Flores 1

Casey Flores
Master's Portfolio
9 March 2013
Seducing the Innocent: How Fredric Werthams Anti-Comic Book Rhetoric Succeeded and
is Mirrored in Todays Rhetoric on the Effects of Media
With every new form of media come assaults on that media. From dime novels in the
19th century to film and radio in the early 20th century, different forms of media have faced
scrutiny from individuals and groups who have argued that these media would corrupt their
children in various ways. Comic books have been one such medium. Amy Kiste Nyberg's essay
"Comic Book Censorship in the United States" reminds us that:
Many of the criticisms leveled against the comics were echoes of earlier attacks on dime
novels, film, and radio. In fact, crusader Anthony Comstock's denunciation of dime
novels, Traps for the Young, published in 1884, is remarkably similar to the indictment of
the comic book by the psychiatrist Fredric Wertham in his Seduction of the Innocent,
published in 1954. Both authors hoped that their books would awaken parents and
teachers to the dangers of what their children were reading, and they used anecdotes of
youngsters led astray to reinforce their arguments. 1
As such, the critique of media was nothing new by the time Fredric Wertham wrote his book
Seduction of the Innocent.2 This paper will show how the anti-comic book critique given by
Wertham succeeded, how these critiques are mirrored in a more current media form, video
games, and a look at an example of video game critique by Craig A. Anderson, Douglas A.
Gentile, and Katherine E. Buckley.

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Most media forms, especially television, comic books and video games, are seen as being
distractions for society, and youth culture in particular. As such, arguments have been made that
the more children spend their time engaged with these media, the more likely they are to engage
in the behaviors glorified in these media forms, especially violence and sexual acts. These
arguments have led to censorship of these media forms in an attempt to alleviate their effects on
their youthful audience. Ronald D. Cohen, Emeritus Professor of History at Indiana State
University Northwest, discussed the issues of censorship stated in a presidential address at the
Annual Meeting of the History Education Society, Toronto Canada, in October of 1996:
Throughout the twentieth century, and even earlier, adults have attempted to publicly
control, and even censor, teenagers' access to various artifacts of mass culture
including magazines, music, comic books, movies, television, and radio programs, and
books. The motivation has been twofold: to shield the young from certain perceived
pernicious influences and to encourage a national cultural uniformity/conformity heavily
motivated by Christian morality and the dread of racial (and class) mixing. 3
Wertham, a noted psychiatrist with a background in treating minorities and juveniles, was one
such adult. His attacks on comic books in the late 1940's and mid 1950's almost crippled the
comic book industry as well as stifled creativity within the field for almost a decade. Through
repeated use of juvenile delinquency cases, and their inherent connection to comic books, as well
as select comic book illustrations that Wertham suggested were typical of the entire industry,
Wertham was able to sell the idea that comic books were a corrupting influence on America's
youth. Within his book, Wertham attacks comic books, asserting that they are trivial4, contribute
to juvenile delinquency, and cause sexual deviancy, among other problems. Wertham's

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strategies and arguments are indeed weak in many ways. However, his rhetoric was successful
nonetheless through the use of enthymemes, metaphors, and the creation of ethos.
And so, I shall concentrate on what Wertham had to say about comic books concerning
influences of violence and sexuality among adolescents5 and use the work of Anderson et al.
whose anti-video game rhetoric shows how the phenomenon of critiquing "children's media" has
been repeated within American society, reemerging with every new form of media, especially
those forms that are popular amongst adolescents. Media that has been deemed "for children"
continuously [face] scrutiny from critiques, and the rhetorical strategies they use to make their
arguments, while evolving through time, remain very much the same. I shall begin by giving the
historical perspective on comic book critiques using the works of Amy Kiste Nyberg and
Richard D. Cohen. Additionally, I use Aristotle and Kenneth Burke to look at how Wertham
establishes his ethos and appeals to his audience's pathos, and William A Covino and Edward P.
J. Corbett to examine Wertham's use of enthymemes. For the purposes of this paper, I
concentrate on chapter seven of Seduction of the Innocent, "I Want to be a Sex Maniac!" which
speaks to his major arguments against comic books, that they promote violence and sexual
deviancy. But to begin, I shall look at the two waves of comic book critique that occupied
American discourse through the late 1940's through mid 1950's

Two Waves of Comic Book Critique

Frederic Wertham was by no means the only voice seeking to ease adult tensions
regarding the youth of America. According to Nyberg, there were two waves of criticism against
comic books; the first wave arose shortly before WWII and centered on the perceived merit
comic books had as literature. Primarily, this first wave consisted of articles written by teachers

