Fredric Wertham’s legacy (expanded beyond SOTI) 3 3

[Cat-Man_America]

There is a lot more to Fredric Wertham’s story than the book SOTI.  For instance, toward the end of his life he tried to make amends to comic fans by supporting fandom.  He wrote a book devoted to fanzines and the value of fan culture, even participating by joining one or more fan clubs (including OAF).  Unfortunately, this effort proved futile as he was never accepted by the fan community due to the perceived damage SOTI inflicted upon the comic industry.  

As a side note, in recent years Wertham’s research methods have come under closer scrutiny and the empirical evidence on which he based SOTI has been called into question.  The jury is still out on the validity of his research and the conclusions on which those claims were based.  However, if the ethical scholarship of SOTI is lacking, then his part in the purge of crime and horror comics may be seen in a somewhat different historical perspective.

This thread is an open invitation to add any content you come across about Fredric Wertham’s involvement in comics and fan culture, news reports, anecdotal information, etc., and of course SOTI related material

 

Edited September 21, 2020 by Cat-Man_America

[Electricmastro]

I’ve said this before and I’ll say again in that if Wertham had just simply focused on going against the racial caricatures and general prejudice-related content in comics, on top of how he was helping black kids who were very much in distress and needed help considering how it was the era of Jim Crow, as well as taking more time to analyze positive race-related portrayals in comics, not just Judgment Day, but also comics such as Interfaith’s Challenger and Jesse Owens, Joe Louis, and Jackie Robinson comics, then I’m sure far less comic fans would be making attacks of condemnation against him on the accusation that he ruined comics for all time.

Instead, I think he let his emotions control him more as opposed to logic, and was reactionary and concerned for kids to the point of perhaps even self-justifying the fabrication of evidence and piling himself with more and more topics he really wasn’t prepared to professionally talk about, such as the portrayal of women in comics and the idea that horror comics generally traumatize kids, all in the name of the greater good.

Even with the understanding that he was otherwise right to go against racist-based portrayals in comics, regardless of the original intent of those portrayals, it’s still a shame that he basically made a fool of himself in spite of whatever genuinely good intentions he had in the beginning, because had he simply gone about it less overly-defensive and more open-minded, then I think that he, and perhaps many of the protective parents listening to him, would have helped result in the comic book industry playing out very differently. I guess we’ll never know though.

Edited September 21, 2020 by Electricmastro

[Mr. Lady Luck]

Without SOTI, there would be no code.

Without code, there would be no pre-code.

Without pre-code, this forum would be filled with lost souls.

Give thanks to Mr. Wertham.

[sfcityduck]

10 minutes ago, Electricmastro said:

perhaps even self-justifying the fabrication of evidence and piling himself with more and more topics he really wasn’t prepared to professionally talk about, such as the portrayal of women in comics and the idea that horror comics generally traumatize kids, all in the name of the greater good.

 

When it comes to how he portrayed the contents of comics, I don't there can be much dispute that much of the comic content he described has proven to be an accurate description.  SOTIcollector has found many comics matching descriptions Wertham made of comic content without identifying the title.  

There's also no doubt that the portrayal of women in comics during the late 1940s and 1950s are not the portrayals a father would want to show his daughter today.  

Where he went wrong was in his analysis of the impact of abhorrent content on kids.  He fell prey to the classic mistake of reasoning by analogy instead of relying upon scientific analysis.  He may not have recognized his error.  It was less falsification, than logical fallacy.  Sadly, that kind of anti-scientific reasoning is still used by many good, but misguided people, today.  So I don't think there is much need to demonize Wertham.  

[sfcityduck]

12 minutes ago, Mr. Lady Luck said:

Without SOTI, there would be no code.

 

I'm not sure that's true.  Wertham jumped on a bus in motion.  He got some great press for his book and a few articles, but there were probably others who might have had the same impact in the dark days of the 1950s when censorship was on the rise in a lot of areas and government was trending towards authoritarianism in important areas.  After all, the comic publishers adopted other "codes" before the CCA. 

