Jul 13
From an article in Ladies' Home Journal, November 1953.
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From an article in Ladies' Home Journal, November 1953.
"Only someone ignorant of the fundamentals of psychiatry and of the psychopathology of sex can fail to realize a subtle atmosphere of homoerotism which pervades the adventures of the mature “Batman” and his young friend “Robin."" Yes, next.
"Batman is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. As they sit by the fireplace the young boy sometimes worries about his partner: "Something’s wrong with Bruce. He hasn't been himself these past few days.” It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together. Sometimes they are shown on a couch, Bruce reclining and Dick sitting next to him, jacket off, collar open, and his hand on his friend's arm." It is like a wish dream of emotional incest
"Robin is a handsome ephebic boy, usually shown in his uniform with bare legs. He is buoyant with energy and devoted to nothing on earth or in interplanetary space as much as to Bruce Wayne. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region discreetly evident." You had me in the first half, but whoa!
"In these stories there are practically no decent, attractive, successful women." Ok. Gay
"If she is after Bruce Wayne she will have no chance against Dick." Based
"We have inquired about Batman from overt homosexuals . . . A number of them knew these stories very well and spoke of them as their favorite reading." Oh im sure
"The thought of Batman and Robin living together and possibly having sex relations came to my mind." Oh im sure pt 2
A prime example of what I mean when I say the well re: Fredric Wertham and Seduction of the Innocent has been poisoned both deliberately and by 70+ years of broken telephone:
There's this quote that you've almost certainly seen. It appears in dozens of books and articles covering this era of comic book history. Many use it to introduce Wertham and his ideas, and it's sometimes the only time he or his arguments are mentioned in the entire piece. And they all utilize the quote the exact same way, which is to say:
"Doctor Fredric Wertham, author of the incendiary screed Seduction of the Innocent, once said, quote,
'Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic book industry. They get to the children much younger.'"
Here's the problem with that quote: it's not from Seduction, nor is it from any of the lectures Wertham gave during his anti-comic campaign. It is, very specifically, from a 1954 hearing of the US Senate Judiciary Committee's sub-committee on juvenile delinquency, and its full context runs like this:
Senator Estes Kefauver, Tennessee: Would you liken this situation you talk about, showing the same thing over and over again until they finally believed it, to what we heard about during the last war of Hitler's theory of telling the story over and over again? Sub-Committee Chairman Robert Hendrickson, New Jersey: The "Big Lie" technique? Wertham: Well, I hate to say that, Senator, but I think Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry. They get to the children much younger. They teach them race hatred at the age of 4, before they can read.
(source: Hearings before the Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency, of the Committee on the Judiciary, United States Senate, 83rd Congress, April 21-22 and June 4, 1954, page 95)
The "race hatred" thing is actually a much bigger deal both to Wertham and in Seduction than most people think. I'd argue it's one of his primary concerns and the root of his harshest critiques, but that's a topic for another post.
The important thing here that I hope I don't have to explain in detail is that it is, frankly, kind of fucked up for people to take what is very clearly a response to a specific question about propaganda techniques, strip it of its context, and present it like it's something Wertham said off-the-cuff, as though it were his baseline read on the comic book industry and its creators.
I've seen this quote completely misrepresented as, "The comic book industry is worse than Hitler." Even The Comic Book History of Comics, which is unusually kind to Wertham and presents the quote in its proper setting and temporal context, acts like it's something he said independently in the midst of an unhinged rant.
I've also looked, and as far as I can find, Wertham never compares the industry to the Nazis without that senatorial prompting. There are mentions of the Third Reich in Seduction, but they're only the exact same connections made by literally everyone else who's trying to honestly engage with the indisputable hard fact that Superman is both named for and partially based on the Nietzschen concept of the ubermensch.
At some point, somewhere in the long history of discussing this topic, someone chose to take that quote out of context, and people have been blithely repeating it ever since like a snappy soundbite.
But the thing is, this whole misrepresentation goes from just kind of fucked up to A Lot Fucked Up, Actually when you learn and/or remember that Dr. Fredric Wertham was a Jewish man. A Jewish man from Nuremberg. Whose family was still living in Germany when Hitler took power. His brother spent World War 2 in a goddamn attic.
So yeah, spreading that quote around is actually a really fucked up thing that we should all stop doing, thanks.
What was the deal with Fredric Wertham?
So I've already made a post about one of Dr. Wertham's most...infamous "contributions" to history in my specialization but by that same token I feel like I wasn't entirely fair.
Not because I suddenly approve of his actions in the events that I originally described, I still don't do any degree, but because I presented a man with a near 60 year career as a prominent psychologist and scholar only through the single event in which history has put him down as the villain. Despite the way that I disagree with many of his most famous conclusions so vehemently my historian's education doesn't allow me to answer this direct question without doing my due diligence.
So its time to dig into everyone's most favorite can of worms. Historical nuance.
(A picture of Wertham from his greatest period of relevance)
Fredric Wertham was a Jewish man born in Nuremberg, Bavaria circa 1895. He was a successful student and one with a high pedigree, studying at King's College in London and eventually graduating from the University of Wurzberg. Inspired by a youthful correspondence with Sigmund Freud that inspired him to focus his corpus of study on psychology.
