a fifteen-3.rear-old boy third-degree as a suspect in a murder
case; three sixteen-year-old buys killing a fourteen-year-old “for revenge”; a
New York City School where the _older pupils threaten the younger ones with
violence and with maiming them, robbing then; of their money, watches, and
fountain pens. The young victims don’t dare tell the names of their tormentors.
When two
of them were asked by a teacher,
they refused to answer: “We don’t want our eyes cut out,- Actually one
sixteen-year-old boy in this school was beaten with a broken bottle from behind
and cut so severely that seven stitches had to be taken around his eyes_ Adults
are horrified at this attack_ They don’t know that this is old stuff for
comic-book readers. In one of the “good” comic books (“Classics Illustrated”)
in a rendering of the novel by Eugene Sue, ‘’The Mysteries Paris,” there
is a picture of a man tied down in a chair—a man whose eyes have been gouged
out and whose blood runs down from beneath the bandage.
A twenty-year-old youth in New
York City has just killed a policeman. Is that so astonishing when he can see
anywhere a typical comic-book cover showing a man and a woman shooting it out
with the police to the accompaniment of these words: “We’ll give those flatfeet
a bellyful of lead”? A nineteen-year-old youth has just been sentenced to the
electric chair for the murder of a girl of fifteen, despite the jury’s
recommendation of clemency, by a judge who had previously disregarded a
recommendation of mercy in the case of a sixteen-year old participant in a
holdup with a fatal shooting. There are recent cases where young men branded
girls’ breasts with burning cigarettes and carved initials into their flesh
with a knife. A thirteen-year-old boy in Chicago has just murdered a young
playmate. He told his lawyer, Samuel S. Andaman, that he reads all the crime
comic books he can get hold of. He has evidently not kept up with the theories
that comic-book readers never imitate what they read. He has just been
sentenced to twenty-two years in jail; while the comic-book publishers who
killed his mind with thoughts and methods of murder, and their experts who say
his reading was good for him, continue as before.
All these manifestations of
brutality, cruelty, and violence and the manner in which they are
committed—that is the folklore of the comic books,
Comic books are the greatest
book publishing success in history and the greatest mass influence on children.
If I make the most conservative estimate from my own researches, one billion
times a year a child sits down and reads a comic book. Crime does not pay, but
crime comics do. Recently I walked in one of the crowded sections of New York
City and saw a sign: “Saturday Morning [which is the Saturday matinee for
children] Comic Books Will Be Given Out Free to the First 500 Attending.” I
looked to see what was playing in that movie that morning. There were two
horror films: “The Son of Frankenstein” and “The Bride of Frankenstein.” The
posters calling attention to the movies showed girls in various stages of being
overpowered. The movie was called the Ritz. As I stood there I was reminded of
the story of the little boy who was asked what he wanted to be when he grew up
and replied enthusiastically:
“I want to be a sex maniac!”
There are two opinions about
comic books. The one says they are very harmful to children; the other says
they are good for the little kiddies. John Mason Brown has called comic books
the “marijuana of the nursery.” The question can put this way: Are comic books
the marijuana of the nursery or the penicillin of a happy childhood? This
difference of opinion is reflected also in the conflict in the child’s mind.
Briefly summarized, it is a conflict between super-ego and submachine gun.
What is the case for the comic
books? Seventeen points are adduced in favor of them. It is said:
1) That the children have their
“own choice” in selecting this literature, (Go to any candy store or newsstand,
and see what other books you can get for ten cents. The children are bombarded
with at least sixty million comic books a month. That is seven hundred and
twenty million of them a year. As far as their free choice is concerned, in a
Chicago school recently the pupils collected and burned all the comic books and
then went around in groups and persuaded the dealers in that neighborhood not
to handle them anymore. Other schools in Chicago followed their example.)
2) That they reflect the
children’s minds and if there is something wrong with them it must be the
child’s fault and the child must have been neurotic or disturbed or unstable in
the first place. (That reminds me of the owner of the dog that had killed a
rabbit, who claimed in court that the rabbit had started the fight.)
