Race, Class and Ethnicity in American History -- a La Sierra University Group Blog of Book Reviews
Wednesday, December 1, 2010
Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero
Book Review: Kyle Lynch
When you think about comic books, what usually comes to mind? Whatever it is, I’m sure Jews don’t come to mind. Well, in the book “Disguised as Clark Kent: Jews, Comics, and the Creation of the Superhero” by Danny Fingeroth explains how comics were the voice that Jews never had. The book explains the process that Jews went through from the coming to America to finally having a voice in America. This book shares a great deal of interesting stories. It also has a few controversies over the most famous superheroes during that time, which so happened to be Superman (hints the title of the book), Wonder Woman, and Batman and Robin.
My Favorite story in the book is about a Psychiatrist named Fredrick Wertham. Now this story got my attention because it seemed like something that would happen in these times. When reading, I kind of gave Wertham the persona of a celebrity blogger that all the celebrities dislike. Fredrick Wertham comes from a secular German-Jewish background and came to the United States during the rise of World War I. When he arrived to the United States in 1922 he quickly got a job at the John Hopkins University Mental Hygiene Clinic and became an American citizen in 1927.He was an expert of a brand of psychoanalysis that concentrated in putting the responsibility for individual antisocial acts on a specific group, which happened to be society and the culture. Wertham was a key player in the African American desegregation ruling in the court case Brown vs. Board of Education. He was also a psychiatric witness on behalf of Ethel Rosenberg and her husband when they were on trial for spying and releasing information about the atomic bomb to the Soviet Union. So after reading the first couple of pages in the story, I wondered why he was hated so much, a man that was putting in work for good use.
Then the story goes in to him talking to his younger patients, who were all delinquents. While observing their cases he realized that they all had something in common… reading comic books. He came to the conclusion that comic books were a key component in antisocial behavior among children and teenagers. With this, through a series of articles, books, lectures and televised testimonies before congress, he became the most prominent alarmist about comic books. He is blamed by many comic fans as the man who crippled the creativity, and the art as well as the whole industry in ways from which they are still recovering.
His claim was that the comics of the late 40s early 50s were extremely violent and bizarrely sexual, and this was corrupting young children because the prices were so cheap, kids didn't really need to ask their parents for money which means the kids read them without their parents knowledge. Wertham started a progressive movement around the idea of a cultured industry, taking jabs at the comic book industry for corrupting children's mind. He instantly became the respectable face for organizations such as the anti-comic movement. However his plan wasn't to ban comics, just to clean them up. However as I read on with the book, it got into deeper explanation as to why Wertham had such a deep passion about the bad things in comic books. He had a deep compassion for poor urban kids that were more gullible and easier to follow things that weren't necessarily good for them. His arguments about the negative effects of horror comics could even be seen by those who didn't agree with hi but the three most popular comics that he talked about the most which were, Superman, Batman, and Wonder woman, nobody really seemed to understand why he came to those conclusions.
Wertham thought that Wonder Woman was a lesbian fantasy. She was portrayed as one that simultaneously encouraged women to be submissive (which means willing to obey orders) to men and to be figuratively and literally bound by men. A quote from Jules Feiffer rebutting the view states, "Whether Wonder Woman was a lesbians dream i do not know, but i know for a fact that she was every Jewish boy's un-fantasied picture of the world as it really was. You mean men weren't wicked and weak? You mean women weren't badly taken advantage of? You mean women didn't have to be stronger than men to survive? Not in my house!" Wertham famously stated that Batman and Robin were a homosexual fantasy, though he never really said that they were gay. Back in the 1950, psychiatrists as well as other people viewed homosexuality as a disorder that people were diagnosed with. So when he made that statement you could only imagine how pissed the comic writers were.
He also made the assumption that many comic books were racist. Which the book says was unfortunately true, in story and character details if not in the overall intent. He said this because the superheroes were always white, and the villains were often stereotyped minorities.
But the comment that got most if not all of comic fans mad was when he said that Superman was a fascist. He states "Superman, needs an endless stream of ever new sub men, criminals, and foreign looking people not only to justify his existence but even to make it possible. It is this feature that gives children either one or the other of two attitudes, either they fantasize themselves as superman, or it makes them submissive and receptive to the blandishments of strong men who will solve all of their social problems for them by force. In these children there is an exact parallel to the blunting of sensibilities in the direction of cruelty that has characterized a whole generation of central European youth fed on the Nazi myth of exceptional man who is beyond good and evil."
So after reading this, I realized why the comic book writers really had that much hate towards Wertham because, they were Jews and the man making these allegations was a Jewish man. Overall, this book was very interesting. I would recommend anybody, not just people that read comics, but everybody to read this book just to get a better understanding of the Jewish/Comic Book world.
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This book is really interesting in the ideas that are presented, sometimes in an almost hidden fashion, within comics.
ReplyDeleteWhat blew my mind was the fact that people considered and STILL consider superman to be fascist, regardless of the fact that the writers were jewish.
I think that when you are talking about how comic books were too violent and sexual I can see the words, tv is corrupting our children coming to mind. So then can we assert that because tv was not as popular then, comics served as the medium for promoting sex and violence? If so, why does it matter?
ReplyDeleteI have been a fan of comic books since iwas a kid, and reading this review really has me interested on reading this book. History is really comparing itself to comic books fiction and that sounds like a awesome read. Good review and looks like a good book.
ReplyDeleteGreat book review, this book seems to be quiet interesting because it summarizes many different aspects about Jews in America, Comics, the Creation of Superheros, as well as the various controversial stories about those "superheros". Interesting book!
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