Persuasive Techniques | Expertise vs. The Scientific Method | Contextual Validity | Disturbing Politics | Wertham's Legacy
To paraphrase Mark Twain, a classic is a book everyone's heard about but no one has read.
At long last, I was able to finally come across a copy of Dr. Frederick Wertham's *Seduction of the Innocent*. I'd heard about the book for years, as have most comic-book collectors. Wertham's name is well-known to most fans with a sense of history; he was one of the most vocal anti-comics forces in the 1950s. It was Wertham who helped put E.C. out of the horror comics business and who ended the production of "True Crime" style comics. ( The result was an over dependence on unrealistic superhero formulae which may finally destroy comic books as we know them.) But until now, I'd never been able to read his most famous work, nor have I come across many comics fans who have.
My feelings about the book are both complex and mixed. Given the importance of the book, and my particular expertise in critiquing it, I have decided that an extended length essay is suitable. Wertham's persuasive techniques, scientific validity, and political ramifications will be addressed.
*Seduction of the Innocence* was clearly written as a persuasive book intended for the layman, and as such should be dealt with on these grounds first. Wertham uses a wealth of dirty debating tricks in this book, such as taking quotes out of context, publishing uncredited excerpts of comic strip panels with editorial asides as captions, reasoning by analogy, and a heavy reliance on anecdotal evidence. (There'll be more on that later). To a layman who lacks any training in either debate or persuasive speaking, this must have been a devastating critique. To someone with a degree in Communication Arts (as I have), the persuasive technique is empty. Wertham's attempts to create narratives of his anecdotes fall apart upon rereading. For example, his central thesis is that comic books influence the perpetration of violent acts by children and adolescents. Early in the book, he tells the story of how a man was murdered by a sniper during a baseball game, and how the courts convicted a young African-American teen for the murder. Wertham then goes on to detail the youth's violent comic book reading list. The reader may conclude that comic books were a factor in the homicide. However, Wertham also implies that the boy was innocent: "The boy. . .signed a confession stating that he owned and fired a .45 caliber pistol - which, incidentally, was never found. In court the judge stated, "We cannot find you guilty but I believe you to be guilty"(6-7). Wertham also notes that similar shootings continues to occur after the boy had been apprehended, implying that the boy was not the true culprit. All of this is not evident except upon second reading.
Furthermore, crucial details are left out of the anecdotes. Wertham provides a long list of the violent acts children and teens of the 1950s were committing (150-155). Missing from Wertham's thumbnail sketches are any clues as to where the incidents took place. Telling the reader that "a teacher in a certain school was attacked" is not very enlightening. Was this an urban school? A rural school? Given that Wertham was based in New York City, one may assume that the given examples are drawn from New York, but from which neighborhoods? Relatively quiet Riverdale? Greenwich Village? Jackson Heights? These neighborhoods reflect different social strata. Again, on first reading the incidents described are horrifying. On second reading, they are woefully inadequate.
Reasoning by analogy is a technique which is of limited usefulness in the classroom, but a rather poor technique for persuasion. The technique fails because no two situations are exactly alike, and every analogy breaks down if pressed hard enough. Wertham compares comic books to rotten eggs in one sequence to criticize the then-current comic book classification scheme. Wertham notes that eggs are put into two categories (safe or rotten), while comic books are placed in multiple categories. Wertham then ridicules the system by asking if egg producers would consider labeling eggs according to the degree you are made ill by them. The problem with the analogy (assuming that comic books contribute to mental illness) is that mental illness is not a perfect parallel to physical illness. In fact, many psychologists decry the "medical model" of mental illness that has dominated psychology and psychiatry to this day.