[catman76]

Wertham didn't have that much affect at all really, only for very brief time and then comic books were back to selling millions per issue again and fine and 99 percent of kids didn't care. People seem to forget that no adults cared about this back then or thought it was a bad thing that comics were under attack. Comic books were for kids and kids didn't even know about the code or cared. They just wanted some comics and comics never went away. Really the best thing to come out of it all was those few pissed off kids that loved ECs and stuff and saw them be killed off and then in the late 60s started the underground comics movement that changed everything.

[Electricmastro]

44 minutes ago, catman76 said:

Wertham didn't have that much affect at all really, only for very brief time and then comic books were back to selling millions per issue again and fine and 99 percent of kids didn't care. People seem to forget that no adults cared about this back then or thought it was a bad thing that comics were under attack. Comic books were for kids and kids didn't even know about the code or cared. They just wanted some comics and comics never went away. Really the best thing to come out of it all was those few pissed off kids that loved ECs and stuff and saw them be killed off and then in the late 60s started the underground comics movement that changed everything.

As well perhaps many publishers publishing comics beyond 1955 with less horror and more mystery also focusing more on plot, seeing as how anthology shows like The Twilight Zone from 1959 didn’t need things like scantily clad sex appeal and gore to be interesting, with the sort of more extreme horror being available in traditional magazines from what I understand.

[Cat-Man_America]

Interesting responses from folks.  Some points I agree with, others not so much.  

7 hours ago, catman76 said:

Wertham didn't have that much affect at all really, only for very brief time and then comic books were back to selling millions per issue again and fine and 99 percent of kids didn't care. People seem to forget that no adults cared about this back then or thought it was a bad thing that comics were under attack. Comic books were for kids and kids didn't even know about the code or cared. They just wanted some comics and comics never went away. Really the best thing to come out of it all was those few pissed off kids that loved ECs and stuff and saw them be killed off and then in the late 60s started the underground comics movement that changed everything.

While Wertham can't be held totally at fault for damage his book caused to the comics industry, I'll take issue with the viewpoint that no damage was done.  Without question, he was partially liable.  EC comics was quite literally scapegoated into submission by the sub-committee hearings and Wertham's biases.  The CCA was a brokered solution to paranoid overreaction.  Many publishers threw in the towel after the CCA imposed draconian regulations that were too difficult to satisfy on a tight deadline schedule and budget.  

Comics in the 40's and early 50's had a much broader spectrum of readership than kids.  While younger readers were the primary demographic, throughout WWII and the post-war period comics had broad appeal and variety.  With the imposed comics code variety fell and the number of comics was whittled down to a handful of publishers who could meet the CCA's rigorous standards.  One could argue that eventually SA comics benefited from a resurgence of new superheroes and the advent of continued storylines, but the survivors also benefitted from a gradual loosening of the standards and having less competition on the spinner racks.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Cat-Man_America
Judicious editing and good ale.

[Cat-Man_America]

An interesting article worth reading is partially captured (so as to not overstep the copyrighted source) in the spoiler below.  It critiques Wertham's research methods...

Spoiler

 

Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics

By Dave Itzkoff

• Feb. 19, 2013
• •  
  • For all the colorful adversaries that comic books have yielded, perhaps no figure in the history of that industry is as vilified as Dr. Fredric Wertham. 

Wertham, a German-born American psychiatrist, stirred a national furor and helped create a blueprint for contemporary cultural panics in 1954 with the publication of his book “Seduction of the Innocent,” which attacked comic books for corrupting the minds of young readers. 

While the findings of Wertham (who died in 1981) have long been questioned by the comics industry and its advocates, a recent study of the materials he used to write “Seduction of the Innocent” suggests that Wertham misrepresented his research and falsified his results.

Carol L. Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, reviewed Wertham’s papers, housed in the Library of Congress, starting at the end of 2010, shortly after they were made available to the public.