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and librarians who felt that comic books had no value to children whatsoever and as such, they
were garbage material. One prominent critique, according to Nyberg, was Sterling North, "who
wrote an editorial published in the Chicago Daily News on 8 May, 1940, titled 'A National
Disgrace.'"6 Nyberg states that while this article was published in a newspaper, the stance and
the tone the article took towards comic books was "tremendously influential" to the discourse
that followed and that in articles that followed North's, "teachers and librarians echoed his
attitudes about comics, often couched in the same language."7 The first wave of comic book
critiques thus argued that comic books hindered "reading skills and language use" and made it
difficult for children "to appreciate better literature."8 Eventually due to America's concentration
on the war effort, this initial attention to comic books lost its momentum.
It wasn't until after WWII and the perceived rise in juvenile delinquency that comic
books really came under fire again. 9 Jason Barnosky points out that in the 1950's, "the United
States experienced a panic over youth crime."10 Reasons for this, as Barnosky states, include a
rise in media attention (newspapers and movies) and a nervousness concerning the Soviet Union
and the effects of socialism on American society. 11
To put all this into context, Kenneth Burke, in "A Rhetoric of Motives," argues that
persuasion can be "blunt," such as propaganda, or "pure" as a means to appeal for change
without any ulterior motive.12 Wertham, within his book, seems genuine in his beliefs and fears
regarding comic books and is able to identify with the general fears adults had at the time. As
such, he comes off as pure in that he truly believes reading comic books contributes to juvenile
delinquency. He reinforces adult power dynamics when he states that "children like to be
guided."13 In looking at Burke, it is evident that Wertham's true overall rhetorical goals are "not
analyzable" as we cannot know what is in his mind; we must simply take what he says in his

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arguments at face value.14 As delinquency rates became a focus within the media, more and
more parents became concerned that their children would become another statistic. Fredric
Wertham was one of the strongest voices to speak out against comic books due to his ethos as a
psychiatrist that dealt with troubled youth.15

Wertham's Ethos
Ethos, as outlined in Aristotle's "Rhetoric" is "achieved by the speaker's personal
characteras to make us think him credible."16 The publisher's note in Seduction of the
Innocent helps to establish Wertham's ethos in the minds of his readers as it states that "he has
had long experience in technical research and was the first psychiatrist to be awarded a
fellowship by the National Research Council" and "from his studies on the brain came an
authoritative textbook, The Brain as an Organ, used all over the world."17 These and other
accolades precede Wertham's text and lend credence to the idea that Wertham was one of the
men to help quell, as Cohen puts it, the "fears of youthful rebellion [that] took on added
dimensions, in the midst of general internal security and prosperity, whipped up by a
combination of anticommunist hysteria and racial unrest."18 Together with parents, teachers, and
legislatures, Wertham was able to start addressing the major corrupting force he felt undermined
American ideals of decency within its youth: comic books.
Werthams status as a psychiatrist specializing in the treatment of minorities and
juveniles helps establish his ethos in the minds of his audience, an audience that Cohen states
"welcomed the advice of experts in child-rearing, marriage, and many other fields."19 As a result
of Wertham's expertise, parents and legislatures took Wertham's claims about comic books
seriously, evidenced by the call for action from the comic book industry that resulted in staunch

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restrictions the industry imposed on itself to alleviate parents' concerns. Ramona Caponegro, in
her article "Where the 'Bad' Girls Are (Contained): Representations of the 1950s Female Juvenile
Delinquent in Children's Literature and Ladies' Home Journal,"20 discusses the perceptions of
many American adults towards adolescents in the 1950s. She quotes Thomas Hine, author of
The Rise and Fall of the American Teenager as well as other cultural critiques, who states that
"Juvenile delinquency is a subject of constant concern and intermittent panic."21. As such,
American adults were primed for listening to men like Wertham who were able to speak to their
fears and whose position established his authority among his readership. Wertham ethos is
further supported by his pseudo-jargon. That is, though not using specific jargon, Wertham does
write with the authority of a psychiatrist. One example is: "Pre-adolescence and adolescence are
manifestly the most difficult periods in children's sexual development."22 It is this pseudo-jargon
that appeals more to the general public as these readers can easily understand Wertham and yet
also see that he is speaking to them through his profession. That is, people are impressed by
those who can communicate more effectively than they can.
Post World War II America was a time of great social change within the country. With a
newfound idle time on their hands, American youth within the growing middle class were
becoming increasingly noticed by adults. Due to this new free time, Cohen states that "adults'
fear of youthful rebellion and their urge to control youth became particularly glaring during the
1950s, when the winds of change seemed particularly brisk."23 Following a perceived juvenile
delinquency scare after the war, adults began to look for explanations and scapegoats. Cohen
continues: "generational frictions" began escalating, leading to adults yearning for control
through rapidly expanding schooling, the invention of the juvenile court, supervised youth
groups, and even censorship."24 Bradford W. Wright, in his book Comic Book Nation: The

