“The Seduction of the Innocent” was published by Frederic Wertham and lead to Senate hearings about comic books and their effect on children. At the time of the book’s publishing there were several titles and stories that contained adult situations and themes but were sold and marketed towards the same children buying super heroes and newspaper comic strip reprints. While Wertham’s disapproving eye did also glare at what he saw as inappropriate content in superhero comic books the main target of his ire and research seemed to the graphic horror and crime stories frequently published at the time.
Almost no problem has a single source that by its elimination or regulation automatically solves the problem, but a crowd sure loves to gang up on a convenient whipping boy. Comic books became that whipping boy.
Wertham was right that not every comic book title was kid friendly, but given that comics started as reprints of newspaper comic strip you can’t fault parents for thinking comics in general were safe for their child’s consumption. Even today you would think that Alphabet Inc’s (Google) kid focused app, YouTube Kids, has content that is safe for children to view; however, the content is all user generated and uploaded and YouTube relies on automated screening systems. To be blunt, there are malicious content creators that have slipped inappropriate content through YouTube’s censors and the threat of the punishment of losing their channel doesn’t deter them. You could say “well, the parents should be more involved”. In theory that’s a great idea but in reality there is too much access to electronics and too much content and its almost impossible to monitor and screen everything a child might come into contact with.
My opinion of what content is child friendly may differ wildly from another persons, but in general we need to protect our children which is what I believe was the point of Dr. Wertham’s research and the Senate hearings. To see Dav Pilkey (Dog Man, Captain Underpants) use one of his recent Cat Kid Comic Club books to mock Wertham while ignoring the fact that his own main audience is children and the Wertham was trying to protect children from malicious publishers makes Pilkey short sighted and petty.
Enough about that, let’s talk about music:
Check out Saving Country Music’s brutal takedown of Sam Hunt’s embarrassing attempt at trying to remain relevant by clicking this link here.
Cody Jinks has a new album called “Change the Game”. Can’t wait to talk about this in future weeks.
I’ve posted some new videos to YouTube recently. Check them out!
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