In a new article in Information & Culture: A Journal of History, Dr. Tilley offers numerous examples in which she says Wertham “manipulated, overstated, compromised and fabricated evidence,” particularly in the interviews he conducted with his young subjects.

Drawing from his own clinical research and pointed interpretations of comic-book story lines, Wertham argued in the book that comics were harming American children, leading them to juvenile delinquency and to lives of violence, drugs and crime.

“Seduction of the Innocent” was released to a public already teeming with anti-comics sentiment, and Wertham was embraced by millions of citizens who feared for America’s moral sanctity; he even testified in televised hearings.

Yet according to Dr. Tilley, he may have exaggerated the number of youths he worked with at the low-cost mental-health clinic he established in Harlem, who might have totaled in the hundreds instead of the “many thousands” he claimed. Dr. Tilley said he misstated their ages, combined quotations taken from many children to appear as if they came from one speaker and attributed remarks said by a single speaker to larger groups.

Other examples show how Wertham omitted extenuating circumstances in the lives of his patients, who often came from families marred by violence and substance abuse, or invented details outright.

In “Seduction of the Innocent” Wertham discusses a 7-year-old boy, Edward, who he says has been having nightmares after reading Blue Beetle comics, about a hero who supposedly “changes into a beetle.” (“Kafka for the kiddies!” Wertham wrote.) 

But, according to Dr. Tilley’s research, Wertham wrote in his original case notes on Edward, “Boy says he does not remember anything about the nightmares.” And the Blue Beetle character does not transform into an insect in the comic. 

Elsewhere in the book Wertham argues that the superheroes Batman and Robin represent “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together,” and cited a young gay man who says that he put himself “in the position of Robin” and “did want to have relations with Batman.” 

But in Wertham’s original notes, Dr. Tilley writes, these quotations actually come from two young men, ages 16 and 17, who were in a sexual relationship with each other, and who told Wertham they were more likely to fantasize about heroes like Tarzan or the Sub-Mariner, rather than Batman and Robin. 

Dr. Tilley said in a telephone interview that she had initially reviewed Wertham’s papers looking for correspondence he might have had with educators and librarians of his day.

 

The entire article can be read here...

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/books/flaws-found-in-fredric-werthams-comic-book-studies.html

 

 

 

Edited September 22, 2020 by Cat-Man_America

[Cat-Man_America]

For those interested, here’s Frddie’s Early 70’s take on fanzines and thegrowing fan culture...

---

Edited September 22, 2020 by Cat-Man_America

[Randall Dowling]

[Larryw7]

Wertham was a sensationalist. He wrote some of the most violent and lurid books purportedly to "educate" the public, but most of it was garbage that made horror comics look like Romper Room. I think he himself had some issues, and he may have been fascinated with all of the gore and violence in some of the comics.

I read an anecdote (from where I don't remember) about Milt Canniff debating Wertham on a radio show about comics. Canniff said when they were done doing the show, Wertham asked Caniff to make a sketch of the Dragon Lady for him. "What a con artist", Caniff thought to himself.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Larryw7

[GreatCaesarsGhost]

10 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

An interesting article worth reading is partially captured (so as to not overstep the copyrighted source) in the spoiler below.  It critiques Wertham's research methods...

  Reveal hidden contents

 

Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics

By Dave Itzkoff

• Feb. 19, 2013
• •  
  • For all the colorful adversaries that comic books have yielded, perhaps no figure in the history of that industry is as vilified as Dr. Fredric Wertham. 

Wertham, a German-born American psychiatrist, stirred a national furor and helped create a blueprint for contemporary cultural panics in 1954 with the publication of his book “Seduction of the Innocent,” which attacked comic books for corrupting the minds of young readers. 

While the findings of Wertham (who died in 1981) have long been questioned by the comics industry and its advocates, a recent study of the materials he used to write “Seduction of the Innocent” suggests that Wertham misrepresented his research and falsified his results.