3) That it is good for children
to find release for their aggressive desires. (Is there one sentence in Freud
to indicate that it is advisable for children to see over and over again
pictures of violence and torture?)
4) That they are educational. (Let’s
look at one of the much-vaunted “good” comic books again, for an example, those
“goad” comic books used as window-dressing for the whole industry. It would
seem that no better choice could be made than the comic-book version of the
novel by Charles Dickens: ‘’Great Expectations.” The first nine pictures of
this “educational” book show a gruesome, evil-looking man threatening a little
boy with a big knife, and in one picture the little boy is crying out: “Oh,
don’t cut my throat, sir!” Is this Charles Dickens speaking, or is it the
circulation manager of a comic-book publishing firm?
(As for the claim that comic
books lead children to read the classics, many children whose confidence I have
gained have told me that when they have to make a book report in school they
use the comic-book version for their report so that they won’t have to read the
book.)
5) That there are good comic
books. (That reminds me of the story of the polite clergyman who was asked
about a bad egg which he had just started to eat: “Isn’t it good?” “Madam,” he
answered, “parts of it are excellent.”)
6) That the children identify
themselves with the good figures in the comic books. (That is like saying that
the spectators in the Grand Guignol who watch the rape, murder, and violence
identify themselves with the gendarme who breaks into the room a few seconds
before the curtain falls, There are comic books where girls are bound and
burned, sold as slaves, thrown to the animals, and rescued only at the last
moment by a good and faithful elephant. Do the experts of the comic-book
industry claim that the children identify themselves with the elephant?)
7) That the children don’t
imitate these stories. (But the increase of violence in juvenile delinquency
has gone hand in hand with the increase in the distribution of comic books.)
8) That comic books prevent
crime and delinquency. (As a matter of fact. we are getting to the roots of one
of the contributing causes of juvenile delinquency when we study the influence
of comic books. You cannot understand present-day juvenile delinquency if you
do not take into account the pathogenic and pathoplastic influence of the comic
books, that is, the way in which they cause trouble or determine the form that
trouble takes. )
9) That in comic books children
are never threatened, killed, or tortured. But that happens in even “good”
comic books. In one comic book a little buy is stuffed into a sack with the
following dialogue: “Stop struggling, in you go.” And the little boy: “No, No
... I want my mother!”)
10) That they are good for
reading. (But all the emphasis is on pictures and not on printed matter and
good teachers know that they have to get rid of comic books to make their
children read real books.)
11) That comic books make a lot
of money, (They do!)
12) That when dealing with crime
the comic books show the victory of law and order. (But what they really show
is what Margaret Osborn in her novel “The Ring and the Dream” called “the
trapped destructor of some human prey.”)
13) That comic books must be all
right because they are so widespread. (That is like saying that infantile
paralysis is all right because so many children have it.)
14) That comic books should be
left as they are because curbing them would mean interference with free speech
(as if censoring what adults read has anything to do with planning for children
the kind of reading matter that will not harm them.)
15) That the “experts” have
approved of comic books so they must be all right. (But experts are not needed,
only common sense.)
16) That comic books are
socially harmless. (On the contrary, they immunize a whole generation against
pity and against recognition of cruelty and violence.)
17) That comic books are a
healthy outlet. (On the contrary, they stimulate unhealthy sexual attitudes:
sadism, masochism, frigidity.)
IT IS pretty well established
that seventy-five per cent of parents are Against comic books. (The other
twenty-five per cent are either indifferent or misled by propaganda and
“research.”) Since the comic-book industry enjoys second-class mailing
privileges, the parents, as taxpayers, are paying for what they do not want.
