It seems Fredric Wertham, author of the 1954 Pearl Clutching Time's Bestseller "Seduction of the Innocent" fudged his evidence. This revelation is out in the latests issue of Information and Culture: A Journal of History after a researcher Carol Tilley did some digging around when Wertham's personal archives were released in 2010 from the Library of Congress (which is good, but raises some questions as to why it took so long to get all of this released). It seems the man who led the charge against comics lied about a lot of things such as names, dates, and quotes. Lovely.
I've covered Wertham and his fantastically alarmist book before as they are an enormous turning point in the history of comics. As those in comics know, Wertham was the guy who pushed America into mass-hysteria mode about comics turning pure innocent lambkins into crime preforming ruffians and gays, or fabulously gay ruffians. He had the book, which was all anecdotal evidence he had gathered firsthand, however he also was apart of televised Congressional hearings on Juvenile Delinquency that were popular with all of the media looking for a good story to run and the concerned housewives looking for something to be worried about back in the day. The reaction was so great to Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent that we exhibited some really wonderful blind fear that among other things led to the mass burning of books, putting comics on trial, and eventually the creation of the now defunct Comics Code Authority. Which very nearly killed the comics industry, crippled it for many years, and created many false notions that the industry still fights against to this very day.
Since Wertham forged a war based on lies, successfully created sheeple strife, and very nearly exterminated an entire industry; I think we can safely assume he was secretly Senator Palpatine. I think we can also assume he was a giant douche canoe and someone really needs to add a second headstone to his grave that reads "Fredric Wertham: Lair, Lair, Pants On Fire".
I wish this would be used as a lesson that blaming media and the industries behind them for turning children into horrible people is inherently flawed and steeped in agenda. However this is America, and we love us some scapegoats. Especially instead of, oh, I dunno, actually owning up to the fact we may be crappy at raising kids.
Art tomorrow, I promise.
No comments:
Post a Comment