National Concerns About the Corruptions of Youth

Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency: Interim Report of the Committee on the Judiciary (1955)

The 1950s postwar affluence affirmed conventional values of middle-class morality and idealized the nuclear family with a working father and stay-at-home mother. At the same time, the economic comforts provided opportunities for consumer indulgence and a relaxation of social and moral constraints. Concerns about immorality haunted the middle class as reformers began defining a problem of juvenile delinquency that they attributed to the sexual and violent themes appearing in comic books, according to Democratic senator Estes Kefauver of Tennessee. The Senate investigated the link between comic books and juvenile delinquency in 1955 and determined that the mass media was a “significant factor” in the crisis of America’s youth.

Juvenile delinquency in America today must be viewed in the framework of the total community-climate in which children live. Certainly, none of the children who get into trouble live in a social vacuum. One of the most significant changes of the past quarter century has been the wide diffusion of the printed word, particularly in certain periodicals, plus the phenomenal growth of radio and television audiences.

The child today in the process of growing up is constantly exposed to sights and sounds of a kind and quality undreamed of in previous generations. As these sights and sounds can be a powerful force for good, so too can they be a powerful counterpoise working evil. Their very quantity makes them a factor to be reckoned with in determining the total climate encountered by today’s children during their formative years.

The first phase of the subcommittee’s investigation of the mass media of communication dealt with so-called comic books. …

It has been pointed out that the so-called crime and horror comic books of concern to the subcommittee offer short courses in murder, mayhem, robbery, rape, cannibalism, carnage, necrophilia, sex, sadism, masochism, and virtually every other form of crime, degeneracy, bestiality, and horror. These depraved acts are presented and explained in illustrated detail in an array of comic books being bought and read daily by thousands of children. These books evidence a common penchant for violent death in every form imaginable. Many of the books dwell in detail on various forms of insanity and stress sadistic degeneracy. Others are devoted to cannibalism with monsters in human form feasting on human bodies, usually the bodies of scantily clad women.

To point out more specifically the type of material being dealt with, a few typical examples of story content and pictures were presented at the New York hearings on April 21, 1954. From the few following examples, it will be clearly seen that the major emphasis of the material then available on America’s newsstands from this segment of the comic book industry dealt with depraved violence:

Story No. 1: Bottoms Up (Story Comics)

This story has to do with a confirmed alcoholic who spends all his wife can earn on alcohol. As a result their small son is severely neglected. On the day the son is to start in the first grade in school the mother asks the father to escort him to the school building. Instead, the father goes to his favorite bootlegger and the son goes to school by himself. En route the child is struck and killed by an automobile. Informed of the accident, the mother returns home to find her husband gloating over his new supply of liquor. The last four panels show the mother as she proceeds to kill and hack her spouse to pieces with an ax. The first panel shows her swinging the ax, burying the blade in her husband’s skull. Blood spurts from the open wound and the husband is shown with an expression of agony. The next panel has a montage effect: the husband is lying on the floor with blood rushing from his skull as the wife is poised over him. She holds the bloody ax, raised for more blows. The background shows an enlargement of the fear-filled eyes of the husband, as well as an enlargement of the bloody ax. To describe this scene of horror the text states that “And now the silence of the Hendrick’s apartment is broken only by the soft humming of Nora as she busies herself with her ‘work.’” She then cuts his body into smaller pieces and disposes of it by placing the various pieces in the bottles of liquor her husband had purchased. She then returns the liquor to the bootlegger and obtains a refund. As she leaves the bootlegger says: “HMMN, funny! I figured that rye would be inside Lou by now!” The story ends with the artist admonishing the child readers in a macabre vein with the following paragraph, “But if Westlake were to examine the remainder of the case more closely he’d see that it is Lou who is inside the liquor! Heh, Heh! Sleep well, kiddies!” We then see three of the bottles — one contains an eye, one an ear, and one a finger.…

It has been repeatedly affirmed that the comic book, native product of the United States, is provoking discussion in other countries. Many Americans have expressed indignation of the influence these books may have upon the children and young adults in other parts of the world.