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Transformation of Youth Culture in America, looks at what kinds of measures were taken to keep
adolescents from accessing comic books. One example Wright highlights is the burning of two
thousand comic books at St. Patrick's Parochial School in Binghamton, New York which was a
result of Wertham and others critics who argued that children who read comic books would
become deviants.25 As mentioned earlier, Wertham addresses many issues in comics. However,
the two that he focuses on the most and which he feels are the most corrupting to American
youth is sexuality and violence. In an America living in fear of communism and growing threat
of nuclear war, any rebellious material or material that may have been a "threat" to the mental
health of adolescents increasingly became to topic of debate and experts like Wertham saw a
way to make their voices heard. In order to do this, Wertham continuously invokes his
profession in regards to the mental health of children and how comic books can lead to deviancy;
a topic I shall return to shortly.
Finally, Wertham uses concepts from the Bible to help establish both his character as a
Christian fighting for the souls of America's youth and the appeals to the religious faith of his
readership, using such language as: "They [children] are taught, 'Lead me not into temptation,'
but temptation in the form of comic books is offered them everywhere."26 By using biblical
language, Wertham is able to establish himself as a righteous advocate of children, working to
bring them back from sin and degradation caused by the reading of comic books. Additionally,
Wertham also attempts to appeal to his patriotism at several points within his book using such
terms as "freedom" to suggest that he is a warrior attempting to protect adolescents from
deviancy and that in order to be a true American, we "must learn that freedom is not something
that one can have, but is something that one must do."27 Thus, Wertham suggests at the end of

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his book that fighting back against comic books is the responsibility of every Democratic
American.

The "Healthy" Sexual Development of a Child!

Cohen states that "heightened sexuality" in children was "particularly threatening"28 to
many American adults in the late 1940's through early 1960's. The evocation of adolescent
sexuality is a powerful argument used by comic censors. Chapter seven of Seduction of the
Innocent attempts to show why censorship of any sort of sexual material is paramount to the
development of healthy adolescents, suggesting that censorship of comics would keep sexuality
under control. Wertham begins his rhetorical tropes with the first paragraph, appealing to the
pathos of his audience: "A small boy who had made ample use of the reading and entertainment
[comic books] we provide so plentifully for children was once asked what he wanted to be when
he grew up. His instant reply was enthusiastic: 'I want to be a sex maniac!'"29 Even before
discussing comic books in this chapter, Wertham is able to manipulate his audience by putting in
their mind the image of a little boy who wants to be a sexual deviant. Wertham also discusses
the sexual awakening of children, how "social orientation" helps children to develop proper
sexual impulses, and that proper sexual education, both at home and in school, leads to healthy,
well-adjusted adults.30 As such, Wertham argues that by allowing adolescents to read comic
books, parents run the risk of their children's sexual awakening happening too early or being
perverted by images and acts portrayed in comic books.
Finally of note is the fact that the cases Wertham cites in his book all concern children
who have been committed to a psychiatric hospital for adolescents, the Lafargue Clinic, and that
because these children read comic books, he argues that comic books must be a root cause of

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their psychological problems. That is indeed the issue Wertham establishes in his first chapter,
"Such Trivia As Comic Books," in an attempt to establish why he is attacking comic books. His
initial cases establish a connection to his readership's emotions by playing on the fact that these
adolescents that he studies all seemed to commit acts that had appeared in comic books. As
such, Wertham begins to establish enthymemes that were highly successful. I will return to
Wertham's enthymemes, but first I want to address how Wertham used children to further his
connection to his audience's emotions.

Quoting Children to Play on Pathos

In quoting what children have to say about comic books, Wertham plays strongly on his
audience's emotions. He forces his readers to imagine children, for example, learning crime
from Superman comic books: "It teaches 'crime does not pay'--but it teaches crime."31 The
image of a child, possibly even the child of the reader, learning how to commit crimes from
comic books would cause most parents to see comic books as a bad influence on their children;
at least that is what Wertham seems to bank on. Wertham quotes children in every chapter of his
book, upping the ante in order to play off of pathos: "Some are dirty, some give you bad
thoughts",32 Wertham quoted one child about a crime comic book. The fact is Wertham does not
give the context of what these children told him and most of the children he quotes possessed
psychological problems that he was treating, allowing Wertham to be able to put into the minds
of his readers that any child could be susceptible to the machinations of comic books. Also of
note is the fact that Wertham never gives the exact questions he asks the children he is
interviewing, begging the question of whether or not he was leading the children in order to get
the results he wanted. As Michael Uslan33 states, "Wertham had interviewed nearly one hundred

