1950s anti-comic propaganda the same as for games today!

[Sketcz]

Today I discovered this gem of an article:

http://io9.com/5985199/how-one-mans-lies-almost-destroyed-the-comics-industry

I have always disliked the 1954 comics code, which restricted creative freedom in a blossoming new medium. In fact I detest it. I have always said: creative people should be free to be creative as they choose.

You know why Japan has always had such a strong manga culture, and everyone can enjoy manga which covers every conceivable topic? Because dogswine like Dr Fred Wertham did not exist to throw a spoke in the works.

If they create something not suitable for children, restrict access to children. Don't be a ****ing evangelical imbecile and ban the whole damn thing.

Turns out the research into comics, which implied that reading comics turned you into a Satan worshipping serial killer, was entirely fabricated. Yeah, the doctor just made it up. They made his medical notes publicly available, and he just invented everything to further his agenda.

I see the same thing today, with the British government wanting to ban pornography, and a multitude of whiny Youtube parasites saying how video games are the source of all society's problems. You know the types. The whiners who say that creative people are not allowed to create something they (the creative people) find awesome, because the whiners are afraid it will curdle their milk and corrupt their children.

It's 60 years later and we're retreading the exact same ground.

Dear 21st century: I've concluded you're just as dumb as the 20th, 19th and 18th centuries.

[sj33]

It's quite disturbing that these kinds of things aren't challenged on any official level. The opposite in fact - they find large political support. Legislation to restrict or ban media requires very little credible research simply because there isn't the political or public appetite to oppose censorship.

Ultimately, it is niche forms of media that will inevitably used as a scapegoat for social ills. They offer simple causes for complex problems It is much easier to identify some form of media as the cause of a social ill rather than invest further effort into discovering the deeper, underlying causes. It is also easier to sell this to the public - when people hear about a murder, they want the blame to be found in something that they can understand. This scapegoat mentality has always existed, and will continue to exist. It may be political, it may be violent, or sexual - either way, people like to feel like a cause has been found, even if it is completely unfounded.

People often wax lyrical about the 'corrosive' affect that violent video games can have on youth, and how this supposedly 'desensitises' us to real life violence. I have been playing violent video games for as long as I have been playing video games, and have also been a horror movie buff since I was a child. And yet, I am not a psychopath. Why? Because my parents taught me right and wrong. I knew as a child that violence was bad, and also knew that the video games and movies were not real. This very simple concept is really not too difficult even for a child. I am today as non-violent as a person can be, and vehemently anti-war - this is in spite of the decades of exposure to violent media.

If people cannot tell right from wrong, then there are clearly other issues to think about than the supposed affect of media.

[briareos_kerensky]

Essentially what Shakey said. Now it's videogames, before it was rock, comics, and even movies. All easy ways to divert the attention from serious issues.
The main problem is that promoters of these ideas get a huge backing for whatever reason, while those inside the accused industry are barely able to speak their mind, or able to bring an unified voice on the matter.

[QualityChimp]

I chuckled as I read the thread title as I knew it would be by Sketcz!

Censorship has been debated quite a lot in here:
All the World's Wrongs: Games At Fault!

Which was started at the Sandy Hook School shootings, after the knee-jerk reaction of The Daily Mail to blame Call of Duty on the massacre.

Most people said there should be no censorship because after a lifetime of violent games none of us have killed anybody so there can't be any correlation, Dogg Thang and myself said we would welcome sensible censorship if it meant there was a chance more susceptible members of society would have access to trigger materials and because we're nice people the thread wound up having a bit of fun and a few japes.

I'm in total agreement that going on one person's unsubstantiated opinion is always going to lead to problems (such as the disproved association with the MMR jab and Autism), but it makes me a little bit sad that we don't all agree that maybe we shouldn't want to show every type of violence or porn the human mind can conceive.

[Golgo]

This is as old as western culture, or at least as far back as we can trace the Greek philosophical tradition. Plato said the same thing about Homer's poetry and Sophocles' plays in The Republic: too much sex and violence (e.g., Zeus transforming into a pretty bullock to sneak up on nymphs then transforming back and raping them) and people wil copy it, etc. Aristotle called him out for being a twat in The Poetics but Plato's view clearly has kept its stranglehold over western culture. Having sex with teen boys (cf.The Symposium) was admirable and ennobling for all parties, however, in Plato's view.

[Sketcz]

Didn't Zeus impregnate women while in the form of a duck? There's classical paintings of women getting it on with ducks. Evidence shows there was a direct increase of 17.5% of human-on-duck relationships after those paintings were painted.

Wikipedia - but NOT SAFE FOR WORK

Censorship has been debated quite a lot in here:
All the World's Wrongs: Games At Fault!

Hmm, perhaps I should posted a link there.

What I find interesting is this is direct proof. The notes of this so called "doctor" show he was basically bull****ting everyone.

Sadly the damage is done. History and culture took a specific path, and while we can change or adapt today, we can never undo the events to see how else they would have played out. People's careers, lives, creativity were augmented in an absurd manner.

America in the 1950s was weird. I always think about their perverse terror of "the reds". So many actors and directors blacklisted for nothing.

[Golgo]

Didn't Zeus impregnate women while in the form of a duck? There's classical paintings of women getting it on with ducks. Evidence shows there was a direct increase of 17.5% of human-on-duck relationships after those paintings were painted.

I agree, to come back to your 1950s point. It was weird, especially in US. Books like Vance's the HIdden Persuaders, Riesman's The Lonely Crowd and Whyte's The Organization Man are full of Cold-War paranoia about the damaging effects of everything from TV adverts to travelling salemen to aptitude tests to suburban lifestyles. I guess the 1954 'Comic Code', which I'd never heard about before, was part of that.