The New Yorker

Books - The Horror: Congress investigates the comics
By Louis Menand
March 31, 2008

If it makes sense to speak of a Cold War culture in the United States-and it's a concept that would have to accommodate a pretty wide assortment of artifacts, from Partisan Review to the transistor radio-then one of its classic moments was the comic-book inquisition. The event took place on April 21, 1954, at the Foley Square U.S. Courthouse (now the Thurgoo Marshall courthouse), in New York City, where a subcommittee of the Senate Judiciary Committee charged with investigating the causes of Juvenile delinquency took on an imminent danger within: the comic-book industry. The hearings were televised...

...As [Bart] Beaty says, racist (particularly concerning Asians) and sexist images and remarks can be found on almost every page of crime and horror comics. What especially strikes a reader today is the fantastic proliferation of images of violence against women, almost always depicted in highly sexualized forms. If one believes that pervasive negative images of black people are harmful, why would one not believe the same thing about images of mean beating, torturing, and killing women?

Bart Beaty is a professor of Communications Studies in the Faculty of Communication and Culture. His book, Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture, was published by University Press of Mississippi in 2005.