Part One: The Surprising Evil of 1950s Men's Adventure Magazines | BEHIND THE BASTARDS

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  • Опубліковано 17 січ 2025

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  • @dragonpjb
    @dragonpjb Рік тому +114

    Switch blades were originally marketed to women. The idea was that they could be used by people with long nails without breaking them.

    • @deathgripskaraoke9351
      @deathgripskaraoke9351 Рік тому +26

      It's so fucking over, buying comically large army knife right now to compensate

    • @thatmechanicgirl
      @thatmechanicgirl Рік тому +4

      that tracks. Can't have women arming themselves against predators.

  • @cherrypopscile3385
    @cherrypopscile3385 Рік тому +52

    "The Black Leather Jacket moved" I like to imagine that it was just a jacket. Not a guy, a sentient jacket

  • @jscythe74
    @jscythe74 Рік тому +60

    The term "Greaser" started out as a slur for Mexicans. I found this out after reading a Western novel by Edgar Rice Burroughs, of all people. The novel was written in the 1920's and repeated used Greaser as a reference to Mexican characters.

    • @bakomusha
      @bakomusha Рік тому

      Growing up in Semi-rural Socal I knew this from a young age, because of very bitter, racist ass old white men yelling at my friends for the crime of.. being born. And before that greasy was an adjective mostly used to describe Italians, till they became white.

    • @theoneandonlymichaelmccormick
      @theoneandonlymichaelmccormick 10 місяців тому

      Makes sense. Ol’ Ned Burroughs was VIOLENTLY racist.

    • @skatef0rl1fe
      @skatef0rl1fe 3 місяці тому

      Would that be The Bandit of Hell's Bend?

  • @senbrandybuck4492
    @senbrandybuck4492 Рік тому +55

    Um yes hello I’d like to formally apply for the position of “can draw really slutty men fighting off crabs” where can I send my portfolio?

    • @athenapromachos3027
      @athenapromachos3027 Рік тому +1

      Uhhhh..... send it here. For... research purposes. Yeah. Make sure they have their titties out too.

    • @alexcarter8807
      @alexcarter8807 Рік тому

      I imagine a rent-boy type sitting on a bathhouse bench, pouring RID into his crotch jungle.

    • @thatmechanicgirl
      @thatmechanicgirl Рік тому +3

      I'll fight you for it! XD ....or we can just share the overwhelming work load ofc

  • @THEHAR0LD
    @THEHAR0LD Рік тому +19

    "All we need is someone who can draw really slutty men fighting off crabs." Get Karina Drawfee!

    • @JeepnHeel
      @JeepnHeel Рік тому

      Do you want really slutty crabs fighting off men? Cause that's how you get really slutty crabs fighting off men

  • @alexcarter8807
    @alexcarter8807 Рік тому +24

    F*cked by the economy is the reality. I remember dreaming of having the money to "attend" some of those correspondence schools, they were the last resort or dream of those utterly cornholed by the economy. I was surprised when I got some 1939/40 Popular Mechanics magazines and there were the same correspondence schools I'd dreamed about in the late 70s/early 80s. Same titles, LaSalle, Cleveland Institute Of Electronics (CIE) etc. I could literally not afford to finish high school and I can't have been the only one. For some of us in the US, the 1930s never really ended. About the switchblades .... I could never get ahold of one. I did manage to buy a lock-blade in that style, and it stood me good stead in a tough school I went to, but I never felt worried about punks with switchblades as I was too poor to rob and I was often the one others worried about (not terribly imposing, but desperation scares people).

  • @Summer512
    @Summer512 Рік тому +35

    I have an anthology book of these sorts of stories called DEEDS OF DARING with a picture of a man riding a horse on the cover.
    The contents page is unfortunately missing but the first story has the header of "TRAPPED BY THE BLACKS" which I feel sets the general mood of the book. Lots of stories of military adventures and pith helmets in distant corners of the british empire.
    I think from the looks of it it's probably late 19th century rather than early 20th century so it's slightly more vintage racism.

    • @Summer512
      @Summer512 Рік тому +13

      Funnily this book also has a story about an Arabian slave girl being rescued by a white guy except he doesn't sleep with her and she gets married to another freed slave. So congrats on the woke victorians for being less creepy than the 1960's.