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juvenile delinquents at his clinic. Each one eventually admitted under prodding questioning by
the good doctor that at one time or another he had read a comic book." 34 Uslan goes on to state
that Wertham continuously stated that this "fact" pointed conclusively to comic books being a
clear-cut cause of juvenile delinquency, girls who read Wonder Woman are destined to become
Lesbians, and boys who read Batman will yearn for a homosexual relationship. 35 Uslan
continues: "[t]he secret clues were all right there in the panels of the comic books! How could
anyone miss them, wondered the Doctor? Robin was bare-legged, and the way he was drawn
running showed him spreading his legs."36 Indeed, Uslan points to the absurdity of this line of
reasoning and continuously points out that Wertham makes similar points throughout the entirety
of his book.
Wertham continuously plays off of children's "discussions" of comic books, leading his
readers to conflation of sinning children with reading comic books. He quotes a ten-year old
boy: "Some comic books lead us into sin."37 Just this quote alone goes a long way to proving
Wertham's argument to his audience that comic books have a detrimental effect on American
youth; Wertham relies on his established ethos and doesn't dwell on the fact that his sample is of
troubled children that he is using to make a generalization about the effects of comic books on
most children. Thus in quoting these children, bombarding the reader with case after case
concerning the corrupting influence of comic books, Wertham is able to "justify" his readers'
fears that comic book reading hurts children.
One of Wertham's primary arguments within this chapter is that comic books distort the
idea of love in the minds of children. He connects phrases he heard from children in describing
comic books such as "impure dress," "some have no clothes on," "indecency," "naked," "they are
not modest"; and combines these concepts with the perception of love within the mind of a child:

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"Many children have received a false concept of 'love,' thinking of it as something 'dirty.' They
lump together 'love, murder, and robbery.'"38 Thus, Wertham conflates adolescents' usage of
these terms with their understanding of love. In order for his statements to carry weight with his
readers, Wertham continuously reminds his audience that he is looking at adolescents, his
phrasing for children.

Enthymemes of Violence
In order to get to Wertham's cause-and-effect arguments against comic books, it is
imperative to first define enthymemes. William Covino defines enthymemes as "[a] claim that
invites the audience to supply missing premises[for] an audience that holds this premise, the
enthymeme is persuasive."39 Additionally, Edward P.J. Corbett defines enthymemes as "an
argumentative statement that contains a conclusion
and one of the premises, the other premise being
implied."40 Wertham begins using enthymemes by
addressing masturbation in adolescents. He states
that "masturbation is harmless enough. But when
accompanied by unhealthy--especially
sadomasochistic--fantasies it may become a serious
factor in (sic) maladjustment of children."41
Wertham implies that comic books lead to sadomasochism in adolescent Americans. He then quotes
a boy who was "turned on" by seeing a girl beaten
and nearly naked in comic books and posits that

Wertham argues that seeing women hurt in

comic books leads boys to want to reenact
these scenes and gives them sexual pleasure in
doing so.

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adolescents can also learn how to commit "burglaries, holdups."42 In effect, Wertham is arguing
monkey see, monkey do, which he attempts to support by supplying examples of crimes
committed by adolescents.
Wertham's first example is Ronnie, a boy Wertham describes as a "comic book addict"43
who watched as his friend molested a little girl. Wertham states that Ronnie got excited by this
and ran to his mother, asking her: "What's he going to do to her--choke her?"44 Wertham
connects this incident to what Ronnie and his friend saw in comic books. He argues that the
"suggestive" pictures in comic books appeal to a primitive, sadistic portion of a child's mind and
create a yearning to act out these images. 45 Burke argues the idea of identification, "[t]o identify
A with B is to make A 'consubstantial' with B."46 In other words, Wertham suggests that what an
adolescent sees in a comic book will be acted out in some way by that adolescent. In citing his
examples and then providing similar situations from comic books, Wertham is able to make
comic books appear as though they are the root cause, or at least, a root cause of deviancy in
adolescents. It is important to note that when recalling the example of Ronnie, Wertham never
mentions if Ronnie or his friend actually read comic books and so begs the question of whether
or not it was the comic books that contributed to this assault.
Violence towards women and girls is a theme Wertham argues runs rampant in comic
books. In one example, Wertham states that seeing a girl run over on the sidewalk led "John, a
boy of nine, [to] put this sequence into practice, and deliberately knocked over a girl with his
bicycle."47 Wertham states that John got excited by running over the girl and while John said
nothing about getting any sort of sexual thrill from the act, Wertham feels that the boy's response
says that he did: "I got a thrill out of it-a thrilling sensation"48 In stating such an example,
Wertham is leaving it up to his audience to fill in the missing premise of this enthymeme. He

