Frederic Wertham, Comics’ Bogeyman || Docuseries-24 by Alex Grand
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- Опубліковано 14 лип 2024
- My book, Understanding Superhero Comic Books available at a.co/d/8ZSTMh8 & mcfarlandbooks.com/product/un....
This video discusses the achievements of Frederic Wertham, and how they should be taken into account when judging the man who wrote the 1954 book, Seduction of the Innocent. All too often, people have a reduced impression of him based on this phase in his life trying to link comics to juvenile delinquency, which contributed to the formation of the comics code authority. However, before and after this time in his life, he lived a full and interesting life contributing to society, academia, and comic book fandom in ways that should be more fully understood, before pre-judging the man.
🎬 Edited & Produced by Alex Grand, ©2021 Comic Book Historians.
Music - Standard License. Images used in artwork ©Their Respective Copyright holders. Images used for academic purposes only.
#CBHDocuseries-24: Was Frederic Wertham really Comics’ Bogeyman? 🤔
📜 Video chapters
00:00 Frederic Wertham
00:14 Seduction of the Innocent-Juvenile Delinquency
01:05 Kefauver Hearings-Comics Code Authority
01:41 Mad magazine bypassing the CCA | Bill Gaines
02:14 Comics Code Authority
03:14 Frederic Wertham wasn’t A Bad Guy
04:03 National Research Council Fellowship
04:16 "The Brain As An Organ" book
05:17 Psychiatric exam on Albert Fish
05:55 Lowenfeld Mosaic test
06:20 Brown vs Board Of Education
06:49 "The World of Fanzines"
09:10 So was he Comics' Bogeyman
10:17 Conclusion
#FredericWertham #ComicCodeAuthority #Wertham #Docuseries #ECComics #AlexGrand #ComicBookHistorians #CBH
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🙏 Thanks for watching
Thank you for the unbiased panoramic vignette, including his accomplishments, too.
As a 62 yr old fan that bought my first comic in 1963 I know a lot of this history. My grandma started my reading ability at 4 yrs old. Guys I LOVE your videos!!!!!!!!!!
Awesome video, nice to see that there are two sides to every story. Fans demonize some historical figures way too easily. Great to get a background.
The real life J.J Jameson, a legend
The Kefauver hearings... oh yeah... that one again. In spite of all the media hubhub about Bill Gaines' testimony, the comic book hearings were not particularly interested in the content of comic stories. I've read the testimony of Magazine Management (Marvel/Atlas) managing director (today he would be VP of Management) Monroe Froehlich Jr, and the majority of the questions were about distribution. Their concern was with uncovering any association between newsstand distributors and organized crime.
I love reading Comics
"Puritanical"? Not really. The main gist of Wertham was the common psychological prognosis that prolonged exposure to violence, either real or in pictoral form, is harmful for a child's psyche, and may desensitize them to violence. That isn't a controversial or puritanical position. True, he went overboard when he proposed direct links between exposure to crime comics and juvenile delinquency. People today tend to forget (or not know) that all comics in those times were bought by 8, 9, 10 year old children, in addition to many older ones. Even today most parents try to shield 8, 9, and 10 year old children from exceptionally gory or violent movies.
Andrew B All comics in those times were bought by children? Yes, but a large number of them were also bought by adults ranging from college students to returning war veterans, especially the EC audience and the buyers of Lev Gleason's Crime Does Not Pay and Will Eisner's The Spirit among other titles, one thing to also remember is that newsstand retailers would often sell Walt Disney's Comics and Stories right alongside Tales from the Crypt at this era.
Great job, this vid is extremely well-researched and balanced about perhaps the greatest bogey man in comic book history!
The only villain that superheros couldn't defeat--Dr Wertham!
I think about the best damn thing that ever happened to Frederic Wertham was when he died. 👍👍
I looked at horror comics growing up as a young boy and hell, even one of my buddies found his dad’s Playboy stash and we all got our eyes full looking at them but none of us grew up to become perverts, commit crimes or anything like that. If anybody claims that a rinky-dink comic book, movie, picture, etc. caused them to do something wrong then they were screwed up in the head from the get go!
Before it came out a few years ago that he falsified his data for Seduction of the Innocent, I might have seen him as just a bit misguided. The problem is, if he falsified the data here, it's probable that he falsified his data elsewhere as well. Really, anything he's worked on, even if it's had a positive benefit to society needs to be retested to determine if his findings still hold up.
Again like today with movies and videogames, it's not the medium that's the problem but parenting and the genres of entertainment that children may consume.
Horror comics were already dropping in sales by the mid fifties anyway.
If you look at how bland boring and lame most TV shows and movies were in the 1950s and then look at how violent some of the EC comics were, the guy kind of had a point. I think his conclusions were wrong, but he DID kind of have a point
frederic wertham abhorred violence. he really did think that as a species we could become a enlightened scholarly types. I mean it's a nice ideal but we're far from that.
@Yorky Gonzalez true, it's the food, chemicals, air, pollution, propaganda etc. just too many things all at one time.
I don't know that he did! I think EC comics and other horror comics had some really cool stories! It's never been proven that violent comic books cause violence! "Most juvenile delinquents read comic books!" "Most juvenile delinquents also drink milk, should we make milk illegal?" Wertham used a lot of false information and shock value stuff to scare the public, and countless comic book companies went out of business and thousands of people lost their jobs!
I never get the hate for this guy from Super Hero fans. Simple fact his trying to censor Horror and Crime comics had the unintended consequences to those companies needing to find a different things to print and bring back the Hero comics book(yes I know many 50s super hero comics are the worst but the rise of the Super hero lead to the comic book revival of the 60s)
he was a bad guy.
He was homophobic
He was anti-pedophilia. Stop equating the two, you’re being rude.
@@edfurnez6134 His entire book is about how comics are corrupting children, so when he calls Wonder Woman “unapologetically Sapphic” and talks about Bruce walking around his manor in a dressing gown and decorating it with flowers, he is painting that as just as negative as the violence. He directly says Batman and Robin “is like a wish-dream of two homosexuals living together.” Plus, it’s not unlikely for a 60-year-old to have old fashioned opinions in the 1950s, like the commonly held belief that gay men are pedophiles. So when he cites these things among everything else when his main argument is “comics are worse than Hitler” (not an exaggeration since he said that in a senate hearing), he’s being homophobic.
@@d-brothers3112 uhm, Robin was 12. Did you not get that memo?
@@edfurnez6134 Well luckily, Batman and Robin were not in a gay relationship
There you go equating the two again. Awful