It was in the early 1920s that Wertham was invited to America where he accepted a position at Johns Hopskins in Baltimore and later a position at the Bellevue Clinic in New York City. He gained some national notoriety in 1935 when he served as defense psychology for cannibalistic serial killer Albert Fish although Fish was eventually sentenced to execution by electric chair.
It wasn't until after WWII that Wertham began to become a thought leader in the growing public dissatisfaction with the Mystery Men who had charted a course through the war. His claims included accusing heroes who held young wards of pedophilia or homosexuality.He also used a small handful of exaggerated anecdotes to say that young people emulating masked crime fighters were getting themselves hurt or killed in acts of delinquency but his most famous accusations would be leveled at two of the generation's leading women.
His original rival was the original Wonder Woman, Queen Hippolyta. Marking her out as a depraved homosexual as she lived on an island populated exclusively by women. He was also one of the first people to willfully misinterpret Themysciran society and philosophy, claiming their social position was misandrist and hostile to men and "traditional norms". He also made wild, Freudian claims that the Lasso of Truth was meant to "induct" young women into the worlds of bondage and sadomasochism. If you've heard a right wing pundit getting red in the face over the "Man Hating" Amazons and their "reverse sexism" chances are they got it from Wertham first.
His coup de grace however was in the early months of 1950, where he was called before congress to explain the "psychology" of mystery men and whether they constituted a danger to America's "moral fabric". He chose to focus his attention on Sandra Knight, the original Phantom Lady. Drawing attention to her scantily clad costume and brash, uncompromising attitude.
He spent the better part of a week raking her over the coals for every action she had taken and every image she had ever been in. Ending with an "unveiling" of his final discovery. That she had had a child out of wedlock, one seemingly fathered by the original Atom. He unveiled Knight's identity and her private business before the entire body politic. Forcing her to give her child up for adoption and being the deciding factor in her following her teammates to Earth-X where she remained for many decades. Many historians have drawn the media frenzy around Wertham's testimony directly to the HUAC's trial of the Justice Society that ended with the team being forced underground and the passage of the Keane Act that made superhero activity illegal in the United States for decades.
However, Dr Wertham was not a supervillain and if you turn over his body of work you find something shocking.
Wertham, through his psychological practice focused heavily on the psychology of children. He was one of the first people to study the stresses of poverty and discrimination on young minds. In fact, his conclusions on child psychology were directly cited in Brown V Board of Education, the supreme court case that overturned school segregation in the United States and one of the largest salvos of the Civil Rights Movement.
His second book (after *Seduction of the Innocent* his bestselling screed on the "Dangers" of Mystery Men) was 1966's *A Sign for Cain* a sobering and deeply rebuking look at the complacency and active participation of medical professionals in the carrying out of the Holocaust. He also came out in life saying that he did not support the Keane Act as written saying it was "too harsh and draconian and I do not support, in principle, the act of punishing those who seek to do good. My concern has always been the lives of children, first and foremost".
Personal acquaintances have said Wertham expressed that his intention was to push the mystery men to reform into a more publically accountable force. Personally I don't fully buy it, it SOUNDS like the people that knew him trying to right his legacy in the aftermath of the Justice League generation, knowing already that that "reform" he "preached" is what the League became and hoisting the benefit of hindsight. I would argue if that was his goal, hurling criminal accusations and airing a young woman's dirty laundry for the entire country is a pretty piss poor way to go about it.
Wertham would pass away at the age of 86, only a few months after the formation of the Justice League. Finding superhero commentary on the man and his work is difficult, for those heroes who appeared AFTER his moment of relevance he's a footnote in their history. For those who SURVIVED his onslaught, most specifically Sandra Knight herself. One supposes certain scars are better left unpicked.
Air Fighters Comics, v.2, no. 2, November 1943
Just as the Victorian era contained considerably more impropriety than its surface propriety would indicate, so, too, the innocence of pre-sexual revolution media allowed for a lot of kink. And skin. That is one serious décolletage on Valkyrie, beyond her skintight jodhpurs. And Airboy looks to have had his top whipped apart.
The splash isn't much better. Budding giantess fetishists must've had a field day with this one:
So, yeah. Seduction of the Innocent exhibit A.
Off the top of your head: Are you aware of the moral panic surrounding the "homoeroticism" in Batman comics?
Yes, and I am a Batman/Batfamily fan
No, and I am a Batman/Batfamily fan
Yes, and I am NOT a Batman/Batfamily fan
No, and I am NOT a Batman/Batfamily fan
If you don't know what Seduction of The Innocent is, you probably do NOT know. Obviously there is more to this topic besides moral panic and Wertham, but I feel it's a good starting point to test the waters of knowledge. On my first poll, I was vague on purpose, but that was an issue. People marked "yes" when they had no IDEA what the queer history I was referring to was. So, this is another poll, hopefully enough context.
Please reblog for a bigger sample size!!! <3
Godammit, why are you making good points about racist tropes in comics and how child readers internalise those ideas? Shouldn’t you be screaming about how Batman and Robin are turning the youth into homosexuals?