Sequential // Comics News & Culture from Canada

Canadian Comix News & Culture

Monday, March 31, 2008

Bart Beaty vs Jeet Heer: 1950s Culture Wars Redux

:: Posted by Bryan @ 3/31/2008 12:01:00 AM

Professor Bart Beaty of the University of Calgary responds to Jeet Heer's review of David Hadju's Ten Cent Plague, from last week's Globe and Mail. The debate centers on the controversial figure of Fredric Wertham, whose Seduction of the Innocent argued that comics turned children into juvenile delinquents. Beaty's 2005 biography of Wertham, Fredric Wertham And the Critique of Mass Culture partially rehabilitated its subject as a misunderstood crusader against racism and the rights of children. Here is a bit of the back and forth between Heer and Beaty (the argument is followed up at Heer's blog):

Beaty: Hajdu asserts that the voice of children was lost in the anti-comics movement of the 1950s, but, in reality, he is talking about teenagers. Indeed, the most popular comics among children in the 1950s were not, as he contends, the crime and horror titles that raised public alarm. They were Donald Duck and Bugs Bunny.

There is an inherent slippage between teenager and child in the contemporary category of youth, and it is one that troubles both Hajdu's book and Heer's reading of it. Importantly, teens are not children, and children are not teens. Heer writes that "children need monsters and ghouls." That may be indeed be the case, but the debate in the 1950s centred around whether a child of 7 needed realistically depicted images of rape.

Heer: True, Wertham didn't favour censorship and the rating system he advocated was eminently sensible. Still, Wertham used language so inflammatory as to give aid and comfort to censors and book-burners. "I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry," Wertham argued. If Superman and Tales from the Crypt were more dangerous than Mein Kampf or Triumph of the Will, then it might make sense to have comic-book burnings, as happened in the Wertham era.

As for the conflation of children and teenagers, that's Wertham's fault. He constantly talked about protecting children, obscuring the fact the most violent and salacious comics were too wordy for pre-teens and were largely read by high-schoolers.

If I had a child, would I want him or her to see "realistically depicted images of rape"? No, probably not (although the film The Kite Runner contains a rape scene and is fine for kids as long as they have parental guidance).

It's well worth checking out this discussion and reading all the books in question (including Wertham). For my part, the most compelling parts of Seduction of the Innocent are Wertham's case histories of the kids he has talked to, like 14-year-old comic book fanatic and accused murderer Willie --the subject of Wertham's first chapter. Among his many other objections to comic books was the manner in which they were consumed. Worth tracking down are Wertham's descriptions of the "hookey clubs" where children traded comics for (gasp!) less than cover price!