As I have nearly completed my Ph.D. in Applied Developmental Psychology, I was particularly interested in Wertham's oft-criticized methodology. The means by which Wertham derives his data consists of projective tests such as the TAT, in-depth clinical interviews, and interpretation of patient's drawings. These are all valid ways to qualitatively assess a patient's mental state. Indeed, I would be concerned if a psychiatric patient did not receive these tests. My problem is that a collection of case studies of mentally ill children and teens, while useful for diagnosis, does not constitute scientific proof. We must turn to an experimental or quasi-experimental design to determine proof; basic courses in experimental methodology bear me out. Furthermore, Wertham's method is retroactive. Interviewing mentally ill or delinquent children about their comic book consumption is meaningless unless we also interview nondelinquent children about their usage. A much stronger design would be to create a longitudinal study and follow a group of children and record how their attitudes towards violence and comic books changed. Science is not concerned with simply studying subgroups but with applying those findings to a larger population. As a result of methodological choice, Wertham cannot possibly extrapolate his conclusions to the general population.
Wertham wrote elsewhere that he held such methodology in contempt. While this places him in the company of anthropologists such as Richard Shweder who follow a Kuhn-influenced scientific philosophy, it does not allow him to make pronouncements with any degree of certainty. To a layperson, who has had precious little training in scientific thinking, Wertham's evidence may seem beyond reproach. To a scientist seeking empirical validation of a theory, it represents little more than an interesting exploratory study. There are plenty of potential studies that could have been conducted to support Wertham's claims, and many of them would have been quite manageable. Content analysis of the content of a month's worth of comic books published in the United States could have revealed the total number of violent acts and prosocial messages portrayed, provided breakdowns for the sort of advertisements contained in comic books, and generally essayed the general level of literacy in the writing of such books. Correlating the level of moral reasoning to comic book consumption would have been another quite manageable project, and would lend itself to elegant statistics. True, at the time that Wertham wrote, Kohlberg's landmark moral reasoning theory had not been put in place, but both Piaget and Blank had testable moral development theories that were available in the 1950s.
In essence, then, Wertham's book is a lot like a medical doctor who can speak at length of his expertise in a given area but can offer no hard data to the patient. Unlike Wertham's analogies, mine is a fair one: Wertham was an M.D. and *Seduction of the Innocent* was essentially his collection of beliefs based upon his experiences.
I detail the flaws of *Seduction of the Innocent* because they unfortunately detract from the surprising validity of Wertham's central thesis, that anti-social material presented in the media can influence the behavior of the audience. The work of Albert Bandura, one of the foremost American psychologists of our time, has demonstrated that people can learn both positive and negative behaviors from the media; this is called Social Learning, and is the logic behind educational programs such as *Sesame Street*. In Bandura's most famous study, children were allowed to watch violent filmstrips and then given free reign to play as they pleased with toys in a playroom. Children who watched violence were more likely to emulate violence in their play. Wertham's position also anticipated the widespread acceptance of contextualism in psychology. Despite their strong nostalgic appeal, it cannot be denied that the crime and horror comics published in Wertham's era *were* frightening to young children and promoted violence as an acceptable solution to conflict. The gore, the step-by-step enactments of crime, and the sexual innuendo may have been drawn in the now nostalgic Golden Age style, but that does not excuse their potential influence on children's thoughts and behavior.
The media, and in particular one branch of the media, is not the sole influence on human behavior. Wertham himself admitted this. However, it is one of the few influences that can be readily controlled by society. Hence, Wertham's passionate arguments in favor of banning comic books outright. Comic books may not be the primary cause of delinquency, Wertham argued, but they are a cause which we as a society are capable of controlling. For better or worse, there are many media watchdogs today who feel the same way. Unfortunately, Wertham's zealousness in this area leaves one with the mistaken assumption that he believes that comic books are the root of all evil, and it is on this point that many of his critics harp.
