Revisiting Wertham

There's an essay up at the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund that is worth keeping handy. It's by Joe Sergi, and it's about Frederick Wertham's criticisms of Superman. It nicely sums up even the later events in Wertham's odd relationship with the comics world.

BBC

A while back (1981) the BBC produced a documentary on Superman called "The Comic Strip Hero", and "Batmitey" was kind enough to post it on YouTube. It begins with an intereview with Superman's creators, Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. They talk about all sorts of stuff. It's crazy to see Joe Shuster hold up his sketch for the cover to Superman number 1.

Also weird: watching Frederic Wertham become annoyed by Superman. He'd written his book nearly thirty years before this documentary, in which he proclaimed Superman to be one of the worst things a kid could read, and yet he doesn't seem to be able to see beyond Superman's powers and the violence with which he solves problems. He seems especially annoyed that the character isn't real. When asked by the interviewer what he thinks of the fact that people say Superman stands for truth, justice, and the American way (this is in the fifth part, as divided on youtube), he can't even answer the question because it makes no sense to him. "How can it stand for something that doesn't exist..." he starts to say, which isn't the question. Then he goes back to the powers: "He flies through the air..." and he talks about how a woman who's raped doesn't need someone who can fly, but a police officer.

It's an interesting perspective. Again and again, people in the documentary talk about how Superman (and superheroes in general) are for little boys who want to be like them. Even Jerry and Joe talk about this. Also lurking behind Jerry and Joe's comments are their everyday wish fulfillments, such as being noticed by girls.

Then there's the thing that's not talked about, but that Wertham is heading toward with his comments when he talks about what "these two schoolboys" started in the beginning...It's what writer Brad Meltzer keeps coming back to in his novel The Book of Lies...the fact that Jerry Siegel's father was probably murdered. When Wertham refers to what the rape and murder victims need instead of Superman, he seems to forget that the victims often don't get what they need. People do bad things to each other. The law cannot protect everyone. So we imagine Superman, and a world where, when the law fails, there's something beyond it to save us. And wouldn't it be great if that something were powerful and unbound by the laws of nature so it could save us anywhere, any time? Wouldn't it be great if this person, or a whole group of people, didn't try to use their power to take over the world?

Science and Superman

In the world of comic books, the greatest villain is Frederic Wertham. His 1953 book Seduction of the Innocent crystallized the public opinion against comics, giving a voice to the distaste that obtained in many minds throughout the United States. It led directly to the Comics Code Authority, a self-censorship board that comics publishers created in order to pre-empt governmental involvement. Wertham objected vehemently to Superman, whom Wertham labeled a fascist who encouraged children to distrust authority (especially their parents) and to engage in vigilante justice. Embedded among these critiques was a subtler one: that Superman taught children incorrect lessons about physics: “Superman not only defies the laws of gravity, which his great strength makes conceivable; in addition he gives children a completely wrong idea of other basic physical laws. Not even Superman, for example, should be able to lift up a building while not standing on the ground, or to stop an airplane in mid-air while flying himself” (34).



Well, this article, The Science of Superman, goes to some length to prove that the science of Superman simply doesn't make sense--which, I suppose, none of us needed evidence of in the first place. Still, it's an interesting thought exercise. It comes from a book called The Science of Superheroes, by Lois Gresh and Robert Weinberg. I wonder if they tackle the perennial question, Would Wonder Woman's lariat really make me tell the truth?



This sort of thing--wondering about the possibilities behind Superman and other science fiction stories--is, evidently, a popular pastime among writers. Maybe among readers, too. There was a National Geographic channel special on the subject, as well as a book called The Science of Superman by Mark Wolverton. Here's an article from the USA Today about it. Predictably, a lot of this stuff came out around the time of the last Superman film, in 2006. Brief comparison: Where Gresh and Weinberg try to point out why Superman's powers simply cannot work, Woverton tries to come up with ways in which they could.



I spent a bit of time studying film, and I wonder if any film scholars have looked at it from the angle of cultural/economic focus point. This is more than trendiness, I think, though there is a bit of that going on. When a film comes out, lots of other aspects of the culture industry get behind it. Books appear, news stories and magazine articles explore it. Its history is laid bare for us to follow. And with Superman, it seems that all of a sudden, the putative science behind it became important.



And then there's this:



The strip is called Bizarro. He does a lot of Superman humor.