    • @EvilGenius007
      @EvilGenius007 Рік тому

      OK, I was curious enough to do a search. Surprising number of options. Do you have (search these phrases for cover images if needed):
      A) Deeds of Daring by Charles D. Michael
      B) Deeds of Daring Land & Sea by J. F. Shaw
      C) Deeds of Daring: Stories For Girls by Fry, Leonora; Herbert, Charles; Owsley, Sibyl B. et al
      D) Daring Deeds Among Wild Beasts by H. W. G. Hyrst
      E) Other (apparently "horse on the cover" + Deeds of Daring is a whole trope)

    • @Summer512
      @Summer512 Рік тому

      Upon further inspection it appears to be two books as the page numbering restarts in the middle of the volume with a subtitle of "On Land And Sea" although the cover images for those searches don't match mine exactly, very similar theme and font though.
      As it is missing the first few pages I unfortunately don't know if the first collection has a subtitle but presumably there are enough variations on the theme that somebody stuck a couple of them in the same binding. Various authors listed for a number of the stories and some stories don't list authors at all. @@EvilGenius007

  • @noop1111
    @noop1111 Рік тому +48

    Would you rather fight 100 crab-sized Nazis, or 1 Nazi-sized crab?

    • @miguelvelez7221
      @miguelvelez7221 Рік тому +1

      Crab sized Nazis. Just get me a mallet and some butter.

    • @cringusmoss9937
      @cringusmoss9937 Рік тому +19

      A nazi sized Crab is not that fast or smart, although it's tough. 100 nazis, despite being cowardly shitheads, could create traps and tools. I'd argue 100 tiny people coordinating is nearly impossible to defeat.

    • @makeitthrough_
      @makeitthrough_ Рік тому +2

      ​@@cringusmoss9937Their power is to be a tiny man, that doesn't mean anything. Now if they're _blurry_ then that could be an issue

    • @paulblankenship8344
      @paulblankenship8344 9 місяців тому +1

      100 crab-sized Nazis, since the giant crab is innocent and the small Nazis aren't.

    • @Gloomdrake
      @Gloomdrake 8 місяців тому +1

      @@paulblankenship8344I don’t particularly like seafood, but if I did, I’d counter your argument by claiming that a man-sized crab would be delicious. Unfortunately crab is not delicious

  • @Archeopteryxman421
    @Archeopteryxman421 Рік тому +9

    Mario Puzo actually wrote for a lot of men's magazines for Martin Goodman, the founder of Marvel Comics. Goodman's wife cousin, Stan Lee, was purportedly envious of writers from the men's magazines.

    • @cinexploits
      @cinexploits Рік тому

      The men's adventure magazines were the ones that kept the Goodman Magazine Management publishing empire in the black during the 1950's, so of course Stan was envious.

  • @jessaminehaak8253
    @jessaminehaak8253 Рік тому +10

    Man I've been writing to Amenhotep IV for years and he never said a *thing* about joining the Rosicrucians... guess I'm just not cool enough to join.

  • @LisaGreene-o6x
    @LisaGreene-o6x 2 місяці тому

    10:00 - Completely correct. My Dad, who was shot down over the South Pacific, and floated around on a raft for 3 days with a gut shot and no food or water before being rescued NEVER spoke about it. EVER. Even with my Mom, his lifelong partner

  • @zeo_crash7984
    @zeo_crash7984 4 місяці тому +1

    4:50 Any time these magazines are mentioned, I automatically think of that crab cover

  • @darkstarmike85
    @darkstarmike85 Рік тому +3

    I happened to be playing BG3 while listening to this.

  • @EvilGenius007
    @EvilGenius007 Рік тому +3

    22:00 Oh my god it's the first 15 seconds of the Reacher season 2 preview that was dropped today.

  • @jonwesick2844
    @jonwesick2844 Рік тому +2

    My dad subscribed to True and Argosy in the 60s. I remember reading some of them but forget the content.

  • @DWSmith-x6c
    @DWSmith-x6c 5 місяців тому

    Oh! Margaret's opening zinger. Holy smokes.
    It's more fun imagining what they're describing more than if I saw it.

  • @dragonpjb
    @dragonpjb Рік тому +7

    The word "Greaser" comes from the heavy use of hair grease in the hair styles they wore.

    • @FakeSchrodingersCat
      @FakeSchrodingersCat Рік тому +4

      The problem with that is if you look at pictures of the original 40s and 50s greasers the greased hairstyle was not really ubiquitous. It became the stereotype but really only after the fact in movies. I'd say the motorcycle angle is probably a more likely origin.

