Posted on 29/03/08
SYMPOSIUM: CULTURE WARS
AT ISSUEIt may be hard to believe now, but in the late 1940s and early 1950s, comic books were at the centre of heated political disputes in the United States. One of the most vocal leaders of this postwar anti-comics movement was a German-born psychiatrist, Fredric Wertham. In last week's review of David Hajdu's new book, The Ten-Cent Plague, about this episode in the United States' culture wars, Wertham has emerged as controversial as ever. Was the anti-comics crusader, as Hajdu and reviewer Jeet Heer contend, inflammatory and irresponsible? Or was Wertham a progressive scholar trying to protect children from harmful comics, as University of Calgary professor Bart Beaty counters? The debate over what our children should or shouldn't consume continues.
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