An Insight Into Comics of the 1950s
During this summer, I took a college U.S. history course. The course itself was nothing special — I’d heard it all before — but the instructor, an adjunct named Tracy Derks, incorporated interesting, curious information into his lectures. Of this information, one particular suggestion he made correlated 1950s comics and the video games of today.
Allow me to explain. During the 1950s, Americans began leaning toward righteousness and spiritual purity. Seemingly everyone was ardently conservative. Commonly, the ideal family was well-behaved and father always knew best. In fact, a TV show called “Father Knows Best” was quite popular during this time, as well as shows such as Leave It to Beaver and I Love Lucy. The ’50s also saw the rise of suburban communities, which further isolated families from cities and societies; this strengthened the influence of the nuclear (immediate) family drastically.
After World War II, young veterans returning home became enticed by the sexual and violent appeal lent by comic books. These books also found favor among young adults who had not been deeply involved in the War, more solidly establishing their prevalence. Particularly, comic books themed with horror, science fiction, romance, and to a lesser extent, westerns, saw a vast increase in popularity.
However, the conservative adults of the 1950s found comic books appalling and dangerous. Public outcry blamed comics for juvenile delinquency. Dr. Frederic Wertham wrote a book entitled, “Seduction of the Innocent,” which hit home for anti-comic book interest groups.
As a consequence, the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency held hearings concerning comic book violence and provocation. Furthermore, the immense public disapproval that resulted from such negative media coverage essentially forced the comic book companies to adopt what is known as the Comics Code Authority (CCA). This code was created by comic companies, as a form of self-censorship (or regulation).
After this policy was instituted, comics rapidly saw a decline in explicitness. Women, almost always depicted a voluptuous and stimulating, were scarcely distinguishable from men (save the hair), and a rapid decline in violent drawings ceased the appearance of blood altogether. (Additional aspects were included, but for the specifics of the code, there’s Wikipedia and Google.) The CCA continues, even today, as a regulatory system to provide considerably more wholesome yet still entertaining material.
Now you may well be wondering how this could be correlated to video games. If you are, once again, allow me to expound. In the same way that comics received public disapproval and became the subject of conservative activists’ primary concern, video games have, for some time now, achieved similarly mixed results. On one hand, teens and young adults today buy into video games and their twisted, gory, explicit visuals. This has produced success for the growing mature audience-only video game market. On the other hand, many adults and right-wing conservatives advocate the regulation, censorship, or in some cases banning, of video games due to the nature of their mature content. We can quickly see that, because no regulatory agency exists (although the ESRB does provide content ratings but not content regulations), the video game industry is essentially free to produce whatever content they want, whether it is pornographic, horrific, or inexplicably violent. Hence, the correlation becomes “Video games today, like the comics of the ’50s, are popular among young adults and shunned by the conservatives due to the explicit material they portray.”
Where does the correlation break down? Well, in the 1950s, public disapproval of comic books was surmised and elaborated in a book written by Dr. Frederic Wertham. This book was critical in the eventual outcome, the CCA. In our era, we too have a far right-wing conservative, who routinely files lawsuits and tries to ride on the existing contempt for video game violence and sexuality. This man’s name is Jack Thomson. However, unlike Dr. Wertham in the ’50s, Mr. Thomson, a lawyer, has not yet written a book. Unfortunately for Mr. Thomson — and all conservatives who are advocates of video game regulation — it seems, furthermore, that he has managed to draw more public outcry and negative media coverage towards himself with his extremist tactics.
Now, to clarify my perspective on this issue, this blog entry was not written to take sides or opine the beliefs of its author. The correlation was brought to my attention by a professor, and I have taken an interest in analyzing his suggestion. My analysis, however, does not yield a conclusion. Simply put, this entry was to elaborate on my professor’s brief suggestion that video games and comics are correlated. I investigated and have published the results of my findings here, for anyone who might be interested to read, digest, and discuss the correlation.
Note: that said, if you’re interested in hearing my opinion or relentless ramblings with respect to video game regulation, feel free to ask. I am not afraid to voice my opinion — it’s my blog, after all.