Carol L. Tilley, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, reviewed Wertham’s papers, housed in the Library of Congress, starting at the end of 2010, shortly after they were made available to the public.

In a new article in Information & Culture: A Journal of History, Dr. Tilley offers numerous examples in which she says Wertham “manipulated, overstated, compromised and fabricated evidence,” particularly in the interviews he conducted with his young subjects.

Drawing from his own clinical research and pointed interpretations of comic-book story lines, Wertham argued in the book that comics were harming American children, leading them to juvenile delinquency and to lives of violence, drugs and crime.

“Seduction of the Innocent” was released to a public already teeming with anti-comics sentiment, and Wertham was embraced by millions of citizens who feared for America’s moral sanctity; he even testified in televised hearings.

Yet according to Dr. Tilley, he may have exaggerated the number of youths he worked with at the low-cost mental-health clinic he established in Harlem, who might have totaled in the hundreds instead of the “many thousands” he claimed. Dr. Tilley said he misstated their ages, combined quotations taken from many children to appear as if they came from one speaker and attributed remarks said by a single speaker to larger groups.

Other examples show how Wertham omitted extenuating circumstances in the lives of his patients, who often came from families marred by violence and substance abuse, or invented details outright.

In “Seduction of the Innocent” Wertham discusses a 7-year-old boy, Edward, who he says has been having nightmares after reading Blue Beetle comics, about a hero who supposedly “changes into a beetle.” (“Kafka for the kiddies!” Wertham wrote.) 

But, according to Dr. Tilley’s research, Wertham wrote in his original case notes on Edward, “Boy says he does not remember anything about the nightmares.” And the Blue Beetle character does not transform into an insect in the comic. 

Elsewhere in the book Wertham argues that the superheroes Batman and Robin represent “a wish dream of two homosexuals living together,” and cited a young gay man who says that he put himself “in the position of Robin” and “did want to have relations with Batman.” 

But in Wertham’s original notes, Dr. Tilley writes, these quotations actually come from two young men, ages 16 and 17, who were in a sexual relationship with each other, and who told Wertham they were more likely to fantasize about heroes like Tarzan or the Sub-Mariner, rather than Batman and Robin. 

Dr. Tilley said in a telephone interview that she had initially reviewed Wertham’s papers looking for correspondence he might have had with educators and librarians of his day.

 

The entire article can be read here...

https://www.nytimes.com/2013/02/20/books/flaws-found-in-fredric-werthams-comic-book-studies.html

 

 

 

Good article. Wertham was nothing but a shock jock in a lab coat who found footing with the weak minded

[Electricmastro]

17 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

Interesting responses from folks.  Some points I agree with, others not so much.  

While Wertham can't be held totally at fault for damage his book caused to the comics industry, I'll take issue with the viewpoint that no damage was done.  Without question, he was partially liable.  EC comics was quite literally scapegoated into submission by the sub-committee hearings and Wertham's biases.  The CCA was a brokered solution to paranoid overreaction.  Many publishers threw in the towel after the CCA imposed draconian regulations that were too difficult to satisfy on a tight deadline schedule and budget.  

Comics in the 40's and early 50's had a much broader spectrum of readership than kids.  While younger readers were the primary demographic, throughout WWII and the post-war period comics had broad appeal and variety.  With the imposed comics code variety fell and the number of comics was whittled down to a handful of publishers who could meet the CCA's rigorous standards.  One could argue that eventually SA comics benefited from a resurgence of new superheroes and the advent of continued storylines, but the survivors also benefitted from a gradual loosening of the standards and having less competition on the spinner racks.

Actually, is there any compelling reason why they couldn’t have just gone with a rating/label system instead publishers censoring themselves just to keep others quiet and still make more money? At the end of the day, the publishers are the bosses and the parents, Wertham, and priests aren’t, and surely the rest of the public, as well as the Senate, would have understood enough to have a proper ratings system in place seeing as how movie gained ratings systems in the 60s which replaces the Hays Code, right?