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counts on his audience using John as an example of a perfectly normal child who was influenced
by a comic book to reenact a violent act. As such, Wertham leads his audience to equate John
with other healthy, well-adjusted children who upon seeing such an act of violence in a comic
book run the risk of reacting the same way John did.
A third example of a Wertham enthymeme is of a twelve-year old boy who attempted to
rape his nine-year old sister and threatened to break her arm if she told anyone. Wertham argues
that the boy must have gotten the notion from a comic book because "to break people's arms, or
to threaten to do so, is one of the comic-book devices. It is even represented on comic covers."49
Though he cites no comic books in particular, Wertham does supply images such as the one
above to help make his case. Combining these images with the case studies he gives lends strong
credence to his arguments and works strongly on the pathos of his readership. Wertham's overall
enthymeme then would look like: if a child sees a violent act in a comic book, then that child will
be compelled to reenact that act of violence. It is up to the reader(s) to make the enthymeme
work overall. As Covino states in his book The Elements of Persuasion, "the enthymeme need
not be explicitly framed by these terms; rather, the causal relationship of the premises to the
conclusion is most effective as a psychological construction supplied by the audience, rather than
a grammatical one supplied by the speaker."50 Part of what makes Wertham's enthymemes work
is the exposure of images like the one above to his audience of adults who fear that their children
will become like the ones Wertham discusses. Additionally, Wertham's "case studies" involving
children help to further his enthymemes by offering what he argues are concrete examples of his
premises in which Wertham is attempting to lead his audience to arriving at his conclusions. Just
looking at the picture above combined with the instances of violence Wertham describes; it is
easy to see how adults might be led to an irrational fear of comic books leading their children to

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stabbing people in the eyes with ice picks, for example. And so, even though he oversimplifies
his arguments, he is able to successfully lead his audience to seeing comic books as a threat. His
audience is taken in by his claims due to the fact that children are involved in his examples and
American parents were afraid that their children would become deviant.

Enthymemes of Sexual Deviancy

Besides sexual violence to girls, Wertham argued that sadism was a strong theme in
comic books. He argued that men, who had a desire to see women nude or barely dressed, tied
up and helpless, had its roots in comic books. Wertham supplies a few examples of what he feels
supports his claims that seeing women tied up in a comic book leads boys and young men to
desire to play out this urge in real life.
An image such as the cover to an issue of
Phantom Lady, he feels addresses this claim as well as
the desire to fondle women's breasts due to the
suggestion of her protruding nipples.51 The images in
comic books served as visual metaphors for these crimes
against woman and led to suggesting these ideas to
adolescents, producing in them a desire to play out these
situations. Thus, Wertham argues that adolescents took
these illustrations literally and that they incorporated

Citing this cover as an example, Wertham

provides this caption: "Sexual stimulation by
combining 'headlights' [breasts] with the sadist's
dream of tying up a woman" (insert 9, emphasis
Wertham)

them into their own desires. And so, the missing

premise in Wertham's enthymeme here is that boys who
see women bound up or tortured in a comic book will

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want to perform the same acts on women (or girls). When combined with these studies of
children and the few images Wertham supplied that he suggested were indicative of most comic
books, it is clear how Wertham was able to successfully lead his audience to such a conclusion.
In addition to sexual domination and torture, Wertham also argued that adolescent girls
were led into prostitution by "love comics."52 He calls upon the case of Annie, a ten-year old girl
who engaged in sex with men for money because she "absorbed fantasies of violence and sex"
from comic books.53 Wertham does not explicitly state if Annie confessed to getting ideas about
prostitution from comic books; he merely makes the assumption since Annie is a comic book
reader. He connects this further to comic books, attempting to strengthen his enthymeme, by
stating that this girl read "twenty comic books a day."54 John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen, in
their article "Analyzing the 'Critical' in Media Control Discourse," look at this issue that
Wertham brings up. They argue that Wertham "engaged in a lexical analysis" 55 when looking at
the titles of these "love comics"; titles such as Fallen Woman, Runaway Passion, Price of Pride,
Forbidden Love, My Foolish Mistake!, and Must I Reveal my Past? all served, as Wertham
argued, to denigrate women by showing them "as weak in character and willing sex objects,
often illustrated as seductive, even when they were in danger."56 By looking at the titles,
Wertham easily made his point as these titles do suggest a denigration of women. Combined
with cases such as Annie's, Wertham goes a long way in making a strong case in the eyes of his
readers, who were scared for their daughters becoming sexually mischievous or utterly
controlled by the sexual whims of men around them. He uses Annies case and the comic books
titles to lead his readers towards the missing premise of his enthymeme, that these love comics
can lead to prostitution. Though Wertham does not link a particular image from his book to
Annie's case, he seems to suggest that images such as that of the Phantom Lady above help to

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reinforce the image that he felt girls got of women from comic books. Wertham's enthymeme
here would thus suggest that girls who read romance comics and who see these images of women
in comics, run the risk of turning to prostitution. Here, Wertham seems to be implying that girls
get a distorted image of love and sex from these comics and it leads them to equate love and self
worth with acts of sex.
Finally, Wertham concludes the chapter with the idea that some comic books promote
homosexuality. In supplying adolescents with comic book images that he felt promoted
homosexual behavior during a key
developmental state in adolescent sexual
maturity, Wertham argues that such
images cause confusion in the minds of
the adolescents viewing them. Wertham
cites Batman and Robin as a main
example of homosexual behavior for
boys, while Wonder Woman is a prime
example of lesbianism for girls. Batman
and Robin, Wertham argues, promote the
"adolescent-with-adult of Ganymede-Zeus type of love relationship."57 The introduction of this
section of the chapter reestablishes his character by discussing the "psychopathology of sex" and
the "subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism which pervades the adventures of the mature 'Batman'
and his young friend 'Robin.'"58 After citing incidences within Batman comics that he states
suggest homosexual tendencies, such as Bruce Wayne and Dick Grayson sitting at a dinner table
together with Bruce in a robe, Wertham states that many of the homosexuals at the

