Censorship Scared Horror Comics to Death
“...I think there ought to be a law against them. Tonight, I’m going to show you why.”
That’s how Los Angeles newscaster Paul Coates opened up a 25-minute broadcast special on Oct. 9, 1955. Without context, you might assume he’s talking about drugs, guns, or alcohol, but you’d be wrong. His broadcast, entitled "Confidential File: Horror Comic Books," made the case for banning horror comics.
Throughout the program, Coates introduced many parents and households to the shocking nature of horror and crime comics prevalent in the 1950s. Admittedly, many of these were graphic, even for today’s standard. But perhaps the only thing more frightening than the ever-popular horror comics that swept the country at that time were the equally popular calls for censorship. Unfortunately, this spirit of censorship seems to still haunt us to this day. We should take a lesson from Coates’ day and guard against it.
During his program, Coates suggested that these comics were driving children to delinquency and crime. Of course, he wasn’t the first person to suggest such a notion. Just a year prior, in 1954, the United States Senate held a hearing on the connection between these comic books and childhood delinquency.
The hearing featured testimony from Dr. Fredric Wertham, author of "Seduction of the Innocent." Wertham was a German immigrant who long believed that comic books, specifically of the crime and horror variety, directly contributed to behavior issues in children. He even infamously made the claim that he thought “Hitler was a beginner compared to the comic-book industry” in terms of propaganda.
Additionally, William Gaines, a publisher and editor of Entertainment Comics, was brought in and grilled by senators. He was asked whether he believed a “child cannot in any way, shape, or manner, be hurt by anything that the child reads or sees,” to which he replied no, if it is “within the bounds of good taste.”
Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver eagerly leaped forward with one of the most recent covers of EC comics, featuring a man holding an axe and his wife’s head. “Do you think [this cover is] in good taste?” Gaines quipped back “Yes sir, I do — for the cover of a horror comic. A cover in bad taste, for example, might be defined as holding her head a little higher so that blood could be seen dripping from it and moving the body a little further over so that the neck of the body could be seen to be bloody.”
Publishers chose to self-censor
No legislation actually resulted from these hearings, but that’s because the comic book industry could see the writing on the wall — it was self-censor or be censored. Reasonably, they chose the former, leading to the creation of the Comics Code Authority. The Code established guidelines comics had to follow if they were to receive their stamp of approval on the shelves. These guidelines ranged from somewhat reasonable to outright ridiculous. This included forbidding terms like “horror” or “terror” from a comic cover, or always ensuring cops were painted as the good guys, and never in a negative light.
Predictably, this attempt at self censorship had negative consequences. Horror is a genre that can play an important role in literature and storytelling. It shows us that the world can be a scary, dangerous place, and that those ill prepared for that fact of life can often fall victim to it. Of course, there is a limit to how much and how early children should be exposed to horror, but that’s a line that’s best drawn by parents at their own discretion.
State-endorsed or enforced censorship of this kind does little to protect children, but it greatly hampers our storytelling abilities.
Many comics were read by adults at that time, and weren’t meant for child consumption in the first place. It would be ridiculous to argue that R-rated movies should be banned because a child might in some way come in contact with them. They’re not for kids in the first place. It was the same with these comic books. After WW II, comics were a very mainstream and popular means of entertainment for veterans returning home, and horror comics, along with crime, war, western, and sci-fi comics, were geared toward adults much more than children.
New code forced some out of business, gave rise to kids comics
But all this changed with the creation of the Comics Code Authority. Many publications went out of business, and the ones that survived were typically geared toward children. Superhero comics were naturally able to overcome, but even they went through internal changes. Darker stories, like Batman, became goofier and more light hearted. Characters like the Joker or Red Skull even got facelifts to appear less scary. Why? To appeal to more children, and to the Code. As a result, reading comic books became associated with childish activities.
Of course, the Code didn’t seriously address any of the true root causes that may have led to child behavioral issues in the 1950s. Nobody considered the possibility that children were acting out because their fathers were killed in war or came home with serious PTSD that we still didn’t yet fully understand.
Thankfully, the government didn’t get the chance to censor comics in the 1950s, but the CCA guidelines damaged creativity in art and storytelling for decades to come. It’s only recently that the comic book industry has started to recover from this absurd call to reign it in.
The Comic Code Authority is basically defunct today, but new calls to censor industries are abundant, and similar arguments in favor of censorship are almost always used. Video games are often a target for political figures who are convinced that there is some link between them and mass shootings. Likewise, in 2019, critics and political pundits alike were convinced that the movie Joker would lead to a mass shooting that never happened. Additionally, social-media platforms like Facebook are routinely the subject to calls of regulation out of fear of hate speech. Like in the 1950s, these tech giants tend to choose self censorship over state-imposed regulation. Time and again, these arguments are constantly recycled. Some instances are more reasonable than others, but none are ever a valid justification for censorship.
At the end of the day, the fear of having too much free speech proves to be far more dangerous than the risks of free speech itself. We should ward off this spirit of censorship like it’s a ghoul in a 1950s horror comic.
