Up to the beginning of the comic-book era there were hardly any serious crimes such as murder by children under twelve. Yet there was a world war and a long depression. So we adults who permit comic books are accessories. Speaking of just such crimes, however, a Municipal Court judge defends crime comics in Parents' Magazine with these three standard hypocritical arguments: "First of all, censorship would be worse"; "second, there is danger in overprotecting our children"; third, "violence and brutality are a part of the pattern of our lives."
It is becoming more and more apparent that what all delinquent children have in common is unprotectedness. I have found in every delinquent child that at one time or another he had insufficient protection. That implies not only material things, but social and psychological influences. Of course, children get hurt at home and by their parents. But the time when children in the mass are most defenseless, when they are most susceptible to influences from society at large, is in their leisure hours. And children's leisure is on the market.
Nobody knows exactly how many juveniles under twenty-one commit murder in the United States. But it is two or three a day. According to Federal statistics in 1948, about one in every eight persons arrested was a minor. The Federal Government does not have accurate statistics as to the number of homicides committed by children in the pre-adolescent and pre-teen group.
How unprotected children are is shown by the glib use of the word teen-ager in talk about juvenile delinquency, putting into one category such different age groups as that of a boy of thirteen and that of a young man of nineteen. One of the best-informed members of the judiciary, Judge Samuel Leibowitz, pointed out in a paper on "Crime and the Community" that "the defendants in crimes of violence in recent years are getting younger and younger, and nowadays they include mere children who should be in knee pants - at the age when in former years they would have come into contact with the law only for swiping apples or upsetting pushcarts."
A New York magistrate stated in open court that "it is fantastic the way mere children are being brought into court." After having published over the years innumerable optimistic handouts from interested public and private agencies, the New York Times said in 1953: "It is difficult to think of children as burglars, gangsters, drug addicts or murderers. Such has become the reality, however."
Juvenile delinquency is not a thing in itself. It can be studied only in relation to all kinds of other child behavior. And it is a mass phenomenon which cannot be fully comprehended with methods of individual psychology alone. Children do not become delinquents; they commit delinquencies. The delinquency of a child is not a disease; it is a symptom, individually and socially. You cannot understand or remedy a social phenomenon like delinquency by redefining it simply as an individual emotional disorder.
It is on the basis of such an approach, however, that important mass influences on the child's mind have for years been completely overlooked. And it was precisely in this way that the comic-book industry could take over a large part of the time, the minds and the money of children from five to sixteen.
When I first made known the results of my studies about comic books, most people, including psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, psychologists, teachers and judges, had paid no attention to their effects on children. A billion times a year an American child sits down to pore over a comic book. What is the attraction?
As late as 1951 a liberal magazine, The Reporter, carried an article on "The Comic Book Industry" in which it gave what it thought was the answer: Children are charmed by comic books because in them they can follow "the fortunes of cowhands and mice."
That is how we deceive ourselves and others. "Cowhands" do occur in Western comics; but Western comics are mostly just crime comic books in a Western setting. Animal comics may feature "mice"; but animal comics are only a small part and are not habit-forming.
The average parent has no idea that every imaginable crime is described in detail in comic books. That is their main stock in trade. When questioned more closely even experts who have defended the industry did not know what an endless variety of crimes is described in detail in story after story, picture after picture. If one were to set out to show children how to steal, rob, lie, cheat, assault and break into houses, no better method could be devised.
It is of course easy and natural for the child to translate these crimes into a minor key:
stealing from a candy store instead of breaking into a bank
stabbing and hurting a little girl with a sharp pen if a knife is not handy
beating and threatening younger children, following the Superman formula of winning by force
Fred’s Novel Idea
It has now become de rigueur to tell tales about American Fascists in books, on TV and in movies and music, now that absolutism has indeed come to America. And just like Germany in the spring of 1933, there’s been little if any resistance. These smug motherfuckers actually made it look easy. And who’s to blame for this? It’s never the guy you suspect. (Been watching a lot of 1930s Charlie Chan movies lately. Maybe TOO many?)
There’s obviously not much interest in this book on Substack… but I’ll keep adding chapters in the fullness of time.
And this annotated version of SOTI hasn’t fared much better on Substack
Which baffles me. I should note that when I first took on the Wertham persona, it was as an in-joke for the delectation of a Golden/Silver Age discussion group in the 1990s which included pros like Dave Gibbons. Since we were mostly boomers, I think they got the irony (for the most part) so I kept it going with the SOTI website in 2000. I even owned the domain name - briefly.
On THIS platform, I just don't think intolerant or mis/disinformed millennials are into that sort of thing... and disdain or ignore EVERYTHING I post here. It's been like that for quite a while.
One of Comicdom's Most (In)famous Covers, 'Black Cat Mystery' No. 50, Scares Up a Record $840,000 at Heritage Auctions
Fred’s Video Collection
I’ve completely lost track of the videos I’ve showcased here, so please forgive any reruns. I’ll try to publish them in some kind of order from now on. This one is just a fake sitcom I created (with the 1950s-ish title Stop the Presses!) using clips from an obscure Marilyn Monroe movie (with Alan Hale Jr.) and a 1950s laff trak. (Yeah, they actually sounded different back then.)