Spotting old books and magazines and dummy newspapers in TV, movies and old photos

[Pyan]

The Archie at the extreme top left:

 

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The Detective Comic right next to it:

 

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Likely suspects, top row:

 

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Guilty, top row far right with Jack Kirby cover:

 

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Deep Red (1975, Dario Argento)

 

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[Extollager]

"Dr. Wertham? Sir, did you ever look at the comics these kids are reading these days -- ?"

Seriously, consider all those CRIME comics.

 

[Dave]

Once we had full education in England in the late 1800's there was a huge rise in reading, but rather than educational books, the thing that rose in readership the most was the ladies magazine. These were denounced at the turn of the Century, in exactly the same way that crime comics were in the twenties and thirties, that superhero comics were in the fifties and sixties, and that social media and reality TV is today. They were all worthless and destroying young minds at some point or other.

 

[Pyan]

Especially the young ladies. Once they could read and write, and the penny post was introduced, the worry was that they could correspond with young men without their parents knowing!

 

[JunkMonkey]

Once we had full education in England in the late 1800's there was a huge rise in reading, but rather than educational books, the thing that rose in readership the most was the ladies magazine. These were denounced at the turn of the Century, in exactly the same way that crime comics were in the twenties and thirties, that superhero comics were in the fifties and sixties, and that social media and reality TV is today. They were all worthless and destroying young minds at some point or other.

Yeah all very true but in all those media the quality of the product improved over the years and the art forms developed beyond their trashy origins. Does anyone honestly think that 'Reality TV' is going to develop into anything that is going to contribute anything worthwhile to world culture?

 

[Extollager]

Especially the young ladies. Once they could read and write, and the penny post was introduced, the worry was that they could correspond with young men without their parents knowing!

Source? Before I retired, I taught a course in classic British novels (Jane Austen etc.) and my students would have been amused by this bit, which I wouldn't have wanted to mention if I couldn't verify it. Otherwise I might assume it was one of those things that gets handed around, like the canard about angels dancing on the head of a pin.

 

[Dave]

in all those media the quality of the product improved over the years

Have you read Hello and OK?

Does anyone honestly think that 'Reality TV' is going to develop into anything that is going to contribute anything worthwhile to world culture?

Probably not, but it won't 'destroy young minds', which was my point! It will always be with us in some form. It was anyway (Candid Camera, Opportunity Knocks.)

Anyway I'm sorry for the digression, back to more wriiten materials sneakily referenced inside the visual arts.

 

[Extollager]

"...the thing that rose in readership the most was the ladies magazine. These were denounced at the turn of the Century, in exactly the same way that crime comics were...."

Then those ladies' magazines must've been extreme!

I think the first image below is a fake. When I discovered the other version, I tried to edit this post and delete it, but I can't seem to do so. If a moderator would remove the fake, I would appreciate that. If a comic book cover, showing a female figure the upper part of whose dress has been ripped, does not appear, that's because a moderator weas able to do what I wasn't able to do. [Moderator note: fake image now removed by request. ]

In any event, the axe one is genuine. My point was that some comics of the 1940s and 1950s ("pre-Code") were, in Dr. Wertham's view, too graphic and suggestive to be suitable reading matter on sale with funny animal comics, etc. His objection was defensible.

 

[Extollager]

Here, in this and my following posting, is the coverage in Time magazine regarding the 1954 controversy about graphic comic books.

 

[Extollager]

Later that year...

 

[Pyan]

I can vividly remember the 1962 Topps Mars Attacks cards - and it just goes to show there is something in the "impressionable young minds" furore, because I'd be about seven at the time. They were shown around at school, until the Head banned them from the premises, but it didn't stop clandestine showings just outside the gates. .

Warning! Graphic images!

 

[Extollager]

Lately, as I mentioned elsewhere, I've been reading Erika Mann's School for Barbarians: Education Under the Nazis. My copy is a Dec. 1938 printing of the Modern Age paperback priced at 50 cents. (Incidentally, Mann's book has been reprinted in the U. S. by Dover Books.)

Her book has suggested to me something that might have contributed to the adult anxiety documented in the two Time magazine articles reproduced above.

In 1954, World War II had ended only nine years ago. It was a living memory for adults. How had Germany gone so terribly wrong so quickly? Mann's book would probably have been read by some of the people who wondered about this.

Mann has a lot to say about how the imaginations of German children were warped by propaganda and education, and by a culture saturated by pornography, hatred, and cruelty. To cite one example, on page 82 she comments on Julius Streicher's tabloid Der Stürmer. She says the content was "almost exclusively about sexual outrages, bedroom gossip, and scandal," and was "read in the schools to children between six and fourteen; its denunciations are themes for their homework," etc. She quotes an admiring letter sent to the magazine by a school principal, who boasts about cutting "photos of a number of Jews who were once permitted to rule Germany, and [says he has] mounted them," etc.

On page 85, Mann adds, "And for those children whose teachers have the conspicuous courage to keep the Stürmer out of the classroom, there are the newsstands where the Stürmer is displayed at every other corner in ever German town."

And on page 92, Mann writes, "The children swarm in from of the Stürmer stands, discussing these things ["pathological sexual aberrations'] excitedly. Sexual psychosis is already so widespread that trust is failing," etc.

So, then, it's likely that many thoughtful Americans were aware of the role played by popular periodicals in the debasing of the imaginations of young Germans in the 1930s. If that's so, it may further be the case that this knowledge was in the back of the minds of some people affronted by the crime and horror comics.

School for Barbarians: Education Under the Nazis

Published in 1938, this well-documented indictment reveals the systematic brainwashing of Germany's youth, involving the alienation of children from parents, promotion of racial superiority, and development of a Hitler-based cult of personality.

store.doverpublications.com

 

[JunkMonkey]

So, then, it's likely that many thoughtful Americans were aware of the role played by popular periodicals in the debasing of the imaginations of young Germans in the 1930s. If that's so, it may further be the case that this knowledge was in the back of the minds of some people affronted by the crime and horror comics.

Very likely but from a liberal (small l) point of view maybe the damage to the youth of Germany was done by the banning and destroying of what was considered 'debasing' and reprogramming them into a rigid, narrow, conformist, intolerant mindset.

 

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