Page:1954 Juvenile Delinquency Testimony.pdf/98

86 One reasen I don't want to mention this town is becanse the same kind of thing happens in many other places nowadays. Maybe not quite so much, maybe a little more.

Many of these things happon and it is my belief that the comic book industry has a great deal to do with it. While I don't say it is the only faelor at all, it may not be the most important one, if 1s one con- tributing factor.

YT wonld like to point out to you one other crime eomie bool: which we have found to be particularly injurious to the ethical development of children and those are the Superman comic books. They arose tn children phantasies of sadistic joy im secing other people punished over and over again while you yourself remain immune, We have called it the Superman complex.

In these comte books the crime is always real and the Superman's triumph over good is unreal. Moreover, these books like any other, teach complete contempt of the police.

Iror instance, they show vou pictures where some preacher takes two policemen and bung their heads together or to quote from all these conic boaks—you know, you can call a policeman cop and be won't mind, but if you call him copper that is a deragatory term and these boys «we teach them to cal} policemen coppers.

All this to my mind has an effect, but it has a further effect and that was very well expressed by one of my research associates who was a teacher and studied the subject and she said, "Formerly the child wanted to be like daddy or mommy. Now they skip you, they bypass you. They want to be like Superman, not like the hard working, prosaic father and mother."

Talking further about the ethical effects of comic books, you can rel snd see over and over again the remark that in crime comic books good wins over evil, that law and order always prevails.

We have been astonished fo fiud that this remark is repeated and repeated, nat only by the comic books indnstry itself, but by educators, ecohunnists, critics, doctors, clergymen. Many of them believe it is so.

Mr. Chairman, it is not. In in many comic books the whole point is that evil triumphs; that you can commit a perfect crime. I can give you so many examples that I would take all your time.

I will give you only one or two. Tlere is a little 10-year-old girl who killed her father, brought it about that her mother was electro- ented. She winks at you because she is triumphant.

Thave stories where « man spies on his wife and in the last picture you sec him when he pours the poison in the sink, very proud hecause he sneceeced.

There are stories where the police captain kills his wife and has an innocent man tortured into confessing in a police station and again 18 (rinmphant in the end.

T want to muke it particularly clear that there are whole comic books in which every single story ends with the triumph of evi), with a per- fect crime unpunished and actually glorified.

In connection with the ethical confusion that these crime comic books cause. L would like to show you this picture which has the comic book philosophy in the slogan at the beginning, "Friendship is for Suckers! Loyaltythat is for Jerks."

The second avenue along which comic books contribute to delinquency is by teaching the technique and by the advertisements for