  • @Spencerdoken
    @Spencerdoken Рік тому +5

    I would watch an entire podcast of going over these crazy damn books

  • @miguelvelez7221
    @miguelvelez7221 Рік тому +3

    Can't wait for the Bucaneer Berko Expanded Universe.

  • @chompytv8591
    @chompytv8591 Рік тому +4

    12:29 Gonna say it every time this topic comes up.
    One word:
    Airsoft.

    • @chompytv8591
      @chompytv8591 Рік тому +4

      So many catastrophic things could have been avoided if we just let people have hobbies lmao.

  • @mse90
    @mse90 Рік тому +2

    I still have questions about those Turkish baths and the detective ad. 🤔

    • @theangryholmesian4556
      @theangryholmesian4556 Рік тому +3

      Holmes and Watson went to Turkish Baths. Make your own deductions here.

    • @cybercop0083
      @cybercop0083 9 місяців тому +1

      @@theangryholmesian4556Watson could relax his tired joints in the hot water, while Sherlock lies in a hammock smoking poppy. Case closed. It was elementary

    • @theangryholmesian4556
      @theangryholmesian4556 9 місяців тому +1

      @@cybercop0083 I must contradict you on one point. Holmes never smoked opium. Other then that...

    • @cybercop0083
      @cybercop0083 9 місяців тому +1

      @@theangryholmesian4556 Well, cocaine then.

  • @woodencoyote4372
    @woodencoyote4372 Рік тому +10

    I would be very interested if you did more about the Circassians. I see so many mentions in classic literature of them being famously beautiful, men and women both, and it defiantly fed into the whole lurid white-gold slave tales. But it's hard to tell how much is true, and what is sensationalism.

    • @bakomusha
      @bakomusha Рік тому +4

      Almost certainly sensationalism.

    • @theangryholmesian4556
      @theangryholmesian4556 Рік тому +4

      The Circassians actually very much did face oppression including a genocide which still isn't well known.

    • @missyuriverse
      @missyuriverse Рік тому +3

      This is gonna be long. It's my honest deep thoughts. I'm Circassian.
      58:46 58:46 I don't think the people speaking in this need to "hand it to the author" at all for "talking about something real" (slave trade in mecca). Look into how the state of Saudi Arabia was founded. The US chose the royal family because they did what we wanted them to and were willing to oppress people. It didn't "get outlawed" or "get better." Our dear allies, the Saudi royal family, for the entire history of their existence and our allyship, to this very moment engage in the slave trade. But not with the Circassian people. They buy and sell black people more than anything. Sometimes indonesian or Malaysian people will get trapped in it too. You go to work, in the oil industry, construction, or as a maid and your boss steals your papers and refuses to pay you. It happens in the US to South Americans/ Mexicans who harvest our food for us.

    • @missyuriverse
      @missyuriverse Рік тому +2

      (2/?) But for the Circassian people... In fact, to escape massacres by the Russian's Tzar's racist, islamophobic forces: My family fled to the ottoman empire. The ottomans actually had the practice of harems. More than Saudi Arabia. My family was given land but was basically forced to sell a daughter. They didn't have food. They didn't have anything and it was the only way for everyone to live (or, you know, the wealthy ottoman who gave the sort of "dowry" could have just helped us without buying a member of our family)..
      Historically, how circassians have been viewed is.. fetishizey. European countries never lifted a finger to help us. Understand that the Circassian tribes vary in how they look. My dad's family and cousins look more Asian, some people look very white, some look very Arab. It has to do with the location in the world. The gateway between continents and all. It was an important stop for many trade routes, especially between Europe, the Middle East, and China. Russia's orthodox leadership has always hated us. Within the region my family's from people are usually either Muslim or pagan. Both things the orthodoxy thinks the world is better without. And I say "thinks" because it's ongoing.

    • @missyuriverse
      @missyuriverse Рік тому

      (3/?)
      We mountain village people waged the longest war in Russian History. For more than 100 years we held back armies of 80,000 well-armed soldiers. All we had is our horses and our love of our homeland. The different Circassian tribes have extremely different languages, in fact, the small region used to have over 200 languages. It was rural, and very rugged. For those reasons we have huge respect for nature.
      Currently Putin chooses our governor. The current guy and his secret police absolutely disappear people, especially LGBT circassians.
      But all of the history, resilience, and beautiful culture don't matter at all. The author doesn't care about the destruction of Circassian lives. They wanted to write about a white girl getting mistreated by stereotyped Arab men. "Gross brown/black man" and "little white girl" is a p0rn trope. There isn't care for women anywhere in it. Driven by the adrenaline (fear of others) and the taboo. But at the end of the day, it's a white man hungrily fantasizing about a girl being a slave.

