What Wertham's detractors didn't seem to say about him
0 Comments Published by Avi Green on Friday, October 21, 2005 at 4:22 AM.
I'd once realized in past years that, if there was something that Dr. Fredric Wertham's detractors didn't seem to mention about him, it was where he came from: He wasn't US-born. As this biography page tells, he was from Nuremberg in Germany, and moved to the US in 1922:
The moonbats who dismiss his work today don't mention where he came from, nor do they ever try to theorize that the reason he took such offense at the marketing of violence and perversity in entertainment was because he may have experienced such nightmares himself in Germany, and that that's a likely reason why he fled to the United States just a year after getting his MD. As a native of Germany, he had a very good understanding of what led to nazism, which he wrote about in The Show of Violence in 1949. As this part says:
Now I'm not saying that Wertham was without his own faults, but, considering that many of his detractors seem to ignore a lot of the meatier details about him and limit their arguments solely to the notion that he was solely a "comics critic" when here, he'd also taken on the movies when studying entertainment, that's where they really screw up. From personal experience, I recall one comics "specialist" who claimed that Wertham had assumed/thought/concluded that all children who became violent had read comic books, without even giving any mention to the fact that Wertham had studied movies in his time, and may have even once cited in some of his research a movie that had led to a kid to get violent with a gun in the 1940s. Talk about coming up with straw-man arguments! By excluding any research Wertham did on movies and television, all that comics writer was doing was rendering his own argument supremely silly.
Like I said, no, he wasn't without his faults, and, if The Sign for Cain really was as stupidly thought out as some say it was, then that indicates that where he tripped was in arguing out of far too much of a bias than needed. But aside from that, considering that he came from a nightmarish environment in Germany, that's exactly why, while I may not praise him, I will most definately not attack him either.
And besides, he did change his mind in 1973, which was certainly good to know.
My point here is that is people are going to argue that Wertham goofed off, that they at least acknowledge where he came from, and understand why he could or did have a problem with violence in entertainment years before. And that he was never the one to have suggested the CCA, rather it was the big two, DC and Marvel, who led to it.
Fredric Wertham was born on March 20, 1895, in Nuremberg, Germany. He went to the University of Wurzburg and received his MD in 1921. After a year of post-graduate study, he got a job at the Kraepelin Clinic in Munich. The clinic's founder, Emile Kraepelin, had the theory that a patient's environment had to be considered when deciding upon a course of treatment for them. This was a new idea at the time, but it appealed to Fredric, and was used throughout his career as a psychologist.Okay, but that aside, let's note that he came from a country that was already descending into literal chaos, knowing that the Freicorps, the precursors to the nazis, were already starting to conduct their sadistic operations at the time.
In 1922, Wertham moved to the U.S. and got a job at the Phipps Psychiatric Clinic at the Johns Hopkins University. While there, he wrote his first book entitled The Brain as an Organ this book was published in 1926. The theories espoused in this book were different than those supported by most psychologists at the time, but the book nevertheless went on to become a widely-used medical textbook. Because of this, Dr. Wertham would become the first psychiatrist to receive a National Research Council grant.
The moonbats who dismiss his work today don't mention where he came from, nor do they ever try to theorize that the reason he took such offense at the marketing of violence and perversity in entertainment was because he may have experienced such nightmares himself in Germany, and that that's a likely reason why he fled to the United States just a year after getting his MD. As a native of Germany, he had a very good understanding of what led to nazism, which he wrote about in The Show of Violence in 1949. As this part says:
In 1949, Dr. Wertham got his third book published, Show of Violence. This book talked about several real-life cases instead of just one. It also showed Dr. Wertham's experience with psychiatry in criminal cases.I just wish it would also point out his having written about also the Freicorps in the latter part of the book, having looked it over once myself.
Now I'm not saying that Wertham was without his own faults, but, considering that many of his detractors seem to ignore a lot of the meatier details about him and limit their arguments solely to the notion that he was solely a "comics critic" when here, he'd also taken on the movies when studying entertainment, that's where they really screw up. From personal experience, I recall one comics "specialist" who claimed that Wertham had assumed/thought/concluded that all children who became violent had read comic books, without even giving any mention to the fact that Wertham had studied movies in his time, and may have even once cited in some of his research a movie that had led to a kid to get violent with a gun in the 1940s. Talk about coming up with straw-man arguments! By excluding any research Wertham did on movies and television, all that comics writer was doing was rendering his own argument supremely silly.
Like I said, no, he wasn't without his faults, and, if The Sign for Cain really was as stupidly thought out as some say it was, then that indicates that where he tripped was in arguing out of far too much of a bias than needed. But aside from that, considering that he came from a nightmarish environment in Germany, that's exactly why, while I may not praise him, I will most definately not attack him either.
And besides, he did change his mind in 1973, which was certainly good to know.
My point here is that is people are going to argue that Wertham goofed off, that they at least acknowledge where he came from, and understand why he could or did have a problem with violence in entertainment years before. And that he was never the one to have suggested the CCA, rather it was the big two, DC and Marvel, who led to it.
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