10 cent plague-32

This was another book that I'm skeptical of it's worthyness to be on the list, a history of the rise and fall of comic books hardly seems like must-read material.

Comic books used to be a popular form of entertainment among kids, but they were incredibly violent and bloody. As a result religious groups denounced comics and said they were corrupting the minds of children. They backed this up with the rising juvenile delinquency rate, which incidentally was rising during wars where the father figure was away and a lot of stress was placed on kids. A connection between those two things can easily be drawn, but the conncetion between delinquency and comics was drawn instead.

The whole history of comics revolves around the religious conservative types and their crusade against the comic book industry.

The story itself doesn't give much food for thought, but certain things struck me as worth delving deeper into.

Firstly, when delinquency rates rise, the first instinct of parents across the country seems to be find something to blame, not try to fix the problem. The idea that perhaps the delinquent children aren't getting enough attention or that the parents may be somewhat responsible for their behaivor is completely thrown out the window. Instead of considering that possibility (which is far mroe likely) parents across the country pinned the blame on comics.

The second thing that struck me as interesting was the way the opinons of the kids in question were completely ignored unless the kids were instructed by adults to voice "their" (a.k.a. the adult's) opinions

Even when a 14-year old boy named David Wigransky wrote an intelligent and well written letter to a newspaper on the topic of comics and children's capacity for independent thought he was immediately disregarded. Some took the stance that, as a very intelligent boy, David could not possibly be representing the comic book industry. Everyone else took the stance that, as a reader of comic books, David cold not be a intelligent boy. Nobody took the stance that what David said had merit, because that would entail admitting that children are human beings capable of independent thought.

I don't really think that view has changed all that much, we may have come a long way from the time where children were used as expendable cheap labor, but we're a long way off from the time where children are treated like human beings.

If you think about it, how often do you talk about a group of children and refer to them, in any way as "people?" Probably not all that often, you make a point of calling them "kids" or "children," because somewhere deep down in your adult mind, you don't recognize them as human beigns like yourself. Adults consider themselves superior to children on quite and astonishing level. Think about all the legislature that gets passed that directly affects children, do they ever get a voice in that decision? They don't, because "children" can't possibly have an opinion on things that nvolve them, they're too young to seriously think about such things.

So maybe  this viewpoint has it's base in reality, children are much easier to persuade or mislead, the younger the easier. In fact at the very young ages they might actually be incapable of independant thought, either that or they stubornly refute any reality their than their own.

However this view has spiralled out of porportion, I'd say that by ages 10-12 (possibly younger) children are more than able to think for themselves. Will they make bad decisions? They probably will sometimes, they will still be selfish and somewhat impulsive. However, at this point they are capable of having opinions, and if they were to present a well thought out and intelligent opinion on something then it should be acknowledged as such.

It seems that the fact that children are just young versions of adults gets lost a lot of the time. The adults see the antics of children and get swelled heads, then they start to condescend and act superior to the children that are so far beneath them. If a child disagrees with an adult enough to argue about it they are brushed off with a "you're too young to understand" type line, even if they are actually correct.

I think this contrast between adult and child is the centerpiece of the anti-comic movement. The goal was to "protect our children from corruption by these insidious comics" or some other emotion packed slogan along those lines. As if children need "protection" of that kind. Saying that children need to be protected from comics is implying that children are nothing more than blank slates that will automatically imitate everything they see without any independent though on the matter.


I think my point has been made, so I'll end this post here, see you next time.