CONCERN over COMICS

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 12, 16 July 1945, Page 9

CONCERN over COMICS

A KORERO Report

Concluded from Korero Vol. 3, No. 11

In 1897 comics, or “ funnies,” began to appear in United States newspapers. Now, forty-eight years later, Americans can point with pride to the following achievements :— A monument to Popeye has been erected in the spinach-growing area of Texas. When Little Orphan Annie’s dog was lost, Annie’s creator received a telegram from Henry Ford.

The Captain Marvel Club has 573,119 members, of whom more than 30,000 fans write to the Captain each year. The death of Raven in “ Terry and the Pirates ” brought 14,000 letters of sympathy, as well as wreaths. In more than 2,500 class-rooms children learn to read from “ Superman ” work books.

Every month 20,000,000 copies of comic books are sold to American boys and girls. Comic books are read regularly by 70,000,000 children and adults, and comic personalities sell breakfast foods and bonds, and recruit blood donors.

That’s what happened in the United States, original home of the comics. From small newspaper strips, the comic concern swiftly developed into a great industry employing hundreds of artists working in shifts, hammering out cartoon after cartoon, mass producing wistful orphans, funny bunnies, gunmen, supermen, pirates, precocious children, crazy cats, monsters, robbers, vandals, rogues, highwaymen. Of these creations, few, indeed, fail to emphasize fist fights, quarrels, despair, deception, fright, thefts, torture, death, and murder.

It wasn't long before Uncle Sam’s syndicate salesmen succeeded in establishing overseas markets, first in England, then in Germany, next in France, and, for a brief period, in Italy

until the Fascists banned these “ foreign strips,” and insisted upon features of “ an all-Italian variety.”

Maybe some years ago you could have said to yourself, well that suits me, that’s their business. But now go to any New Zealand bookstall, examine any child’s treasured pile of comics, and you’ll find predominating over all others is the American comic, with American slang, with American slants on life and living (no matter how remote), and the plodding, old theme of fist-fights, quarrels, death, murder, &c.

These comics appear to have no political chopper to grind, no message (either sinister or constructive) to convey to children. But their absolute unreality gives a child no encouragement to think for himself, to learn about the world and its problems, to form any outlook on life except that adventure, thrills, and causes worth dying for happen at the ends of the earth, in deserts and on the moon—in fact, anywhere except where real life itself is to be found.

What can we do about it ?

To begin with, no trained investigator yet has determined scientifically the effect, either for good or for evil, of comics upon the children of our country. Observations and surveys by the Education Department show the New Zealand youth generally belongs to the vigorous, outdoor group of children who spend comparatively little leisure time in cinemas. They read more than any other children in the world. The standard of their reading matter is higher than that of English children, and probably far superior to that of similar age-groups in the U.S.A. Yet in the field of “ yellow ” comics, the concern is not how much the child believes at the time of reading, but how much belief remains in his mind.

Educationists feel that by becoming enthralled with “ yellow ” comics, the child unknowingly lowers his guard, and gradually passes on, with the years, to reading avidly trashy pulp publications such as Film Parade, shoddy magazines about the Wild West, “ true ” shootin’ cowboys, ‘‘ true ” romances, and “ true ” detectives. One beneficial feature of import restrictions, from the viewpoint of educationists, is the banning of pulp magazines, which before the war arrived in New Zealand at the estimated rate of 2,000,000 copies each year.

"We have the answer to the comics in the School Library Service,” officials at the Schools Publications Branch of the Education Department told us. ‘‘We can challenge comics by flooding the country with well-illustrated children’s books, just as the School Library Service has been endeavouring to do since April, 1942.”

“ Ah, yes,” we said, “ but don’t children want pictures, action, and excitement ? Aren’t comics distinct from picture-books ?

They didn’t agree. In recent years ever-increasing numbers of picture-books with excellent illustrations and letterpress have been turned out by man-and-wife combinations such as the Petershams, the d’Aulaires and the Haders. The Oxford University Press, Faber Popular Books, and the Frederick A. Stokes

Company in New York were producing a wide variety of richly illustrated books. Just two of these, Picture Folk Tales and Legends of the United Nations, would satisfy a child’s imagination, while vocational stories gave elder boys and girls realistic ideas about their possible postschool careers.

There was another point to consider. They quoted us the opinion of W. H. Auden, English poet, writing in the New York Times in praise of the Brothers Grimm.

“ Comics, and what to-day passes for popular art, is not the work of simple ‘ low-brow ’ men and women, but a degenerate ‘ middle-brow ’ horror, mass produced for profit by fully conscious, well-educated young men,” was Auden’s verdict.

