Blinking At TV Violence No Answer,” the New Zealand Herald thundered, adding, “Policy on TV Violence Close”. The ever-reliable MP Sue Kedgley’s contribution was “Violence on TV needs fixing pronto.” Such were responses to a report earlier this year, which found the level of TV violence higher than did the last one back in 1995. Parents are fretting and Broadcasting Minister Steve Maharey is weighing up whether the Broadcasting Standards Authority should take a tougher line or play a greater educative role. We’ve come a long way, right?
But what about the headlines “The Cult of Violence Persists”, “Is This the End?”, “What Parents Don’t Know”. As current as they sound, these come from the 1950s, before TV even existed here. Then, pulps and comics were the whipping boys of choice and New Zealand’s sonorously named Oswald Mazengarb was appointed chair of a committee to look into “Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents”, prompted in part by frightful tales of “heavy petting in the Hutt Valley”.
Some of the cheap-looking publications in his sights had marvellous titles like Justice Traps the Guilty, Crime Does Not Pay, The Vault of Horror and Crypt of Terror. In both the US and New Zealand, parents were alerted to a lurking danger to youth by one voice in particular, New York psychiatrist Frederick Wertham. He expanded an article entitled “What Parents Don’t Know About Comic Books” into a book, Seduction of the Innocent, in 1954.
Vividly illustrated by panels taken out of context, Wertham’s book shocked Mom and Pop with tales of graphic horror in “something meant for kiddies” (one of his many assumptions). It zoomed up the bestseller charts before you could say, “Look at his tongue! It’s been ripped out!” (a speech bubble from one of Wertham’s gorier illustrations).
A televised US Senate committee considered this timely issue. It was addressed by publisher Bill Gaines, whose EC Comics included many of the best (and most graphic) horror, suspense, war and science fiction comics. He mounted a spirited defence, but to no avail.
Comics couldn’t be banned (irritatingly, the US Constitution wouldn’t allow that), but most comics publishers capitulated to the self-regulatory Comics Magazine Association of America. The CMAA drew up a code that included stringent prohibitions against violence, not frightening the horses, etc, also stating that “all lurid, unsavoury, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated”.
Publishers were forced to drop the words “terror”, “horror”, etc, from their covers and since Gaines’s titles used such words liberally, all had to go. Madness reigned. In one inspired instance, the CMAA insisted on the drops of sweat on a character’s brow being erased. Not so much inspiration as perspiration? Please yourself.
Back in New Zealand, a copy of the Mazengarb Report landed on every breakfast table. Warnings about the mind-rotting dangers of comics and pulp writers like Mickey Spillane simply confirmed what everyone “knew”. Something bad was in the postwar water: something called popular culture.
Mazengarb gave rise to the Indecent Publications Amendment Act, 1954, that allowed police to swoop on dairies and the like, confiscating publications deemed a danger. Publishers of The Lone Ranger comic were nonplussed when, enquiring about the banning of the squeaky clean defender of justice, it was explained that it was illegal to wear a mask in New Zealand.
Rugrats, Pokemon and Woody Woodpecker are now rated according to “the highest incidence of violence”. Fifty years ago, Wertham had a bee in his bonnet about what he called “Crime Comics”, which could, apparently, turn a decent kid into a juvenile delinquent. These publications could be defined as any comic where a crime was committed. If Bugs Bunny steals a carrot from Elmer Fudd, then that makes Bugs Bunny a crime comic. But there was worse. Wertham lambasted role models Batman and Robin as closet gays and Wonder Woman as an “unfeminine” lesbian.
Pertinently, the Senate committee pronounced: “Authorities agree that the majority of comic books are as harmless as soda pop.” The response of the comic-banners in the 50s and those in the current TV “debate” seems to be depressingly similar. Pop culture, harmless or bad, is never good.
And though no one believes Wertham’s absurd propositions today, it’s worth remembering that anti-comics hysteria prevailed in the 50s. Here, The Lone Ranger bit the dust; in the US Bill Gaines turned his last comic, Mad, into a magazine and became a millionaire. After the CMAA’s code, comics became bland and the superheroes were newly refurbished and firmly heterosexual. Batman smoked a pipe and even had a – harrumph – girlfriend!
Of the 31 specific prohibitions in the code, my favourite is: “Scenes dealing with instruments associated with … cannibalism are prohibited.” What precisely were these instruments do you think? Knives and forks?