The apologists of comic books, who function under the auspices of the
comic-book business (although the public is not let in on that secret), are
sociologists, educators, psychiatrists, lawyers, and psychologists. They all
agree that this enormous over-stimulation of fantasy with scenes of sex and
violence is completely harmless. They all rely on arguments derived from
misunderstood Freud and bandy around such words as “aggression,” “release,” “vicarious,”
“fantasy world.” They use free associations to bolster up free enterprise.
My own clinical studies and
those of my associates of the Lafargue Clinic, the first carried out
independently from the comic - book industry, and the first leading to their
condemnation, have convinced me that comic books represent systematic poisoning
of the well of childhood spontaneity. Many children themselves feel guilty
about reading them.
The worst sector of comic books
is increasing and the best, if there is a best, is getting smaller. The
comic-book publishers seduce the children and mislead the parents. Their mass
production is a serious danger to the production of good inexpensive children’s
books. The publishers of these good children’s books, instead of fighting the
experts of the comic-book industry and decoding their “codes,” lie on
psychoanalytic couches themselves, and delve into their own dreams instead of
providing decent fare for the dreams of childhood.
When I recently conducted a
symposium in the psychopathology of comic books I was blamed for not allotting
more time to a representative of the comic-book business who was there. I am
even guiltier than that: I once conducted a symposium on alcoholism and didn’t
invite a single distiller.
Fredric Wertham, is senior
psychiatrist, New York City’s Department of Hospitals, director of both
Bellevue and Queens General mental hygiene clinics (NYC), and the author of ‘
“Dark Legend: A Study in Murder.”
EDITOR’S
NOTE: Of the numerous replies we have received to Dr. Fredric Wertham’s
article, “The Comics . . . Very Funny!” [SRL May 291 and John Mason Brown’s
“The Case against the Comics” [SRL March 201, one of the most interesting is
that written by fourteen-year-old David Pace Wigransky of Washington, D. C.
Young Mr. Wigransky, who has just completed the tenth grade at the Calvin
Coolidge Senior High School, is a devoted reader and collector of comic books.
He tells us that he now owns 5,212 such books and “intends to make drawing for
them his profession and life’s work.”
“Unlike
other critics of comics,” Mr. Wigransky writes, “I possess a firsthand
knowledge of them, and unlike even those critics who argue in their favor, I
can say that I was once an average, normal comic-book fan and reader, during
the war and before it. Therefore I feel that I am more qualified than people
like John Mason Brown and Dr. Wertham in criticizing theM.”
Although
sections of Mr. Wigransky’s letter have been omitted for considerations of
space, his copy has not been edited.
SIR:
And it came to pass, when they were in the field, that Cain rose up against
Abel his brother, and slew him.
The
brothers Cain and Abel lived in a world of ideal tranquility, a world that had
never before known violence or crime, a world completely devoid of comic books.
How .then does Dr. Fredric Wertham account for this brutal fratricide told
within the pages of the Bible, the only book in the history of man more widely
read and more widely attacked than American comic books?
Or,
if Cain’s slaying of Abel seems far-off and far-fetched, let us take the
Leopold-Loeb case, which took place in early 1924, just five years before
publication of the first independently produced comic book. Nathan Leopold and
Richard Loeb, eighteen and seventeen years old respectively, were accused of
brutally murdering fourteen - year - old Robert Franks, thereby committing what
has been acknowledged by some as the most brutal crime in United States
history. Both boys were of well-to-do and cultured families and were readers of
“good” books. How then could Dr. Wertham possibly account for even the remotest
thought of murder or violence entering the minds of either?
Dr.
Wertham cites some two dozen gruesome and horrible cases of juvenile
delinquency from his files. These crimes were committed recently by weak-minded
children and adolescents, who, Dr. Wertham implies, would never have considered
crime had not they been comic-book readers. In none of these cases was it
proved that reading comic books was the cause of the delinquency. A good many
of the delinquents mentioned happened to be • readers of comic magazines just
as are 69,999,975 perfectly healthy, happy, normal American boys and girls, men
and women, who also read the comics. It is just as ridiculous to suppose he is a juvenile delinquent.” This is enough for Dr. Wertham.