This leads us into the political ramifications of Wertham's work. Wertham decried the quasi-Nazi attitudes portrayed in the comic books of his day, yet advocated restrictions on the First Amendment that can only be described as fascist. On the one hand, Wertham is a liberal who feels it is unfair to punish children when society itself is to blame. On the other hand, Wertham comes across as a reactionary who wants to return to the "good old days" before comic books were popular. Wertham's concerns about the depictions of latent homosexuality in comic books are far more political than scientific; needless to say, Wertham's descriptions of the relations between Batman and Robin are closer to a Lenny Bruce routine than to an accurate portrayal of the comic as it existed in the 1950s. The lack of a coherent political philosophy is troubling, since the book was so obviously written to encourage political change. Given that many psychologists in the 1960s attempted similar social upheavals, Wertham has plenty of company when he overstates his case. Skinner's "programmed learning", which was supposed to revolutionize the school system is instead remembered as a limited and quaint fad, and society as a whole has been neurotized by the "unconditional positive regard" many of Carl Rogers' popular disciples have elevated into a feel good philosophy.
Almost fifty years after publication, how relevant is *Seduction of the Innocent*? Wertham would roll over in his grave if he were aware of the contents of contemporary manga. On the American front, *Spawn* is one of the most graphic titles around, and *The Incredible Hulk* contains doses of sadism that were never hinted at in the old Stan Lee/Jack Kirby strip. Horror comics are a rarity, and crime comics no longer exist. So-called "lingerie and swimsuit specials" are available from Marvel Comics (as if the outfits worn by She-Hulk and Red Sonja weren't skimpy enough) and one of the most popular newer titles from Image/Top Cow is *Witchblade* whose wardrobe is scanty enough to make Vampirella blush.
Wertham also decried the lack of artistic merit inherent in the often stilted poses in the comic books of his day. Many of today's artists, while certainly possessing the ability to draw dramatically posed characters, do so at the expense of anatomical accuracy. Images that may appear semi-realistic at first glance are often grossly distorted versions of the human body that not even massive steroid use and plastic surgery could mimic in reality.
The entire comic book market has also changed from a mass audience of children and less literate adults to a specialists and collectors fan base' consisting mainly of teens and young adults. This is in sharp contrast to Wertham's era, in which the majority of comic book consumers were children. In some respects, this aging of the comic book market has resulted in fascinating work - Alan Moore's *The Watchmen* is probably the best example - most of the results are gimmicky. The "Death" of Superman, the "psychological" ramifications of Spiderman changing his costume, the use of racial analogies in *The X-Men* and the periodic "rebooting" of series like Wonder Woman and the Fantastic Four are all potentially challenging concepts that quickly revert into nothing more than marketing stunts done for the benefit of "serious" collectors and at the expense of the average comic book consumer. Indeed, with the impending collapse of Marvel Comics and the dwindling sales of many DC titles, the very future of American comic books is in jeopardy.
In essence, Wertham's critiques are of an entertainment format that is vastly different than the one we are familiar with. Comics are no longer a children's medium. They are aimed at teens and young adults and, at their best, possess a literacy that few Golden Age titles ever aspired to.
Wertham's comments would now apply to the contents of broadcast television. Many of the syndicated action programs which viewers are likely to watch today contain doses of violence that, until recently, were confined to R-rated feature films. *Xena the Warrior Princess*, to use one example, has recently indulged in violent "flashback" episodes which graphically illustrate how barbaric Xena was before becoming a Power for Good. The glee with which these past acts of violence are portrayed, however, is often sickening. More damaging to children than *Xena* is the casual use of profanity in prime-time situation comedies, and the lack of sensitivity TV stations use in advertising clearly adult fare during children's time slots. TV news broadcasts have also grown increasingly graphic, and daytime TV has gone from *Regis and Kathy Lee* to *Jerry Springer*. The barely censored pornography, the simultatious glorification and condemnation of brutal violence, and the hypocritical "moral lessons" one is supposed to derive are now more likely to be found on TV than in comics.
In a nutshell, Wertham's legacy is analogous to the cliched plots of the EC horror comics he helped to put out of business. Like a zombie in *Vault of Horror* or *Tales From the Crypt*,. Wertham's words come back to battle his opponents long after he is physically dead. Where is the O. Henry-derived twist that William Gaines delighted in?
Answer: It's difficult to tell which is scarier: a proponent of limiting constitutional liberty or the publishers and TV producers that turn a tidy profit on material that is antisocial.
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