Lets delve into a lterature review of the different types of media violence, focusing on comics. This is chapter II of my Master's Thesis.

Violence and the Media

In recent years, social researchers have scrutinized various forms of mass media entertainment violence. This includes the film industry, video games, television entertainment programs, television news, television commercials, comics books and music.

Comic Book Violence

During the 1950's, Dr. Fredric Wertham's book, Seduction of the Innocent raised a considerable alarm charging that violence in comic books was a major contributing factor as to why juveniles were committing crimes. Wertham suggested that due to the rising amount of juvenile delinquency in the 1940's and 1950's that comic books are not the disease, they are only a symptom. And they are far more significant as symptoms than as causes. They (comic books) shed some light on the whole foundation of moral and social behavior. According to a December 20, 1948 Time Magazine article, a mass comic book burning took place in Binghampton, New York, in which a house to house collection of comics was conducted and the books burned. These staements clearly show that the government and public interes in regulating media violence is nothing new, given that in 1954, Wertham's book was published initiating a U.S. Senate Investigation into the relationship between comic book violence and juvenile delinquincy. Wertham soon found himself testifying before the Senate Investigation Committee on Juvenile Delinquency in an attempt to ban comic books. In his book, Wertham made statements such as, "slowly and at first reluctantly, I have come to the conclusion that this chronic stimulation, temptation and seduction by comic books, both their alluring advertisements of knives and guns, are contributing factors to many children's maladjustment."

Although Wertham's book focused primarily on crime comic books, his study was not limited to them. For example, Wertham states that "crime comic books are comic books that depict crime, whether the setting is urban, western, science-fiction, jungle, adventure or the realm of superman, horror, or supernatural beings". Clearly there were only a select few comic books, such as Dell's Donal Duck, that did not come under scrutiny by Wertham and his team of researchers. Wertham also criticized the comic book industry for depicting super-heroes and heroines as the only ones that can stop "evil-doers" from harming helpess citizens. That is, comics depicted government agencies and law enforcement officials as incapable of doing their job.

Comic books were, and to some extent still are a major form of mass media entertainment for young people. It is well to keep in mind that television was at the very early stages of development during the late 1940's and early 1950's and therefore not yet under close scrutiny by advocates for the deterrence of violence in forms of popular media entertainment. Hence with rising rates of juvenile delinquency during the post-war era of the late 1940's and early-mid 1950's, comic books became a major target for those determined to explain the causes of juvenile delinquency and to extinguish those causes as fast as possible. Comic books soon became the scapegoat for rising amounts of juvenile delinquency in the United States.

In 1954, comic book publishers, in fear of having their books regulated by the government, took it upon themselves to devise the Comic Code Authority (CCA) in order to regulate their own material. As stated by Nyberg, "modeled after the film code, the comics code targeted all material that could possibly be considered offensive, going beyond the regulation of crime and horror comics to mandate that comcs should reflect dominant American values." In a symposium held in 1948, organized in part by Wertham, the topic was about violence in comic books. In an abstract describing the symposium's topic, the author states that "all comic books without exception are principally, if not wholly devoted to violence" (Legman, 1996).

Another study within this field of researc attempts to assess the amount of violence in newspaper comc strips. The researcher conducted a content analysis of comic strips in the Baltimore Sun ranging from 1911-1966. The researcher, Hutchinson, looked at a total of 5,238 comic strips having a total of 26,875 panesl. In his study, Hutchinson was trying to determine the effects of the United States military conflicts upon comic strips. Violence was coded in four separate categores of comic violence defined as comic violence actual, comic violence threatened, serious violence actual and serious violence threatened. The researcher then compared comic strip violence with Uniform Crime Report statistics. His findings suggest that crime rates (the number of crimes per 100,000 population) had been increasing since the 1940's, but comic strip violence between 1939-1966 had declined. Hutchincson state, "during this time period, the relatinship between crime rates and violent comic strips has approximately been an inverse one". The crime rate, notes Hutchinson, rose slightly more than 50% faster than comic strip violence was falling."

In 1971, Arthur Berger published an article titled "Comics and Culture". This article is in part, the foundation for his later book The Comic Stripped American (1973), which would be one of the first American Books to explore the scientific relevance of studying American comic strips and comic books. In the article "Comics and Culture Berger (1971) stresses that up until the late 1960's and early 1970's comics have been somewhat neglected by American scholars. Only recently have American social science researchers begun to follow in the foodsteps of European scholars wha have been studying American comics for many years (1971:165). According to Berger (1971:177), "Italians have, for a long time, studied American comics assiduously, and sponsor an international colloquiom every year dealing with comics and society". Other countries such as France, Germany and England have works pertaining to the study of American comics and comic strip art. Berger (1971) also states that "the University of Rome has an extensive collection of comics and perhaps a dozen books have been published in Italy, in the past five or ten years, on comics---with particular attention to American ones." This is just one example that compliments the idea that comcs indeed can be a major venue of study for social science researchers, nonetheless, Berger (1971:165) caustions that comics are not a perfect mirror of society but it is plausible to discover important American values showing through." In a sutdy of the Sunday comics made by Science Research Associated in 1956 Berger (1971:168) states that "it was suggested that comics are like icebergs, with the important and significant meaning tending to be below the surface and concealed from public view."

In 1971, literary critic and novelist from Chile, Ariel Dorfman, along with Belgium sociologist Armand Matterlart published a book titled How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic. The authors charge that Walt Disney along with reigning political dominant authority figures use Walt Disney comics, specifically Donal Duck to undermine the people of Chile. One of the book's main premises is the the representation of Donald & Company within the comics is actually the dominant hand of U.S. government in Chilean affairs. Compared with other works within this field, this is o