Seduction of the Innocent . The book was a minor bestseller that created alarm in parents and galvanized them to campaign for Censorship. At the same time, a U. S. Congressional inquiry was launched into the comic book industry. Subsequent to the publication of Seduction of the Innocent, the Comics Code Authority was voluntarily established by publishers to self- censor their titles. The Seduction of the Innocent. A non-commercial site about Seduction of the Innocent and the Anti-Comic-Book crusade of the 1940's and 1950's. TITLES » SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT » SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT #1 (OF 4) SEDUCTION OF THE INNOCENT #1 (OF 4) Available on Dynamite Digital > Price: $3.99 Shipping. Seduction of the innocent He always wears his bible belt The collar under his head It's like a noose around his neck His sandaled feet don't touch the ground. Seduction of the Innocent, written by psychiatrist Fredric Wertham was first published in 1954. It was a pivotal moment in the history of comics.The book asserted, largely based on undocumented anecdotes, that reading this material encouraged similar behavior in children. Wertham's claim that Wonder Woman had a bondage subtext was somewhat better documented, as her creator William Moulton Marston had admitted as much. Wertham sympathized with retailers who did not want to sell horror comics, yet were compelled to by their distributors' table d'h. The first printing contained a bibliography listing the comic book publishers cited, but fears of lawsuits compelled the publisher to tear the bibliography page from any copies available, so copies with an intact bibliography are rare. Early complete editions of Seduction of the Innocent often sell for high figures among book and comic book collectors. For example, Wertham expressed a concern for the impact of impossibly proportioned female characters on girl readers or on the advertisements of violent and harmful toys. Primarily, Wertham assigned the blame to parents, not the industry nor the creators, in his book, and even his anxiety over Batman's and Robin's perceived homosexual subtexts was aimed at the welfare of a child introduced to that sort of family unit, not on some a priori immorality or sinfulness to such a lifestyle. Seduction of the Innocent is a book by German-American psychiatrist Fredric Wertham, published in 1954, that warned that comic books were a negative form of popular.
In extensive testimony before the committee, Wertham restated arguments from his book and pointed to comics as a major cause of juvenile crime. The committee's questioning of their next witness, EC publisher William Gaines, focused on violent scenes of the type Wertham had decried. Though the committee's final report did not blame comics for crime, it recommended that the comics industry tone down its content voluntarily. Possibly taking this as a veiled threat of potential censorship, publishers developed the Comics Code Authority to censor their own content. The new code not only banned violent images, but entire words and concepts (e. This destroyed most EC- style titles, leaving a sanitized subset of superhero comics as the chief remaining genre. Wertham nevertheless considered the Comics Code inadequate to protect youth. Seduction of the Innocent is one of the few non- illustrative works to be listed in the Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide as a collectible in its own right. For instance, he used children at the Lafargue Clinic to argue that comics disturbed young people, but according to a staff member's calculation seventy percent of children under the age of sixteen at the clinic had diagnoses of behavior problems. He also used children with more severe psychiatric disorders which required hospitalization at Bellevue Hospital Center, Kings County Hospital Center, or Queens General Hospital. Conclusions drawn from flawed sample populations cannot be extrapolated to society at large, leading to sampling error. Relevant personal experience was sometimes left unmentioned. For instance, in arguing that the Batman comics condoned homosexuality because of the relationship between Batman and his sidekick Robin, there is evidence that Wertham misrepresented the testimony of young men. He combined two subjects' statements into one and the two subjects had been in a homosexual relationship for years prior. He failed to inform readers that a subject had been recently sodomized. Despite subjects specifically noting a preference for or the superior relevance of other comics, he chose to give greater weight to the readership of Batman. Wertham also presented as first- hand stories which he could have only heard through colleagues. He exaggerated a thirteen- year- old girl's report of stealing in a comic from . He compared the Blue Beetle to a Kafkaesque nightmare, failing to mention that the Blue Beetle is a man and not, in fact, an insect. Reinhart & Company, Inc. Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics. Information & Culture: A Journal of History. Retrieved 6 March 2. Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture. University Press of Mississippi, ISBN 1- 5. Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, University Press of Mississippi, ISBN 0- 8. X. Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics. Information & Culture: A Journal of History. DOI 1. 0. 1. 35. 3/lac. Warshow, Robert S. Commentary (June 1. Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America, Johns Hopkins University Press, ISBN 0- 8.
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