Feb 15
Here’s a link to the website I showed you in class today, all about Seduction of the Innocent, Frederic Wertham, and the comics panic.
Particularly notable and helpful to you might be this page, a timeline of the major events of the moral panic, including links to many PDFs of magazine and newspaper articles mentioned in Hajdu.
Shirley Temple being taken by Cannibals in "Kid in Africa"
A part of the “Baby Burlesk” series, the ten minute short, “Kid in Africa,” released in 1933, parodies the “Tarzan the Ape Man” movies by telling the story of a young girl, played by Madame Cradlebait, who is determined to civilize cannibals in Africa. Starring Shirley Temple as a missionary, Madame Cradlebait, the short opens with the arrival of the young blonde followed by several young black children who play the role of her servants and carry her luggage (which reads, “Civilize the Cannibals or Bust!”). Shortly after finding a place to nap, Cradlebait and her servants are attacked by a group of cannibals, portrayed by more young black children wearing face paint, who eventually capture the missionary and put her into a giant pot to prepare her for supper. Luckily, the heroic Diaperzan hears Cradlebait’s cries for help and summons his elephant to ride to her rescue. Diaperzan scares off the cannibals and saves the missionary. Soon after, the jungle has been civilized and a town has blossomed, complete with a traffic controller and a filling station. Wearing dressy clothes, Diaperzan says he will play golf this afternoon, but Madame Cradlebait reminds him he must wash the dishes. The short ends with Cradlebait having civilized Diaperzan as well, as he wears a frilly, pink apron while being subservient to her.
Opposed to other “Baby Burlesk” shorts, Shirley Temple’s role in “Kid in Africa” is a lot less flirtatious, as John Kasson describes the parts she frequently plays. The only thing that stuck out in my mind as coming close to crossing that boundary was the costume that Temple wears, her khaki “diaper” is very short and shows a lot of leg. Other than that, “Kid in Africa” is very tame in regards to flirtatiousness.
I did, however, find evidence to support Kasson’s claim that the humor of these shorts relies on adult knowledge playing against childhood innocence. A young cannibal calls another to come eat the missionary, to which the line, “if there’s anything I love, it’s true missionary,” is said. I believe that this line is a reference to the sexual position by the same name, and would be a joke that only an adult audience would be able to understand. The humor lies at the child not knowing what he is saying.
Feb 15
According to an article in the Times of India, there has been a recent surge in new comic books and comic book popularity in India. At Comic Con India, it was reported that at least 22 new book launches are expected this month. Some of these titles include familiar Western heroes, such as the Watchmen, but many Indian publishers are putting out their own original stories with their own characters. The article claims that the surge is a “growing niche” but it has not yet “arrived”, meaning that it is still a growing movement, and has not become completely mainstream yet.
In class, we discussed comic books from the 1950’s and explored the themes and content that made them unpalatable to parents and other authority figures back then in the United States. They were concerned about the adult story lines, violence, and disdain for authority. As comic books became more popular, this backlash gained traction, and led to comic book burning and bans from state and local governments. It will be interesting to see, as comic books become more popular, how parents and other adults in India respond to this new form of entertainment. India has a history of placing high importance on family values, which comic books, especially those containing Western characters, may not always embody. As the world becomes more globalized, this concern over Western ideals taking over their children may be lessened, but it will still be interesting to see whether this surge leads to a moral panic.
Image from PopGun Chaos
Eminem wanted poster (poster.net)
When the white rapper Eminem, formerly known as Marshall Bruce Mathers III, came on to the hip-hop scene in 1998, he quickly became every parents’ worst nightmare; he was overtly homophobic, excessively violent, and blatantly misogynistic, but most importantly, in a hip-hop culture largely dominated by African Americans, he was a face that middle-class, white children could relate to.
For a mere fifteen dollars, which could easily be saved up from allowance and lunch money, any kid (myself among them) could purchase one of Eminem’s albums on their own, despite the Parental Advisory sticker on the cover of the album, which was supposed to prohibit children under seventeen from buying the album but which was loosely enforced.
