BW Media Spotlight

Normally, Chapter By Chapter is me reading a fictional book one chapter at a time to study each part of the story. In this special review series however we are looking at Seduction Of The Innocent, a non-fiction book as the writer, Dr. Fredric Wertham, tries to make the case that comics were a bad thing for kids in the 1950s. The book had a huge impact on the comic industry and fans. We will examine what he is saying not exclusively by today’s standards, but the time in which the book was made to see where Wertham was right, and where he was horribly wrong.

 

Methods of Examination

“And then one should search… for connections, conditions and situations that have acted at once or slowly, and with which perhaps the origin of the abnormal deviation may be justifiably linked… Moreover, it is necessary to understand why these conditions and situations have brought about such results in the patient, when in another person they would occur without the slighest effect; and furthermore, why they all lead in the case of one person to just such an abnormal complex, while in another to a totally different one.”
– Pavlov

A little perspective here. I am not naive enough to say that media has zero effect on people, especially on young minds just learning the world. I’ve heard of criminals getting ideas from movies like Money Train and here in Connecticut there was a big story about some kid setting himself on fire after watching MTV’s Jackass and apparently thinking heavy padding was all he needed. And this was someone in his late teens if memory serves. Positive or negative, intentional or otherwise, media does alter our kids’ perception of the world. If it didn’t “edutainment” shows and games would be worthless and PSA’s would be a waste of time.

My question while doing this however is asking whether or not Wertham is putting too much emphasis on comics as the sole source of these supposedly new aggressive behaviors. Comic books were still relatively new as a medium and like video games when they started telling stories and doing things adults didn’t grow up with, they were treated as dangerous. We saw last week how there was a bit of snobbery when it came to comics and we’ll be seeing more of that this week. The main focus however is on the series of experiments he performed to ascertain how dangerous comics are. He says he came from this in an unbiased way but if the previous chapters have told us anything is that he was already against comics from the start.

Chapter 3: The Road To The Child

Read tonight’s chapter with the above link and do your own research before looking into his comments.

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