Comics: Seduction of the Innocent

[A beaker full of death]

Every 60 years or so...

http://movies.yahoo.com/feature/mov...roes-might-not-be-such-super-role-models.html

Study: Superheroes Might Not Be Such Super Role Models
by Mike Ryan · August 3, 2010

What's that you say? A rogue vigilante, who dons a mask at night to fight crime while using illegal weapons, with no endorsement from local law enforcement authorities, may not be a good role model for young boys?

Incredulity aside, it turns out that even some of the "nicer" comic-book heroes might not be so good for the kids. That's the conclusion of a new study of current superhero movie characters (how does one apply for this job?). The researchers behind the study shared their findings at the American Psychological Association convention this past Sunday. What's most surprising about the results of the study is that it doesn't necessarily vilify all of these powerful characters -- just modern-day superheroes. The superheroes your parents watched and read many moons ago? Those guys were just fine.

Sharon Lamb from the University of Massachusetts-Boston, who spoke on behalf of the study, explained: "Today's superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he's aggressive, sarcastic, and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity. When not in superhero costume, these men, like Iron Man, exploit women, flaunt bling, and convey their manhood with high-powered guns."

Iron Man, Lamb's example of a modern-day superhero, debuted in March of 1963 in issue number 39 of "Tales of Suspense." In 1979, the Iron Man story went through an arc known as "Demon in a Bottle," which portrayed Tony Stark's (Iron Man's true identity) battle with alcoholism. That storyline was later loosely adapted into the two "Iron Man" movies.

There is a valid point within the research that young boys who don't have real-life role models may turn to their movie idols to compensate for their lack of guidance. Especially considering that a slew of these comic-book demigods -- Peter Parker as Spider-Man; The X-Men -- are themselves considered outsiders in their personal lives. The problem is, of course, that real-life humans haven't been bitten by radioactive spiders or developed mutant powers. As the researchers discovered, this leads to problems when movie marketing can "take advantage of boys' need to forge their identity in adolescence and sell them a narrow version of masculinity."

Lamb's research concluded there are only two types of personalities that today's boys have the option to aspire to: the aforementioned superhero or the cracking-wise slacker. (What, no vampires?)

Doing her best to channel the character of John Bender's dad from "The Breakfast Club," Lamb explains her findings about on-screen slackers thusly: "Boys are told, 'if you can't be a superhero, you can always be a slacker.' Slackers are funny, but slackers are not what boys should strive to be; slackers don't like school and they shirk responsibility. We wonder if the messages boys get about saving face through glorified slacking could be affecting their performance in school."

 

[Hober Mallow]

Do kids even read comic books anymore? There's a few comic shops around town where i live, and I only ever see adults going into them. Perhaps the article writer would do better to research kids and videogames and online fantasy world characters.

I was never hardcore comic collector as a kid, but I read Spider-Man and Hulk and a few others, and I never grew up lamenting the fact that I couldn't grow into a nine-foot tall green monster.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Wow.

 

[Jetfire]

http://www.ep.tc/wertham/soti/blog/2005/09/superman-is-fascist-and-top.html

Superman is a fascist and a Top
Superman (with the big S on his uniform—we should, I suppose, be thankful that it is not an S.S.) needs an endless stream of ever new submen, criminals and "foreign-looking" people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that engenders in children either one or the other of two attitudes: either they fantasize themselves as supermen, with the attendant prejudices against the submen, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong men who will solve all their social problems for them—by force.

 

[Admiral_Young]

Again wow....that guy was serious as well. I guess he didn't actually read the comics but glimpsed at a photo of Superman when he wrote that statement.

 

[byron lomax]

Dr Wertham wrote a lot of utter rubbish about comics, but it isn't really fair to hold him as some ignorant, reactionary figure reponsible for years of censorship. He never really intended to censor comics with his writings, to the extent that it actually happened - it's just that certain groups had wanted to ban and censor comics for a long time, and used his writings as "scientific proof" of the damage they believed they would cause children.

He was a liberal, anti-racist, and for the most part, against censorship. Then again, with a title like Seduction of the Innocent, he really should have forseen that his book would have been used as a scare-mongering tool.

 

[EnderAKH]

Every 60 years or so...

So it happened in the 1950s and before that in the 1890s?