Much like the moral panic of the 1940’s and 50’s surrounding comic books, the controversy surrounding Eminem and his impact on children became a national talking point, with much of the public split between whether he should be considered a poetic genius or whether he was simply corrupting the minds of the youth. Just as comic books were thought to have been “the direct contributing cause of many incidents of juvenile delinquency and to the imbedding of immoral and unhealthy ideas” (144), so too were Eminem’s vulgar lyrics, though perhaps with a bit more merit.
Following the release of Eminem’s second album, The Marshall Mathers LP in 2002, the Eminem controversy boiled over even further as Eminem began to receive criticism from an audience he had not expected: kids. Students at Sheffield University decided to ban their own radio station from playing any of Eminem’s songs because, according to Dan Morfitt, the head of music at the station, “three people out of a student community of 20,000 complained.” This event, similar to the comic book burnings cited by David Hajdu, begs the question of whether kids themselves were actually offended, or whether the decision to ban Eminem was actually just “the puppetmastery of reactionary adults exploiting children too sheepish to defend their own enthusiasms” (119).
The controversy surrounding Eminem hardly hurt his sales, however, as he went on to be the best selling artist of the decade, proving, just as comics had during their golden era, that the more parents hate something, the more kids can’t get enough of it.
Television has been entertaining people since the 1950’s. Even I was drawn
Mighty Morphin Power Rangers
into this mechanical box since the bright pixels entered my pupils. As a kid I would spend countless hours watching one of my favorite cartoons, the Power Rangers. My mother would always try to make me to watch something much more educational, like Bill Nye the Science Guy, Barney & Friends, or other didactic cartoons on the screen. She believed that by watching Power Rangers I was becoming more aggressive and unrealistic versus knowledgeable and grounded. I am fairly certain she would agree with Peter Stearns’s statement that “TV seemed to be promoting a craving for violence and fantasy among children (Pg 15).”
Despite critics such as Stearns and my mother, the Power Rangers remains a widely viewed show on the air. The first season of Power Rangers, Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, aired in 1993 and became an instant hit on Fox Kids Network. Sixteen seasons later, it has now expanded to other networks such as ABC station, Jettix, and Nickelodeon. Its latest season, Power Rangers Super Samurai, will air on February 18, 2012. The Power Rangers epic run seems to have no ending, the original creator, Haim Saban, is still working on additional seasons.
The large audience still watching the show has not discouraged viewers from labeling it as a violent action show targeting children. Nicole Jarosz claims the show promotes violence as a way to solve problems. According to Jarosz, since the Power Rangers always solve a problem by fighting and ridding themselves of the bad guy, children believe this is the way to solve problems. They fight their way out of trouble thinking everything will turn out OK with no consequences. In California State University, a study was done to find the answer to this intriguing question. Children were divided in two groups, one group was showed an episode of Power Rangers and the other was not. The groups were then released to a play and the number of acts of aggression were recorded for each child. The observers noticed that the children that saw Power Rangers were more aggressive then the ones that did not, especially the boys. It is studies like these that entices people to believe violence on television impacts the viewer. My mom may have been a tad correct after all.
Kid playing around as Power Rangers, until the teach ruins their fun.
Recently an article was written about how some of the most popular video games that we know today need to “take a vacation”. Ben Silverman wrote in Yahoo! Games that game publishers year after year produce new versions of their games to milk out every dollar from their consumers that they can. Games such as Sonic the Hedgehog and The Sims are two of the five franchises that are recommended to take a break and cool it for a while. Each game is praised for its popularity and lovability, but criticized on the fact that all the repetition is dull and overkill. As I read this, I started comparing children today and children that lived less than a hundred years ago. In the article “I’m Bored: The Two Faces of Entertainment”, Stearns (1-29), the author argues that children, over time, started becoming bored more easily and parents increasingly felt the need to entertain their children. It’s pretty crazy to think that pre World War II, children were left to roam their neighborhoods freely and had to rely on themselves to find entertainment. Kids had to use their imaginations to create characters and games. Now, youth in America is shown, from an extremely young age, the possibilities they have with technology. One stereotype of little boys in today’s society is the one who is glued to his video games and doesn’t ever see the light of day, contrasting with how little kids should be out and active all day. Now, not only do kids have access to video games, but there are literally thousands and thousands of options, all with just the slightest changes. This article is supposed to simply criticize certain video games for their overkill, but when you look at it in the context of comparing it to our youth today and the youth we’ve been studying in class, it makes you think about how extreme and sometimes ridiculous entertainment is today.
