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For decades, comic book fans across the globe have reviled Dr. Fredric Wertham as the man who single-handedly brought down the "Golden Age" of comics. But is he truly the Lex Luthor he's been made out to be? Today's podcast takes a deeper look at one of the most controversial figures of the twentieth century.
Podcaster: Mariah
Further Reading
Bart Beaty. Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture. University Press of Mississippi, 2005. David Hadju. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How it Changed America. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2008. Jim Trombetta. The Horror! The Horror!: Comic Books the Government Didn't Want You to Read! Abrams ComicArts, 2010.
Music by Kevin MacLeod (www.incompetech.com)
4/7/2014 05:11:36 am
It's good to see attention paid to Dr. Wertham's progressive efforts throughout his career. At the same time, I thought this profile glossed over three flaws in his comic-book crusade. 4/7/2014 09:51:02 am
Excellent points! I agree with your assessments - although only having ten minutes, I wanted to focus on angles that were not as covered by other podcasts and websites. I have some issues with Tilley's work, because I think she is holding Wertham to an ahistorical standard (most of the sociology articles I have worked with from this era are equally as anectdotal and flimsy evidentiary-wise.) As to being homophobic, I would say from the letters in his archives he was a bit more progressive than Seduction of the Innocent would suggest, but I agree that he was not so progressive that he did not consider homosexuality to be abnormal, as did all mental health professionals of the period (as seen in its categorization in the DSM.) All that aside, I agree with your points whole-heartedly, and I thank you for bringing them up! Leave a Reply. |