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This volume reprints the testimony before the Senate Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency on April 21st and 22nd and June 4th of 1954 in the committee’s focus on comic books. The subcommittee, which served under the Committee on the Judiciary, set out to investigate “the problem of horror and crime comic books” which they defined as “pamphlets illustrating stories depicting crimes or dealing with horror and sadism” (pg. 1). The chairman stated that “more than a billion comic books” were sold in the U.S. every year and so they were limiting their investigation (pg. 1). Addressing censorship, the Chairman said, “I wish to state emphatically that freedom of the press is not at issue in this investigation. The members of this Senate subcommittee…as well as myself as chairman, are fully aware of the long, hard, bitter fight that has been waged to achieve and preserve the freedom of the press” (pg. 1). Most of the testimony consists of examinations of various crime and horror books as well as the revelation that publishers pressured newsvendors to purchase comics in bulk, similar to the block booking on the motion picture industry. The testimony of Fredric Wertham and William M. Gains, publisher of Entertaining Comics Group, proved most pertinent to the public debate about comics. Wertham began his statement with a recitation of his professional credentials and publications. He claimed that his opinion was “based on clinical investigations carried out not by [him] alone, but with the help of a group of associates, psychiatrists, child psychiatrists, psychoanalysts, social workers, psychiatric social workers, remedial reading teachers, probation officers, and others” (pg. 81). Most of the witnesses to testify about discussed delinquency spoke of violence against persons or property, but Wertham includes “offenses connected with sex” and “childhood prostitution” (pg. 83). Wertham backpedaled from his earlier vitriol to say that comics were a contributing factor and not the cause of delinquency. He claims that the greatest harm from comics is that “they cause a great deal of ethical confusion” (pg. 85). He claims that this had led one New York school to witness violence among its male students and that “in 1 year 26 girls became pregnant” (pg. 85). When detailing other environmental factors that contribute to delinquency besides comics, Wertham said the factors were “not necessarily the homelife, not necessarily the much-blamed mother, but there are many other things” (pg. 87). Wertham argues that he does not support censorship while accusing comic book publishers of censoring parents’ access to information about the comics and their impact (pg. 92). Wertham accused the comics of promoting race hatred. When Gaines gave testimony, he cited the same comic as one his company published that confronted racism by showing its ugly side. Gaines said, “This is one of the most brilliantly written stories that I have ever had the pleasure to publish. I was very proud of it, and to find it being used in such a nefarious way made me quite angry” (pg. 99). Unfortunately, Gaines soon lost the moral high ground when he said, “My only limits are the bounds of good taste, what I consider good taste” (pg. 103). Senator Kefauver asked if he considered an image that portrayed a woman’s severed head was in good taste, to which he responded, “Yes sir; I do, for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding the head a little higher so that the neck could be seen dripping blood from it and moving the body over a little further so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody” (pg. 103). This exchange earned Gaines, and the industry as a whole, the public’s ire. In the end, the subcommittee Chairman concluded “that any action on the part of the publishers of crime and horror comic books, or upon the part of distributors, wholesalers, or dealers with reference to these materials which will tend to eliminate from production and sale, shall receive the acclaim of my colleagues and myself” (pg. 310).… (más)
 
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DarthDeverell | Nov 15, 2016 |

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Obras
36
Miembros
67
Popularidad
#256,179
Valoración
½ 3.5
Reseñas
1
ISBNs
8

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