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"Readjustment Center" read Batman as children. 59 Here, it is enough for Wertham that Batman
and Robin have homosexual fans and so must carry homosexual undertones themselves. Thus,
Wertham establishes Batman and Robin as a visual metaphor for homosexuality as well as an
appeal to the fears of his heterosexual adult readers that Batman and Robin can lead to their sons
into becoming homosexuals as adults. 60 The missing premise of the enthymeme Wertham wants
his audience to fill in here is the idea that since Batman and Robin are two males working and
living together without any sort of female influence, they must be homosexual, or at the very
least, promote homosexuality.
Wonder Woman is in Wertham's view, the "Lesbian counterpart of
Batman."61 He again establishes his character, his ethos, by first stating that the
"homosexual connotation of the Wonder Woman type of story is psychologically
unmistakable. The Psychiatric Quarterly deplored in an editorial the 'appearance
of an eminent child therapist as the implied endorser of a serieswhich portrays
extremely sadistic hatred of all males in a framework which is plainly Lesbian."62 By offering
up a quote from a psychiatric journal that supports his argument, Wertham lends credence to his
ethos and his argument for an early 1950's audience. Wertham is able to establish metaphors of
Wonder Woman as an anti-masculine figure due to her strength, suggesting that all strong
women who do not need a man to solve their problems are indeed metaphors for lesbianism. 63
Ingulsrud and Allen find Wertham's views of women as narrow minded, to say the least. They
argue that Wertham appeals to the image of what the gender role for women in the 1950s should
be, that of a dutiful wife or daughter who remains compliant with the man of the house and does
not acknowledge their own sexual identity. 64 Given the ideals of the time for women, pre-sexual
revolution, Wertham seems to speak to the pre-WWII ideals which the United States tried to hold

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onto after the war, when the soldiers returned home and wanted their jobs back from women.
As Corbett argues, "those who seek to persuade a select audience must apprise themselves of the
generally held opinions of that group."65 In this regard, there is little doubt as to why Wertham's
arguments in regards to women and "their place" were so "convincing" to his male readership
(and some more old-fashioned female readership as well). Wertham leads these readers to
conflate female strength and independence with lesbianism, again playing off societal fears of
homosexuality. And so, if girls read comic books like Wonder Woman, they run the risk of
becoming lesbians.

The Stifling of the Comic Industry

John E. Twomey writes that comic books were affected
by Wertham's book and by different community groups. In his
article, "The Citizens' Committee and Comic Book Control: A
study of Extragovernmental Restraint," Twomey states that the
controversy over comic books led to the "appointment of the
Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency of the
Senate Committee on the Judiciary," which investigated the
link between comic books and juvenile delinquency. 66 This committee, among others across the
country, was concerned with, as Wright states, "the harmful effects ofcomic booksin the
cases of straightforward emulation..."67 A significant portion of the adult public greatly accepted
Wertham's ethos, pathos, enthymemes, and metaphors and felt comic books needed to be
censored, despite the fact that, as Wright states, Wertham misread comic books.68 While

Flores 19
Werthams critiques did speak to some real issues in comics, the idea that the influence of comic
books was so strong on children is problematic.
The Senate's investigation lasted three days, 21 April 1954 to 23 April 1954, and
included testimony from Wertham as well as a few comic book publishers. Mike Gold, a comic
book writer and editor, states in the introduction to 1950s: The Greatest Stories Ever Told, that
these hearings caused many comic book companies to go under. In order to save the companies
that survived, the remaining publishers formed the Comics Association of America in order to
self-censor comic books to keep them "suitable" for adolescent readers. A seal of approval had
to accompany comic books in order for most outlets to sell them and the creative restrictions
placed on writers and illustrators made them feel hampered by the restrictions.69 Through his use
of anti-comic book rhetoric, Frederic Wertham was able to strike a major blow against the comic
book industry by suggesting, amongst other things, that comic books promoted sexual deviancy
and sexual violence amongst adolescents. Corbett seems to articulate best why Wertham's
enthymemes worked in the 1950's as well as why similar arguments made by critics such as
Anderson et al. work on video games today. Corbett states that "[an enthymeme] often
suppresses some of the links in the chain of argument because the audience is impatient with, or
incapable of attending to, the kind of closely reasoned, full-scale argument associated with
formal logic. And the audience can be satisfied with probable conclusions because it recognizes
the contingent nature of the things that rhetoric deals with."70 So in looking at how Wertham
used enthymemes in his anti-comic book rhetoric, Wertham was able to play off of his audience's
desire for clear-cut answers. Parents and legislators were looking for a convenient scapegoat to
attribute the rise in juvenile delinquency and Wertham was able to supply one as long as his
audience did not look too closely at his arguments.

