QAA Podcast - Trickle Down Episode 19: Graphic Corruption (Sample)

Episode Date: March 9, 2024

In the 1940s and 50s there was the great American comic book scare. Many serious adults warned that comic books were turning young people into illiterate, criminally violent, sexually deviant political extremists. There were several editorials in newspapers that argued as much. There were groups who organized literal comic book burnings. Local jurisdictions passed laws to limit the sale of comic books. There was even a televised congressional hearing on comic books by the United States Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. This was a widespread phenomena that can’t be laid at the feet of any one person. But there is one person who did more than anyone to legitimize this panic: Dr. Fredric Wertham. He was a well-credentialed German-American psychiatrist best known for his anti-comics book Seduction of the Innocent: The Influence of Comic Books on Today’s Youth. The scientific worthlessness of Wertham’s theories has been clear to historians of comic books and even some of his contemporaries. However, it wasn’t until 2012, three decades after his death, that the full extent of the worthlessness of his anti-comic book work was revealed. After a historian was able to read his raw clinical notes for the first time, it was discovered that many claims in his book Seduction of the Innocent were wholly fabricated. His anti-comic book claims weren’t merely the product of sloppy science, but lies and distortions. Subscribe for $5 a month to get an extra episode of QAA every week + access to our archive of premium episodes and ongoing series like PERVERTS, Manclan, and The Spectral Voyager: www.patreon.com/qanonanonymous Theme by Nick Sena (nicksenamusic.com). Additional music by Pontus Berghe. Editing by Corey Klotz. www.qanonanonymous.com

In April 1953, an 11-year-old boy by the name of Brian McLaughlin wrote to the psychiatrist Frederick Wertham. 11-year-old boys usually don't write the psychiatrist, but Brian had a special reason. He was a fan of comic books, and Dr. Wortham was the most famous and influential critic of comic books in the country. According to Wertham, there's no limit to the amount of depravity that comic books could inspire in youngsters. Brian's letter responded to an article by Dr. Wortham publishing readers' digest called Comic Books, Blueprints for Delinquency. In the letter, Brian takes issue with Dr. Wortham's main thesis. Anybody that goes out and kills someone because he read a comic book is a simple-minded idiot. Sounds silly? So does your item.

Unfortunately for Brian, Dr. Wortham's influence was only growing. The following year, Wertham would publish a book and offer congressional testimony that would redirect the trajectory of the comic books industry forever. I'm Travis View, and this is Trickle Down, a podcast about what happens when bad ideas flow from the top. With me are Julian Field and Jake Rockatansky. Episode 19. Graphic Corruption There is a tradition of American moral panic. about how new media is affecting the youth. Rock music turns teenagers into criminals,

Dungeons and Dragons turns nerds into occultists, video games turn young boys violent. But before all of those was the great comic book scare. For many years in the 1940s and 50s, the impact of the massive comic book industry on American youth was a hotly debated topic. Many serious adults warned that comic books were turning young people into illiterate, criminally violent,

sexually deviant political extremists. We need to bring them back now, for Marvel movies. Yeah, yeah, if only. We need to accuse, like, Marvel movies of doing all of this. Now, there were several editorials and newspapers that argued as much. There were groups who organized literal comic book burnings. Local jurisdictions passed laws to limit the sale of comic books.

There was even a televised congressional hearing on comic books by the United States Senate Subcommittee on juvenile delinquency. Now, this was a widespread scare that can't be laid at the feet of any one person. but there is one person who did more than anyone to legitimize the panic, Dr. Frederick Wortham. He was a well-credentialed German-American psychiatrist, best known for his anti-comics book, Seduction of the Innocent, the influence of comic books on today's youth. He used his medical credentials to assure anxious adults that they were right to panic about the influence of comic books. In fact, in his estimation, they weren't panicking enough.

He even claimed that his stance was more than mere common opinion. it was a clinical finding based on his expertise and working directly with many young people who were adversely affected by the poison of comic books. In one interview, just a couple years after the end of World War II, he suggested that comic books would raise a new generation of Nazis. The real question is this. Are comic books good or are they not good? It all depends on what you want.

If you want to raise a generation that is half stormtroopers and half cannon force, with a dash of illiteracy, then comic books are good. In fact, they are perfect. His work, along with the fear of government crackdowns, scared the comic book industry into self-censorship for several decades, squashing the energy and inventiveness of this medium just as it started to flourish. They had just gotten started with Adventures of the Good Hitler. Right.