I
seriously doubt if the children and adolescents interviewed by Dr. Wertham
would even bring up the subject of comic books at all if he did not first bring
it up himself. Being a psychiatrist, he must be able to do an expert job of
leading them on, mixing them up, getting them excited, and generally unnerving
them. He stirs them up over the subject of comic books just as he has the
ability to do on any subject, and then records their nervously blurted-out
remarks to use in his attacks on comic books.
This
crusade against comics is nothing new. It all began back in 1896 with the
conception of “The Yellow Kid,” after whom was named “yellow journalism,” so
christened by preachers and clergy who preached entire sermons against the
little Chinese boy who had leaped from the pen of Richard Felton Outcault. This
criticism grew and grew until it seemed that it could grow no more. Then came
the comic book, the newer and greater offspring of the comic s tr i p. This
opened up a new field to the critics. They began ignoring the quieter
news-Paper strip to transfer their opposition to the magazines. This
unwarranted and vicious attack is now at its height, led by such fanatics as
Dr. Wertham and John Mason Brown. The defenders of comic books occasionally
write a good-natured article in answer to the deadly serious and bitter
articles written against them. It is high time that we who are on the defensive
become as serious as are our attackers. We didn’t ask for this fight, but we
arc in it to the finish. The fate of millions of children hangs in the balance.
We owe it to them to continue to give them the reading matter which they have
come to know and love.
Dr.
Wertham seems to believe that adults should have the perfect right to read
anything they please, no matter how vulgar, how vicious, or how that 69,999,975 people are law-abiding citizens just because they are
comic-book readers as it is to suppose that twenty-five others are depraved
criminals due to the same reading habits.
Capable
as Dr. Wertham may be in the psychoanalysis of adults, I certainly do not
believe him able to deal equally as well with children, due to his f a n a tic
hatred and prejudice toward comic books. From reading his article I get the
impression that this feeling colors all of his investigations and reports. It
appears that his $64 question to a child being psychoanalyzed is, “Do you read
COMIC BOOKS, my little man?” Of course the juvenile delinquent being a normal
child in at least that way, will answer, “Yes.”
“Ah
ha,” says Dr. Wertham. “This child is a juvenile delinquent. This child reads
comic books. Therefore it is because he reads comic books that depraving,
simply because they are adults. Children, on the other hand, should be kept in
utter and complete ignorance of anything and everything except the innocuous
and sterile world that the Dr. Werthams of the world prefer to keep them
prisoner within from birth to maturity. The net result of all this, however, is
that when they have to someday grow up, they will be thrust into an entirely
different kind of world, a world of violence and cruelty, a world of force and
competition, an impersonal world in which they will have to fight their own
battles, afraid, insecure, helpless.
The
whole argument over comic magazines is very silly and needless. The kids know
what they want. They are individuals with minds of their own, and very definite
tastes in everything. Just because they happen to disagree with him, Dr.
Wertham says that they do not know how to discriminate. It is time that society
woke up to the fact that children are human beings with opinions of their own,
instead of brainless robots to be ordered hither and yon without even so much as
asking them their ideas about anything. To be a child psychiatrist, one should
be able to look at things through the eyes of a child. If a child is told not
to read a comic book, he will break his neck to do it. This is not wilful
stubbornness, but a perfectly normal revolt against . a world of giants who
seem to be doing nothing but what they please. He wants to be like them, and at
the same time he hates and resents them for their high-handed superiority.
The
comic-book publishers know what the kids want and try to give it to them. This
is not only democratic policy but good business sense. A child looks upon crime
and violence as ideal adventure and excitement. He has no desire to experience
these things in actual form, and knows them only as fun, and not in their true
ugliness. The adult, on the other hand, has had actual experiences along this
line, and looks upon fighting and violent action as loathsome and horrid. A
typical example of all this is the soldier who longs for home and his kid
brother who would give his right arm to be out there fighting alongside him.