Flores 20

Violent Video Game Rhetoric or History Repeats Itself?

With recent mass shootings including the Colorado shooting at the premiere of The Dark
Knight Rises as well as the school shooting in
Newtown, Connecticut, discourse within
American society continues to look for
scapegoats to find reasons behind such
heinous violence. The Sandy Hook shooting
in particular lends itself to the work of Craig
A. Anderson, Douglas A. Gentile and
Katherine E. Buckley, who in their book
Violent Video Game Effects on Children and

Video games such as Mortal Kombat with its "Fatality"

system that allowed players to "kill" their opponents
resulted in heavy scrutiny of the entire video game industry
in the 1990's.

Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, state that "[p]ublic attention and debate about
violent video games has been one of the few positive outcomes of the horrendous spate of school
shootings by boys with a history of playing violent video games"71 While the Sandy Hook
shooter was an adult, one of the outcomes of the shooting was a meeting between Vice President
Joe Biden and representatives of the Video Game Industry to discuss violence in video games.
Similarly, after the shootings at Columbine High School in Colorado, one of the activities that
the shooters engaged in, according to media reports, was playing first person shooter video
games; it is believed this was one of the activities the two boys engaged in within days of the
shootings and has been critiqued as an activity that may have inspired the two high school
seniors. Like comic books before them, video games are a form of media that is seen as a cause

Flores 21
for violence amongst the youth of America. As such, studies have been conducted to "prove"
that video games, if not a cause, are at least a significant contributing factor to violent behavior
in children and teens. Also of note, like comic books, these studies tend to lead to the
involvement of government agencies in
investigating the claims made by experts.
Anderson et al. states that "[a]s early as 2000
the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation
included 'fascination with violence-filled
entertainment' as one of the warning signs
characteristic of school shooters. More
directly relevant to video games, this report
noted that the high-risk student 'spends
inordinate amounts of time playing video
games with violent themes, and seems more
interested in the violent images than in the
game itself."72 As discussed previously,
Wertham makes similar arguments
concerning comic books. What is important
here is that after the comic book industry lost

Anderson et al. rely more on logical arguments and case studies

to make their arguments. The book's cover contains the only
video game image.

its media attention in regards to violence and

its effects on youth culture in America, video games gained that attention, which like comic
books, came in waves. Beginning in the early 1990's and the release of violent video games such
as Mortal Kombat, attention began to garner around the video game industry, even resulting in

Flores 22
congressional hearings similar to those surrounding comic books in the 1950's. Similarly, it was
the video game industry that received the brunt of the critical critique, resulting in a rating
system not unlike the ones already in place for motion pictures and comic books. This system
came about within the most prominent wave of video game criticism, yet with every new
example of violence in schools, video games come under fire. While each new wave of critique
seems to be shorter and less pervasive in the public eye, these waves do keep occurring. Within
American society, there seems to be a need to place blame on media forms for increases in
violence among children.
As mentioned above, video games are a media form that has encountered similar attacks.
Like Wertham with comic books, Anderson et al. argues that violent video games lead to an
increase in aggression in adolescents. As their critiques illustrate, this kind of rhetorical analysis
seems to be cyclical with every new form of media. Additionally, Anderson et al. argue that
exposure to violent video games seems to stir feelings of aggression and arousal in their
audience; they even suggest through their use of language that violent video games seem to
evoke similar sexual stimulation to the violent comic books that Wertham denounced. Anderson
et al. state that "[t]here is evidence that violent video games result in increased psychological
arousal" which leads to players feeling "'spent'" afterwards.73 And like Wertham, Anderson et
al. suggests the connection violent video game audiences seem to make between sex and
violence with their choice of language. The experience of playing these violent video games is
an experience that once completed, requires players' bodies to rest, "to return to baseline."74
While Anderson et al. establish a more credible ethos by giving detailed accounts of three studies
they conducted which looked at violent video games effects on elementary school students and
up through college (even going so far as to state that the elementary school children were not

Flores 23
exposed to any game rated T for teen and up), they still boil down their final discussions to a
matter of arousal within the violent video gaming audience.
Moreover, while Wertham's tone and language suggests an animosity towards comic
books, Anderson et al. seem more interested in making sure parents and society as a whole make
responsible choices as to the level of violence children of different ages are exposed to in their
media choices. Their book was published in 2007, more than a decade after the Entertainment
Software Rating Board (ESRB) was established and began rating video games. As such,
Anderson et al. seem more focused on educating parents in the proper use of the ratings system
as well as the attention parents should pay to their children's exposure to violent video games.
Also of note is the fact that, while Wertham included an insert containing images from comic
books, Anderson et al. only use a photo of a video game box on their cover. Instead of pictures
from video games within their text, Anderson et al. use figures and charts to represent concepts
and data.75 In this way, Anderson et al.'s charts and graphs work to further their professional
character among their readers by appealing to logos instead of pathos.
Additionally, Anderson et al. give detailed accounts of their studies, including what they
expected to find within each study and what they actually found. Despite the more in-depth
coverage of their research however, they still end up attributing violence to video games. 76
Anderson et al.s rhetoric is tied to their results, stating such findings as adolescents who play
a greater number of violent video games hold more pro-violent attitudes, have more hostile
personalities, are less forgiving, believe violence to be more typical, and behave more
aggressively in their everyday lives.77 As such, while the ethos of the critiques has evolved, the
kinds of rhetoric put forth remains similar.78

