Our Views: When comics raised anxiety
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These days, many parents worry about the violence and other unsavory content their children might encounter in playing video games.
But worries about exposing the young to sexual or violent images in popular entertainment are far from new.
Author David Hajdu reminds readers about that in a new book, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America.”
In the years between the end of World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium in the 1950s, the most popular form of American entertainment was the comic book, Hajdu tells readers.
Sometimes garish and often shocking, comic books became a pop culture phenomenon, but the publications also drew the attention of self-appointed guardians of order and decency.
Congress held televised hearings on comic books, and the backlash affected hundreds of artists and writers.
Obviously, there’s a long tradition of anxiety about how popular entertainment affects youngsters.
Long after the demise of video games, we suspect, mothers and fathers will be worrying about some other, as yet undeveloped medium and its power, real or imagined, to affect young minds.
But worries about exposing the young to sexual or violent images in popular entertainment are far from new.
Author David Hajdu reminds readers about that in a new book, “The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America.”
In the years between the end of World War II and the emergence of television as a mass medium in the 1950s, the most popular form of American entertainment was the comic book, Hajdu tells readers.
Sometimes garish and often shocking, comic books became a pop culture phenomenon, but the publications also drew the attention of self-appointed guardians of order and decency.
Congress held televised hearings on comic books, and the backlash affected hundreds of artists and writers.
Obviously, there’s a long tradition of anxiety about how popular entertainment affects youngsters.
Long after the demise of video games, we suspect, mothers and fathers will be worrying about some other, as yet undeveloped medium and its power, real or imagined, to affect young minds.
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