The
child, having never been an adult, cannot be expected to understand the adult
point of view. The adult, on the other hand, was once a child, and should
therefore realize that this craving for horror is not for actual physical
violence but for imaginary violence in the form of comics, radio, movies, or a
good game of “Cops ‘n’ Robbers,” the last of which I am .sure was enjoyed many
years before the other three had even been thought of. If all the Dr. Werthams
in the world would realize this, the greatest barrier between parent-child
mutual understanding would be automatically removed.
If
let alone by the Dr. Werthams and John Mason Browns, I think the comic-reading
kids will turn out all right, as did the present generation, the first brought
up on comic books. Let any who starts to raise his voice in protest to this
generation, first compare it with any preceding one. I am certain that he will
discover the cards are stacked in favor of the comic-book readers of-the
present age.
DAVID
PACE WIGRANSKY.
Washington,
D. C.
SIR:
Congratulations on Dr. Wertham’s splendid article. Most librarians, both
college and public, have long Celt the evils of comics but have been unable to
do much about it as the rooting out is a question of the publishing business.
However, public opinion can do much and an article like yours ought to help
tremendously.
MOTHER
ST. LAWRENCE.
Rosemont,
Pa.
Sic:
The comics are very had in spots, but what does Dr. Wertham think should he
done about the Bible?
Right
after his article appeared, I heard a mother tell her friends that her
four-year-old daughter just loves the Bible stories, and every night asks to
have the one read “where God kills all the little babies.” Other favorites are
“where the boys throw Joseph down the well” and “where God has the men kill
Jesus.”
The
wrong kind of comics is bad for children; so is the wrong kind of religion.
They would be better off without any comics and religious stories. As long as
it is profitable for the trade to sell bad comics and for the churches to
furnish low-grade religion, the children will probably be supplied with both
products. They should be getting something better.
E.
M. HUNT.
White
Plains, N. Y.
Sic:
The article “The Comics . . . Very Funny!” was a shock to me as I never read
comics of any kind, and had the idea they were mercy stories in pictures. I
knew they were not funny.
My
thirteen-year-old son reads them by the ton. I have not noticed any of the
reverberations mentioned in the article in his conduct, but perhaps I am as
blind to that as I have been to the comics. I know lots of interesting
teen-agers and am interested in them.
Would
you and/or the author now
please
tell me what I can do about this? I would appreciate it. Of course, I mean I
and other mothers? It would be impossible for me to stop my son from reading
them. I know that.
LOIS
ECKSTEN.
Kansas
City, 1\4o.
Sir:
As the wife of a psychiatrist, the mother of three children, and the president
of the local branch of the American Association of University Women, I say a
fervent “Amen!”
Our
Colorado Springs branch of AAUW has done some work on comic books, and it is
being taken up as a statewide project. I discussed the matter at national
headquarters in Washington last month and hope I can get some action from them.
I do feel that aritcles like yours, in national publications, can have more
benefit than any other medium.
MRS.
PAUL DRAPER.
Colorado
Springs, Colo. •
SIR:
It seems to me that a campaign among parents and teachers could be effective in
suppressing the comics. Or effective if other forces joined in.
The
National Council of Parents and Teachers, Chicago 5, Ill., is headquarters of a
nationwide group. I have written to them about your article and suggested it be
read and action taken.
I
do hope The Readers Digest will reprint your article. How can it not do so?
So
far our children aren’t criminals, but their language and attitudes definitely
deteriorate subsequent to reading comics. We storm, forbid, but there’s always
a comic available somewhere.
I
pray there will be drastic changes made in publications of this nature. If so,
we will have you to thank.
AGNES
W. RANDENTASII. St. Paul, Minn.
THIS JUST IN
The incredible, friendly and generous Michael T. Gilberts
sent me his terrific article about David Wigransky that appeared in Alter Ego
and gave me permission to use it.
Thanks Mike!