  • @vcg7790
    @vcg7790 Рік тому

    19:52 Oh, y’know, just send a letter to Akhenaten and you’re golden.

  • @TVAVStudios
    @TVAVStudios Рік тому

    37:15 The forgotten early version of Mambo No.5.

  • @oldmanramblingatclouds
    @oldmanramblingatclouds Рік тому +12

    Speaking as a Muslim, I'd love it if you guys did a BtB on the Saudi royal family. Just don't let it on that I suggested it, I still haven't performed the Hajj and I don't want to be blacklisted 😜

    • @SgtKaneGunlock
      @SgtKaneGunlock Рік тому +6

      man that must suck to have shitty people have a strangle hold on a major aspect of your faith though i like comic books so i guess the feeling wouldn't be TOO dissimilar to me

    • @cryptbeast3222
      @cryptbeast3222 Рік тому +1

      That would definitely be a three-to-four-part episode.

  • @tomfinn8076
    @tomfinn8076 Рік тому

    There's a song by Kaleo called 'All the Pretty Girls'. I didn't realize all of the references in the song until i heard this episode.

  • @Osric24
    @Osric24 9 місяців тому

    That first portion talking about men who served in WW2 but saw little to no action makes me think of the late great Bernard Cribbins and his scene in Dr. Who when the villain of the week is accusing his character Wilf of cowardice because he served but didn't kill anyone, a fact that was personally true of Cribbins and that he was personally proud of, in that he served Britain without killing anyone. How sad so many men did not take that same pride, but instead felt emasculated. And it led to so much stuff we now recognize rightly as toxic masculinity.

  • @Daedalus117
    @Daedalus117 Рік тому +5

    Wait, this episode aired today? I thought these UA-cam uploads were all old episodes still. Huh

    • @JackgarPrime
      @JackgarPrime Рік тому +4

      They do a mix. Like the Vince McMahon episodes were still new when they got put on youtube.

    • @Daedalus117
      @Daedalus117 Рік тому +7

      @@JackgarPrime oh I geddit. They upload new ones as they come out, in-between the old episodes

  • @MurderousEagle
    @MurderousEagle Рік тому +1

    but seriously, weasels DID rip my flesh

  • @majuuorthrus3340
    @majuuorthrus3340 Рік тому +1

    Yeah I'm starting to see where that scene in the novel Dr No where Bond and his girl of the week get tied naked to the ground and have crabs climb all over them was inspired by.
    Did Ian Fleming write for Manly Men Fighting Crabs or similar publications, I wonder?

  • @thatmechanicgirl
    @thatmechanicgirl Рік тому +7

    A small but hilarious connection I made about this episode is that, if you've ever had the displeasure of listening to a lot of conservative talk show ads then you're aware that a hefty sum of them are embarrassingly similar to the ads from these old magazines. It's all "tactical" gear, gold ads, prepper grifts, and dick pills. Just...real sad stuff.

  • @fusionspace175
    @fusionspace175 Рік тому +5

    I'm just a late gen X'er, so I don't think all men should have gone to war to become men. I do kinda think everyone should have done the scouts, though, or just learned how to camp. That taught me a lot of basic skills just useful in life, orienteering, first aid, starting a fire, building shelter, all have come in handy at some point, often when technology failed. I always got the purpose of that training, to make more well rounded people better able to survive adversity, and I worry that element isn't as in favor nowadays.

  • @BongRippingRiffLover51
    @BongRippingRiffLover51 10 місяців тому +1

    I bet if Andrew Tate was an adult in the 1950s, he'd write and publish a magazine just like that.

  • @majuuorthrus3340
    @majuuorthrus3340 Рік тому +2

    Given how 'punk' was a slur for young gay men... well, a former punk buying a current punk a burger and then threatening to spank him, after how weirdly lustfully switchblade punk/disembodied jacket was talking about the diner... yeah this is a porn set-up that went off the rails.

  • @beantoes9627
    @beantoes9627 Місяць тому

    Any connection between consumption of this pulp fiction and the rise of serial killers in the 60s & 70s?