Now, the scientific worthlessness of Wortham's theories has been clear to historians of comic books and even some of its contemporaries. However, it wasn't until 2012, three decades after his death, that the full extent of the worthlessness of his anti-comic book's work was revealed. After a historian was able to read his raw clinical notes for the first time, it was discovered that many of the claims in his book, Seduction of the Innocent, were wholly fabricated. His book wasn't just the product of sloppy science, but out-and-out lies and distortions. But these were like lies and distortions that had a massive impact on this emerging way of telling

stories and, as a consequence, a massive impact on American culture generally. Now, this story is very well known to comic book fans, and Frederick Wortham is a villain in that community, but it's not nearly as well known outside of that community. Out of curiosity, I check the Wikipedia page for Moral Panics to see how it references the comic book scare. That page currently does mention panics related to rock music, dungeons, and dragons, and video games, but it has no mention of the comic book scare, despite the fact that the impact of that moral panic is far greater.

would argue, than all of those mentioned. Because of this comic book scare, which Frederick Wertham greatly validated and contributed to, parts of the comic books industry collapsed, and it severely limited the kinds of stories that comic books told for about a generation. Due to that, I don't think it's too much to say that Frederick Wortham perpetuated the most culturally significant abuse of the scientific mantle in American history. Frederick Wortham's work emerged from two converging social phenomenon. There was the long-simmering anxiety about the influence of comic books, and post-war worry about juvenile delinquency. Now, the essential book on this subject is the 2009, The Ten Cent Plague, The Great Comic

Book Scare, and How It Changed America by David Hajdu. Super fascinating book, and it provides not only a history of the comic book scare, but a history of the rise of comic books generally. What's really interesting is that it was actually published before the full extent of Frederick Wortham's deceit was uncovered in 2012. Anxiety around illustrated comics generally predates anxiety around comic books. Like people were worried about the impact of comics like The Yellow Kid, Crazy Cat, and Little Nemo and Slumberland. There are people who are very concerned about the bad influence of the Sunday funnies.

In January of 1909, decades before the comic books were invented, the magazine Ladies' Home Journal published an article titled A Crime Against American Children. According to this article, these comic strips weren't just fun supplements in the Sunday. Newspaper, they undermined literacy and promoted lawlessness. Are we parents criminally negligent of our children? Or is it that we have not put our minds on the subject of continuing to allow them to be injured by the inane and vulgar comic supplement of the Sunday newspaper? One thing is certain, we are permitting to go on under our very noses and in our own homes, an extraordinary stupidity, and an influence for repulsive and often depraving vulgarity, so colossal that it is rapidly taking on the dimensions of nothing short of a national crime against our children.

Blah, blah, blah. It's when you write a lot but say nothing. I'm always shocked by just the outpouring of revulsion around, you know, silly little drawings on paper. It's like family circus, you know? The first true comic book is usually considered to be the first issue of New Fun, the big comic magazine, which was published in 1935. This is called the first one because it contains entirely new material.

Prior to this, there were books full of comic strips, but they were just reprints of comics that were previously published in newspapers. The cover of New Fun Number One promised a western story, the tale of a white-hatted cowboy named Jack Woods, who was kidnapped by two bad hombres he encounters on the trail. New Fun Number One was also the first book published by a company called National Allied Publications, which would later become Detective Comics or DC Comics. Just two years later, in 1937, there were 150 comic book titles. A new way to experience stories was born. Wait, so DC Comics stands for Detective Comics Comics? That's awesome. Yeah.

QAnon Anonymous. I mean... Good point. Hey there. You've been listening to a sample clip of Trickle Down. This is a side project that I've been working on. It's a 10-episode series about misinformation and bad ideas. that flow from high authority sources.

I think it's fascinating, and I mean, it's a way for, I guess, me to explore the way people who should know what they're talking about don't always, actually. I'm not going to lie, some of it's kind of a bummer, but if you're anything like me, that's actually more of a reason to dive into the subject matter. Like with the premium episodes of Q&N anonymous, all the episodes of Trickledown are available to people who support us through Patreon, still the same five bucks a month, double the extra content, same price that we've been doing since 2018. are inflation-proof. Inflation-proof. Inflation-proof. Inflation-proof.