 

[Derishton]

byron lomax, thanks. People don't realize that Wertham was a major figure in the fight against racism; one of the problems he had with comics in the 40s and 50 was their more racist aspects (also, of course, slightly unfair, as many comic writers were themselves at least slightly more liberal than society as a whole). Wertham remains a kind of boogeyman for comics fans today, but at least some recent books have gonje back and said he wasn't entirely wrong in principle: he said these books, unregulated, would lead to greater and more common depictions of sex and violence. He was right, even if I think in a broader sense he was wrong in being right: we're better off being able to depict what we want in literature and on film. But to the extent that he was afraid we'd end up desensitized, he was right.

 

[Derishton]

This study is also being discussed - well, this badly-written stitch-up article is being discussed, since nobody has access to the book, and a link someone provided makes it clear that the article writer probably doesn't, either - in The Neutral Zone, as well.

 

[Jetfire]

^
The problem is Superman was created by one a son of Jewish immigrants and the other to a Dutch father and a Ukrainian mother. The character is practically ripped from the Bible in many ways Old & New Testament terms... comparing Superman with Nazi's or Racism is a bit much...even if there is slight elements of Nietzsche wound within The Man Of Steel. In general at that time there was a lot going on in comics that could raise concern but Superman isn't one of them.

I mentioned to someone in talking about Superman...Truth, Justice & The American Way...she laughed at "The American Way" she is from Scotland...to me "The American Way" refers to altruism.

 

[Derishton]

Absolutely, jetfire. Wertham only addresses Superman once or twice in Seduction, and it's clear he isn't aware of the character['s origins; he's responding to the name and its connections to Nazi readings of Nietzsche. (Wertham was a Jewish German who came to the States in the 20s, so can be forgiven for sensitivity on the subject of Nazis.) As I say, he's often right about racism in comics of the time, but he's also sometimes wrong: even the early EC comics, those he hates most, published some remarkably forward thinking stories.

 

[Jetfire]

^
Understandable.

Forgive me, I am a huge Rita Hayworth fan but I love what is underlined in yellow.

 

[Derishton]

There's never any need to apologize for Rita Hayworth. The Superman title makes you wonder which side he's on ...

 

[Teelie]

Comics are coming back as the boogeyman again. Every few years someone decides whatever is popular with children and teens must be bad and finds a way to prove it. Movies, music, video games, sports, books, you name it, somehow it's detrimental to youth.

 

[Professor Zoom]

Comics are coming back as the boogeyman again. Every few years someone decides whatever is popular with children and teens must be bad and finds a way to prove it. Movies, music, video games, sports, books, you name it, somehow it's detrimental to youth.

Except this time not nearly has many kids are reading comics.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Even though kids aren't reading comics that much anymore, they are watching more movies and cartoons based off comic book superheroes than ever before. Detractors may just go after the source of it all though.

 

[Teelie]

^^^ Exactly. The comics themselves might not be as popular but the movies, games and cartoon series are. It's an easyscape goat for the self-righteous to use.

 

[hyzmarca]

You know, there were alcoholics in real life long before Iron Man was created.


The point of Marvel superheroes is that they're real people with real problems; they're not perfect but they do try their best. Over time, editorial staff and writers have forgotten this somewhat, and made many of them into irrepentant douchebags in the name of edginess.


Anyone who sees Tony Stark as an endorcement of hard drinking and womanizing is an idiot. Both are shown as bad things that he needs to overcome, and both have nearly gotten him killed on multiple occasions.

And really, if 47 years old is somehow "modern", I'd hate to see his definition of "classic".

 

[Derishton]

The point of Marvel superheroes is that they're real people with real problems; they're not perfect but they do try their best. Over time, editorial staff and writers have forgotten this somewhat, and made many of them into irrepentant douchebags in the name of edginess.

I think the researcher would agree with this to a large extent. Just look at the current Peter Parker - the post-OMD Spider-man was supposed to be more appealing to kids, and that somehow takes the form of drunken one night stands (later explained as Peter thinking he was drunk on apple juice) and breaking into hotel rooms to have sex with the Black Cat. I have a hard time not taking Lamb's point seriously when I see that. In some ways, I think she's making the same point as Millar's Kick Ass does, although in a very different way.

 

[Greg Cox]

There's an excellent book on this subject, The Ten-Cent Plague by David Hadju, which documents how comic books (and comic strips) have been used as scapegoats almost from their very creation. The big blow-up in the fifties, to which Wertham contributed, was the culmination of decades of anti-comics campaigning. Parent groups, church groups, literacy groups, and so on have always regarded comics as suspect. Even Wonder Woman was condemned back in the old days, because of her "immodest" attire.

This new article seems amazing similiar to newspaper editorials written back in the thirties and forties . . . .