He said Grimm’s heroes are not supermen with exceptional natural gifts. They are humble, in that they admit they cannot succeed without Divine asistance. From the dreadful fate of stepmothers and witches the reader will learn that retribution becomes law to those who, because they envy, cannot forgive. From tale after tale the child (or adult) learns wishing is not a substitute for action, but that wishes for good and for evil are terribly real, have positive results, and are not to be indulged in lightly. “ Once a reader comes to know and

love Grimm’s Fairy Tales, he will never be able again to endure the insipid rubbish of contemporary entertainment.” Still another point to consider. Eye specialists had declared no child’s book should be set up in a type below 10-point, yet comics repeatedly use 6-point, and seldom go above 8-point. School readers and the school journal never went below 10-point, and used good-quality paper. The atrocious small type used in comic stories must have a detrimental effect on children’s eyes.

Summing up, they suggested : —

(1) Quietly reducing or cutting off the supply of “ yellow ” comics.

(2) Outbid the comic with an abundance of better books, obtained free through libraries.

(3) Produce the New Zealand comic as a national publication. It would have to be informative, essentially rich in the

human element, treat history in illustrated strips, be characteristic of New Zealand children, cover travel and foreign countries, cater for hero worship (“ Bill Stone—-All Black ”), and boost hobbies.

This sounded as if we were getting somewhere at last, so we went to see the head of the School Library Service, a librarian who for a year studied children’s librarianship at a librarv school in the U.S.A.

We were told that “ this poisonous mushroom growth ” tends not only to threaten the children of New Zealand, but the young people and adults also. America is deeply concerned with this growing interest in comics. The librarian showed us an editorial in the Chicago Daily News, written by Sterling North, author of children’s books.

“ Badly drawn, badly written, and badly printed—a strain on young eyes and young nervous systems effect of these paper-pulp nightmares is that of a violent stimulant,” ran the article. “ Their crude blacks and reds spoil the child’s natural sense of colour, their hypodermic injections of sex and murder make the child impatient with better though quieter stories.” Further, North writes, “ that the shame lies largely with the parents who don’t know and don’t care what their children are reading. It is with the unimaginative teachers who force stupid, dull twaddle down eager young throats, and, of course, it lies with the completely immoral publishers of the ' comics ’ —guilty of a cultural slaughter of the innocents. But the antidote to the

‘ comic ’ magazine poison can be found in any library or good book-store. The

parent who does not acquire that antidote for his child is guilty of criminal negligence.”

The librarian said : “ New Zealand children need more and better books — books showing a literary taste, having artistic value and meeting up with their vital needs and interests. There is published overseas a wide, rich field of children’s literature, but this literature is available only in limited quantities in New Zealand. This literature must be made available to all children through the schools and free public libraries, the selection must be wide, so that the children may choose freely according to individual tastes.

“ Large doses of ‘ paper-pulp nightmares ’ will not in anyway help, but rather hinder the outlook of the next generation.”

Finally, we searched for an English opinion on comics.

“ In all boys’ papers ” [published in England] “it is assumed not only that foreigners are comics who are put there for us to laugh at, but that they can be classified in much the same way as insects,’’ wrote George Orwell in Inside the Whale and other Essays. He prepared this list : Frenchman : Excitable. Wears beard, gesticulates wildly.

Spaniard, Mexican, &c. : Sinister, treacherous. Arab, Afghan, &c. : Sinister treacherous. Chinaman : Sinister, treacherous. Wears pigtail. Italian : Excitable. Grinds barrelorgan or carries stiletto. Swede, Dane, &c. : . Kind-hearted, stupid. Negro : Comic, very faithful. In a detailed survey covering boys’ weeklies, Orwell found the working classes only enter into Gem and Magnet as comics and semi-villains (racecourse touts, &c.). Class friction, trade-union-ism, strikes, slumps, unemployment, Fascism, and civil war were not mentioned. In more up-to-date papers founded after the Great War {Triumph, Champion, Modern Boy, &c.) he noticed that, school stories aside, the favourite subjects are Wild West, Frozen North, Foreign Legion, crime (always from the detective’s angle), the Tarzan motif in varying forms, professional football, tropical exploration, historical romance (Robin Hood, Cavaliers, and Roundheads), and scientific invention.

In post Great War papers he detected a marked advance in intellectual curiosity, bully-worship, and the cult of violence. In these (as it is to-day), the schoolboy reader is led to identify himself with ‘‘a G-man, with a Foreign Legionary, with some variant of Tarzan, with an air ace, a master spy, an explorer, a pugilist —at any rate with some single allpowerful character who dominates every one about him and whose usual method of solving any problem is a sock on the jaw.”

Orwell deplored the lack of political development, the exclusion of contemporaneous history, the persistent distrust of foreigners, and no facing of the facts about working life of any description. Girls’ papers have the same faults, “ except that there are orange-blossoms instead of machine-guns.”

Orwell concluded that such papers are successful because boys find it necessary to read about adventure and excitement. He argued, however, that these stories are wrapped up in illusions and the conviction that the major problems of our times do not exist.

“ The fact is only unimportant if one believes that what is read in childhood leaves no impression behind.”