Seduction of the Innocent II
His data is anecdotal and descriptive, but so is the evidence in virtually every study of fandom that I’ve read, and that’s in part what this is — how young crime-comic fans read and “use” crime comics. He describes gay readings of Batman & Robin, and lesbian readings of Wonder Woman and Black Cat, which sounds like any number of studies published today. He reports what kids say they learn from comics and how they use them in various social and psychological ways; hello, cultural studies. He compares comic-book content to other crime novels and to the works of de Sade and Sacher-Masoch, which I’ve seen done in lit-crit studies. He points out differences between comic-book “classics” and the original classics they’re interpreting. He analyzes the ads running in the comics and what they’re telling kids (you’re too skinny/fat/flat-chested, etc.), a kind of early content analysis. He’s horrified by sexist and racist depictions in the comics, and U.S. nationalistic propaganda in comics, which gets a thumbs-up from me (Superdickery has a gallery of racist comic-book illos). He critiques government policies that attack juvenile delinquents but ignore (what he thinks are) the causes of juvenile delinquency. He also critiques comic-book publishers’ block-distribution policies, which forced booksellers to accept comic-book shipments with certain magazines. And he acknowledges that there are many other effects on kids, although he thinks crime comic books are pervasively bad.
So, in the end, I have to say that while Seduction is unabashedly biased, and in places pretty amusing, and that today he’d need to show much more rigorous documentation, he wasn’t the nutcase so many people have described him as, and his work actually addressed a lot of issues that have since been investigated in more depth. The Comics Code that arose as a result of his book was rather silly (and, Wertham thought, inadequate), but so are most forms of censorship. Still, I’m so photocopying Chapter VII, “I want to be a Sex Maniac!”: Comic Books and the Psycho-Sexual Development of Children. It’s got all the fun stuff in it.
drupagliassotti @ June 19, 2007