  • @wesshiflet2214
    @wesshiflet2214 Рік тому

    “Joe Morelle” is the name of a U.S. Representative from NY

  • @marocat4749
    @marocat4749 Рік тому +1

    Did you cover the battle of may island that is so emberassing and dark, and funny, but also tragic, but also hillarous. And so bad that the military wanted to keep it top secret.
    and ther eis a bastard, the head of the fleet thats describes as vey self ensured beyond reason and be the smartest person in the room in his opinion.

  • @siobhanroberts2329
    @siobhanroberts2329 Рік тому +2

    Is it just me or do the Xmas bastards come out earlier and earlier every year?

  • @fett01
    @fett01 Рік тому +6

    Margaret Killjoy is fine, but the fact that Billy Wayne Davis wasn't the guest for this is a goddamned shame

    • @youmukonpaku3168
      @youmukonpaku3168 Рік тому +5

      would've made it a fun follow-up to the episodes on Soldier of Fortune. Margaret Killjoy's expertise on the subject matter seems appropriate, though.

    • @fett01
      @fett01 Рік тому +4

      @@youmukonpaku3168 agreed on both counts

  • @malcolmdarke5299
    @malcolmdarke5299 3 місяці тому

    A prime example of pulp that's *significantly* less than entirely wholesome is a lot of Lovecraft's stuff. Dude wrote for pulp magazines, and he was *incredibly* racist, even by the standards of his time.

    • @TelenTerror
      @TelenTerror 2 місяці тому

      Lovecraft wasn't a man with issues, he was a lot of issues walking around wearing a human skin.
      Everything he wrote as 'horrific' ties in with his own personal fears and horrors. His family was New England gentry who lost their money, so his beautiful centuries-old house in Providence decayed around him throughout his childhood, so he had this Thing about the progression of time and 'degeneration'.
      He hated the sensation of cold air moving across him so he wrote about a doctor keeping himself in unholy life by the unholy power of air conditioning, which had semi-recently been invented.
      He was scared of everything that wasn't rich white people from New England, so everyone who isn't a rich white Englander is evil or ignorant or both. And believe me, there's some New Englanders who have problematic attitudes to this day.
      And he was so white his wife had to teach him how to eat spaghetti--after they were married.
      There's almost an innocence to him. Multiple times in his life, he was confronted with the objects of his prejudice--Italian food, the Irish, etc--and he realized his preconceptions didn't match and his previous beliefs were founded in ignorance. What condemns him was in the forty-odd years he had to live, he never thought that extra step further that maybe *all* his prejudices were founded in ignorance.

  • @clavicleofcernunnos
    @clavicleofcernunnos Рік тому

    These episodes and the Soldier of Fortune episodes remind me of the Mondo "documentaries" of the 60s and 70s, with similarly lurid, violent, masculinist, and racist themes. If you haven't done an episode on that, you really should. The original Mondo Cane is patronizing and lurid, but relatively tame compared to Africa Addio wothy it's graphic war, executions, poaching and atrocity scenes. (Whether real or faked, they all cover real historical events in the decolonization of Africa). As you can guess, it's extremely racist, patronizing, and prurient, and it has everything from these Men's Magazines - right down to the heroic white mercenaries and savage natives. There is even a Mondo doc about the late 20th century slave trade in East Africa and Arabia, which your last story from the magazine reminded me of. They are some truly trashy films, but also utterly fascinating as the beginning of shockumentaries (and shock websites) and the anctecedent of Italian Cannibal movies. It's not surprising these films are pretty popular among racist and/or gorehound subcultures, but now they are also a subject of serious film and cultural studies.

  • @willowmckinnis6323
    @willowmckinnis6323 Рік тому

    i gotta say, only 3 people in ur book? that’s pretty low ngl

  • @arrsequoia4087
    @arrsequoia4087 Рік тому +1

    Bada da da da India!

  • @DSnake655
    @DSnake655 Рік тому

    👍

  • @mylabot
    @mylabot Рік тому

    @13:00 He sums up why america sucks so hard right now

  • @johannageisel5390
    @johannageisel5390 Рік тому

    I like adventure stories, but I really hate that so many of the old ones are racist and sexist. They all need more women protagonists!

  • @MMaximuSS1975
    @MMaximuSS1975 Рік тому +1

    I swear I wish more of these got onto Google Podcast. Thanks for YT Premium anyway! Which I got. With unlimited 5G data per month so IDGAF. Lol.

    • @bakomusha
      @bakomusha Рік тому

      My brother and his wife got a family plan package for a bunch of things, youtube, spotify, pandora, hulu and others. I still use adblock tho, suck it google!