“COMICS” NO LONGER COMICAL: CRUELTY VIOLENCE AND SEX

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 12, Issue 79, 9 August 1948, Page 7

“COMICS” NO LONGER COMICAL: CRUELTY VIOLENCE AND SEX

The Detroit Police Department in America recently forbade the sale of 36 “comic books” because of their glorification of crime, and the Indianapolis police had banned other comics for similar reason, says a writer in the Melbourne Herald. It was estimated, he said, that 72,000,000 “comics” a year circulated in the United States. Managements of some of the publications claimed they had a therapeutic value, and had hired a number of psychiatrists, lawyers and educators to support the contention. The stock arguments of supporters of “comic books” were that if the children were influenced it simply showed they must have been unstable in mind and criminal in their inclinations; that in reading ‘comic books” children found a harmless outlet for aggressive tendencies that otherwise would find release in action; that children identified themselves with the good figures in “comic books”; that “comic books” showed the victory of law and order. Dr. Fredric Wertham, senior psychiatrist of New York’s Department of Hospitals, has documented •his findings on the effects of comics on American children with case histories, compiled by his department of children who got from comics ideas for crimes they had committed. He said comics accustomed a whole generation to cruelty and violence and destroyed healthy sentiments of pity; they stimulated unhealthy sexual attitudes; they contributed to juvenile delinquency; they interfered with education; they were the greatest mass influence on children, and also on a considerable part of the adult population..