Fox even took the route of having adults only labels on their publications back in 1948, but seemed to have been later dropped for whatever reason.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Electricmastro

[Cat-Man_America]

6 hours ago, Electricmastro said:

Actually, is there any compelling reason why they couldn’t have just gone with a rating/label system instead publishers censoring themselves just to keep others quiet and still make more money? At the end of the day, the publishers are the bosses and the parents, Wertham, and priests aren’t, and surely the rest of the public, as well as the Senate, would have understood enough to have a proper ratings system in place seeing as how movie gained ratings systems in the 60s which replaces the Hays Code, right?

Fox even took the route of having adults only labels on their publications back in 1948, but seemed to have been later dropped for whatever reason.

There was propaganda fueled paranoia permeating the public mind in the early 1950’s.  The “Red Scare” was at it’s height and scapegoating anything perceived as ideologically progressive was typical.  Any viewpoint which questioned government authority was attacked as unAmerican by those who held power in Washington.  The Senate sub-committee hearings on comics fits under the broader umbrella of McCarthyism when viewed in the context of the time.  I’m neither suggesting nor implying any contemporary allegorical rationale that might place at risk further analysis and discussion of Fredric Wertham’s legacy.

As for a rating system, that would’ve involved too much common sense reasoning, not to mention across the board state/local buy-in and Distributer participation.  In the 50’s it was much easier for Congress to bully and shame publishers into taking action, self-preservation outweighing the risks and expense of legal confrontation.  I distinctly remember gossip around MAD magazine being targeted as communist propaganda in the late fifties.  This probably carried over from EC being singled out in the Congressional sub-committee looking at comics and juvenile delinquency, but the exponential growth and popularity of social satire magazines may have played into this viewpoint as well.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Cat-Man_America

[Electricmastro]

31 minutes ago, Cat-Man_America said:

There was a propaganda fueled paranoia permeating the public mind in the early 1950’s.  The “Red Scare” was at it’s height and scapegoating anything perceived as ideologically progressive was typical.  Any viewpoint which questioned government authority was attacked as unAmerican by those who held power in Washington.  The Senate sub-committee hearings on comics fits under the broader umbrella of McCarthyism when viewed in the context of the time.  I’m neither suggesting nor implying any contemporary allegorical rationale that might place at risk further analysis and discussion of Fredric Wertham’s legacy.

As for a rating system, that would’ve involved too much common sense reasoning, not to mention across the board state/local buy-in and Distributer participation.  In the 50’s it was much easier for Congress to bully and shame publishers into taking action, self-preservation outweighing the risks and expense of legal confrontation.  I distinctly remember gossip around MAD magazine being targeted as communist propaganda in the late fifties.  This probably carried over from EC being singled out in the Congressional sub-committee looking at comics and juvenile delinquency, but the exponential growth and popularity of social satire magazines may have played into this viewpoint as well.

I suppose it didn’t help, as I recall, that EC published quite a number of stories that called out, or at least implied, the government as un-American, or just being bad in general if nothing else, as I don’t think it just simply has to do with EC being more gory, but them also writing their social issues and politics in a way that some may more consciously get the impression that they’re giving out attacks of shame against the government, if not, the American people regardless of the original intent of the writers themselves, and goes beyond simply framing it as dumb adults just being scared of delinquency. It sounds extreme, but as you were saying in regards to paranoia, the Red Scare, as well as the fear of communist spies and the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War, then I suppose it also fits in with the general extremity of the times, whereas publishers such as Ace weren’t targeted as much despite having arguably just as gruesome content otherwise.