Some hold the view that there is no way in which we could give the young people abroad a more unfavorable and distorted view of American values, aspirations, and cultural pattern [than] through crime and horror comics. The destructive potentials of the comic book must be recognized both within our domestic society and in consideration of our relationship to peoples abroad. Publishers of undesirable comic books should be made aware of the negative effects these books may exert upon the thinking and conduct of persons who read them throughout the [world] and of the deplorable impression of the United States gained through their perusal.

Several consideration[s] stem from the impact of the comic books abroad. They are:

A Communist magazine, printed in East Germany and devoted to bitter criticism of the United States, appeared under the name, “USA im Wort und Bild” (USA in Word and Pictures). The publication ridicules comic books and similar American attempts to present the classics in simple form. Some of the phrases read:

Shakespeare in Yankee dialect is the latest “cultural triumph” *** The “cultural” achievement of the publishers is expressed on the jacket of the pamphlet: “You can quote the best quotations of Shakespeare and impress your friends, without reading the play.”

… Soviet propaganda cites the comic book in support of its favorite anti-American theme — the degeneracy of American culture. However, comic books are but one of a number of instruments used in Soviet propaganda to illustrate this theme. The attacks are usually supported with examples drawn from the less-desirable American motion pictures, television programs, literature, drama, and art.

It is represented in the Soviet propaganda that the United States crime rate, particularly the incidence of juvenile delinquency, is largely incited by the murders, robberies, and other crimes portrayed in “trash literature.” The reason such reading matter is distributed, according to that propaganda, is that the “imperialists” use it to condition a generation of young automatons who will be ready to march and kill in the future wars of aggression planned by the capitalists.…

While not attempting to review the several findings included in this report, the subcommittee wishes to reiterate its belief that this country cannot afford the calculated risk involved in feeding its children, through comic books, a concentrated diet of crime, horror, and violence. There was substantial, although not unanimous, agreement among the experts that there may be detrimental and delinquency-producing effects upon both the emotionally disturbed child and the emotionally normal delinquent. Children of either type may gain suggestion, support, and sanction from reading crime and horror comics.

There are many who believe that the boys and girls who are the most avid and extensive consumers of such comics are those who are least able to tolerate this type of reading material. The excessive reading of this material is viewed by some observers as sometimes being symptomatic of some emotional maladjustment, that is, comic book reading may be a workable “diagnostic indicator” of an underlying pathological condition of a child.

It is during childhood that the individual’s concepts of right and wrong and his reactions to society’s standards are largely developed. Those responsible for the operation of every form of the mass media of communication, including comic books, which cater to the education or entertainment of children have, therefore, a responsibility to gear their products to these special considerations.

Standards for such products, whether in the form of a code or by the policies of individual producers, should not be aimed to eliminate only that which can be proved beyond doubt to demoralize youth. Rather the aim should be to eliminate all materials that potentially exert detrimental effects.

To achieve this end, it will require continuing vigilance on the part of parents, publishers and citizens’ groups. The work that has been done by citizens’ and parents’ groups in calling attention to the problem of crime and horror comics has been far-reaching in its impact.

The subcommittee notes with some surprise that little attention has been paid by educational and welfare agencies to the potential dangers, as well as benefits, to children presented by the growth of the comic book industry. As spokesmen in behalf of children, their responsibility requires that they be concerned for the child and the whole world in which he lives. The campaign against juvenile delinquency cannot be won by anything less than an all-out attack upon all conditions contributing to the problem.

The interest of our young citizens would not be served by postponing all precautionary measures until the exact kind and degree of influence exerted by comic books upon children’s behavior is fully determined through careful research. Sole responsibility for stimulating, formulating and carrying out such research cannot be assumed by parents’ or citizens’ groups. Rather it must also be assumed by the educational and social welfare agencies and organizations concerned.

In the meantime, the welfare of this Nation’s young makes it mandatory that all concerned unite in supporting sincere efforts of the industry to raise the standards of its products and in demanding adequate standards of decency and good taste. Nor should these united efforts be relaxed in the face of monetary gains. Continuing vigilance is essential in sustaining this effort.

Comic Books and Juvenile Delinquency: A Part of the Investigation of Juvenile Delinquency in the United States, Interim Report of the Committee on the Judiciary, Rep. No. 62, 83rd Cong., 1st Sess., March 14, 1955.

READING AND DISCUSSION QUESTIONS