Video Game Youth from Google Images
This is a replica of the Workout Barbie from Toy Story 3.
It appears that most decades have been marked by some sort of moral panic outbreak. Most of the time, the hysteria stems from adults fearing that some object of pop culture is harmful in one way or another to the younger generation. A February 6, 2012 article found on Reuters.com, “Aww, man! Bart Simpson joins Barbie in Iran ban”, addresses the recent move by Iran to ban the selling of “The Simpsons” dolls, as well as Iran’s last month decision to crack down on Barbies. The article states that: “The Simpsons are corroding the morals of Iranian youth” (“Aww, man! Bart Simpson joins Barbie in Iran ban”). In the article, Mohammad Hossein Farjoo, Secretary for Policy-making at the Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, expresses his dissatisfaction with the longest-running American sitcom, “The Simpsons”. Farjoo is unwilling to promote this animated sitcom, and in turn has put a ban on the importation goods associated with it. The article mentions Farajoo’s disapproval of the values held by the Simpson family, which are “self-centered and irreligious” (“Aww, man! Bart Simpson joins Barbie in Iran ban”). The selfish and inappropriate conduct of one of America’s most well-known families, the Simpsons, is contrary to Iranian standards; therefore, Iranian officials deem it necessary to take all precautions in order to avoid losing their youth to “Western intoxication” (“Aww, man! Bart Simpson joins Barbie in Iran ban”).
All 5 members of the Simpson family from the animated sitcom, "The Simpsons".
This fear of an animated television show corrupting the Iranian youth parallels a great deal with the comic book scare of the 1950s in America. In the 1950s, many adults feared that comic books were negatively influencing the younger generation, as was mentioned in David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague. Hajdu quotes a statement made by Chief Chris K. Keisling: “They [mothers] are helpless to protect their children from the lurid booklets through [which] cavort half-nude women…[and which]…belittle law enforcement and glorify crime” (Hajdu 89). American adults feared that adolescents were easily influenced, and thus believed that the content and values found in comic books resulted in misbehavior and juvenile delinquency. As a result, attempts were made to ban certain comics books and write up legislation that controlled the content written in them. This is quite similar to the current events taking place in Iran, which are driven by Farjoo and others who share his concern with “The Simpsons”, and their potential to corrupt the Iranian youth by instilling values that are disagreeable with those of the Iranian culture.
Iran has taken further action to protect their traditional values, such as their previously established ban on the importation of Barbies. The apparel, or rather lack of apparel, worn by Barbies differs a great deal from the traditional dress code of an Iranian woman; the article states: “The American doll’s full figure and revealing wardrobe particularly offend Iran’s leaders, who decree that women must be fully swathed in loose-fitting clothes in public” (“Aww, man! Bart Simpson joins Barbie in Iran ban”). The Barbie doll is offensive to Iranian officials who do not want to risk young girls being influenced by their half-dressed Barbie doll, for fear that such a toy might prompt girls to question or even rebel against the conservative dress code that their culture expects of them. Sharing the same concern, the Hajdu passage mentioned above addresses the American adult concern with the images of scandalously dressed women that adolescents were exposed to in comic books.
Both the Iranian adults of today and the Americans of sixty plus years ago share the belief that some object of pop culture, whether it be television shows, dolls, or comic books, are having negative impacts on the younger generation. Neither culture, American or Iranian, would or will stand by and allow these pop culture sensations to “brainwash” their youths into acting in ways adults perceive(d) to be shameful without putting up some sort of fight to try and stop it.
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