Edited September 22, 2020 by Electricmastro

[Cat-Man_America]

2 hours ago, Electricmastro said:

I suppose it didn’t help, as I recall, that EC published quite a number of stories that called out, or at least implied, the government as un-American, or just being bad in general if nothing else, as I don’t think it just simply has to do with EC being more gory, but them also writing their social issues and politics in a way that some may more consciously get the impression that they’re giving out attacks of shame against the government, if not, the American people regardless of the original intent of the writers themselves, and goes beyond simply framing it as dumb adults just being scared of delinquency. It sounds extreme, but as you were saying in regards to paranoia, the Red Scare, as well as the fear of communist spies and the threat of nuclear war during the Cold War, then I suppose it also fits in with the general extremity of the times, whereas publishers such as Ace weren’t targeted as much despite having arguably just as gruesome content otherwise.

Points taken.  The reason EC was targeted more than say Ace ...or even Atlas for that matter, which arguably had the largest number of horror comics on the market at the time... is the fact that EC was highly popular especially with older readers.  EC produced the highest quality, most consistently mature, innovative comics with many of the best artists in comics publishing.  EC may not have been the biggest dog in the pack, but they were a blue ribbon show stopper.

Wertham was trying to sell a controversial book and make a name for himself.  I'm not going to suggest that he didn't have noble intentions to curb the perceived threat of rampant juvenile delinquency, but he picked an easy target and recklessly exploited it. Youth culture is often seen as a generational threat.  Add to that the Cold War concerns over Communist influence and it becomes a volatile mix of exploitable paranoia. What SOTI played into was fear, and FW used a generational dog-whistle to achieve maximum attention.  Imagine a less benign version of Harold Hill convincing the good citizens of River City that their children are at grave risk and only he can save them from the moral depravity he envisioned.   

[Electricmastro]

4 hours ago, Cat-Man_America said:

Points taken.  The reason EC was targeted more than say Ace ...or even Atlas for that matter, which arguably had the largest number of horror comics on the market at the time... is the fact that EC was highly popular especially with older readers.  EC produced the highest quality, most consistently mature, innovative comics with many of the best artists in comics publishing.  EC may not have been the biggest dog in the pack, but they were a blue ribbon show stopper.

Wertham was trying to sell a controversial book and make a name for himself.  I'm not going to suggest that he didn't have noble intentions to curb the perceived threat of rampant juvenile delinquency, but he picked an easy target and recklessly exploited it. Youth culture is often seen as a generational threat.  Add to that the Cold War concerns over Communist influence and it becomes a volatile mix of exploitable paranoia. What SOTI played into was fear, and FW used a generational dog-whistle to achieve maximum attention.  Imagine a less benign version of Harold Hill convincing the good citizens of River City that their children are at grave risk and only he can save them from the moral depravity he envisioned.   

I suspect there were politicians who bothered to take a closer look at EC at all that took more notice of the aforementioned material that seemingly took a stand against the American government itself more than the actual horror, and used Wertham as a sort of scapegoat link, regardless of whatever point he made, in agreeing they want to do something about horror comics so as to get more parents and people agreeing with Wertham in general on their side with the real agenda of taking down publishers they perceive to be discrediting American industry.

It goes back to how Harvey Comics was also targeted by the Senate, because of how Senator Capehart accused Sad Sack Goes Home as being Socialist propaganda:

Edited September 23, 2020 by Electricmastro

[aardvark88]

On 9/21/2020 at 3:28 PM, Electricmastro said:

 seeing as how anthology shows like The Twilight Zone from 1959 didn’t need things like scantily clad sex appeal and gore to be interesting, with the sort of more extreme horror being available in traditional magazines from what I understand.

Scantily clad ladies read horror comics too. Pic courtesy of Bob Beerbohm's fb page.

[aardvark88]

On 9/21/2020 at 4:19 PM, Cat-Man_America said:

While Wertham can't be held totally at fault for damage his book caused to the comics industry, I'll take issue with the viewpoint that no damage was done.  Without question, he was partially liable.  EC comics was quite literally scapegoated into submission by the sub-committee hearings and Wertham's biases.  The CCA was a brokered solution to paranoid overreaction.

 

Gather all ye sinful comics ready for another book burning this weekend. Pic courtesy of Bob Beerbohm's fb page.