Flores 24
Comparing Wertham's rhetoric to Anderson et al., it seems evident that Wertham counted
on his readers taking his arguments at face value and that his audience would complete his
enthymematic arguments to a desired outcome. In contrast, Anderson et al. do not simply state
that if children play violent video games they will be more likely to commit violent acts, but
rather that the potential for violence is heightened and it is up to parents not to work to ban these
video games altogether, but to be aware of the video games their children are playing. And yet,
Anderson et al. does seem to suggest that adolescents that play violent video games and indeed
anyone who plays violent video games is not truly immune from the effects of media violence
exposure.79 But while they repeat a lot of the same kinds of suggestive language of violent
media yielding violent effects on media consumers, Anderson et al. end their book with a list of
suggestions geared towards parents and responsible video game consumption as well as a list of
helpful websites dedicated to answering parents questions about violent video games. In the
end, Anderson et al. call for parents and society to take charge concerning the level of violence
adolescents are exposed to and determine what is acceptable for a particular age group as well as
a need for the psychological experts and the video game industry to join together to "create a
voluntary educational and parental control system that truly works."80 Their call for action is
focused on making sure parents and society as a whole see the ESRB ratings as more than just a
letter on the package and more of a rating of appropriateness for the age of the user.
In contrast, Wertham keeps his focus geared towards the comic books as the cause. He
states that "[w]e pretend that hostility and destructiveness are ingrained in the child and need
expression, and fail to recognize what is instilled in him from outside."81 Here, Wertham
suggests that the violence and deviancy he's seen in children is resulting from their exposure to
violent comic books and suggests that there are no other factors at work. Unlike Anderson et al.,

Flores 25
Wertham is quick to blame the medium before other possible factors and never addresses how a
lack of parent interest, among other possible issues, might play just as much if not more into the
violence the children in his "case studies" committed. And more importantly, Wertham believes
that the issues he has outlined can only be alleviated when "[violent] comic booksgo, and with
them all they stand for and all that sustains them."82 And so by eliminating violent comic books,
Wertham suggests that juvenile delinquency will dissipate, if not disappear.

Conclusion
These arguments concerning different media forms detrimental effects on adolescents
repeat over and over again, since the emergence of Dime Novels in the 1800's. Wertham focused
on attacking the medium itself and attributed most, if not all of his findings to the media.
Anderson et al., in contrast, argue that while violent video games do indeed affect the audience
playing them, the games are but one contributing factor and it is up to parents and society to
better regulate what children play at what age. And while Wertham relies on his ethos and the
pathos of his audience and how they respond to all of these "first-hand" examples of children
being violent and the connection that violence has to comic books, Anderson et al. rely on ethos,
pathos, and logos in that they supply not only pathetic appeals involving children within their
studies, but back up their findings with research results. As such, the rhetoric has evolved since
Wertham's era in that Anderson et al. establish clear credibility. But, the underlying argument of
violent media's effect on children does persist through time as instances of youth violence remain
prominent in the media.
In times of fear and distrust of its own youth, history has shown through the critique of
dime novels, film, radio, comic books, television, video games and now online media, that the

Flores 26
majority of Americans tend to show distrust for these forms of media in regards to their effects
on adolescents and use them as a scapegoat for the reason why youth culture seems so defiant,
deviant, and violent. With skilled rhetoricians like Fredric Wertham who know how to play to
this audience, these media forms will continue to come under fire through the use of enthymemes
that may be faulty, but tend to work because they appeal to the search of many Americans for a
reason behind "troubled youth."

Flores 27
Endnotes

Amy Kiste Nyberg, "Comic Book Censorship in the United States. Pulp Demons: International
Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign, Ed. John A. Lent (Madison/Teanick: Associated University
Press, Inc., 1999) 43.
2

Frederic Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (New York/Toronto: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1955)

Ronald D. Cohen "The Delinquents: Censorship and Youth Culture in Recent U. S. History." History of
Education Society 37, no. 3 (1997),231
4

Frederic Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent (New York/Toronto: Rinehart & Company, Inc., 1955), 1.

In discussing adolescents, Wertham seems to mean children between the ages of 5 and 14; he switches
between the phrases "adolescents" and children quite often.
6

Nyberg, Comic Book Censorship in the United States, 171.

Ibid., 171. Of interest here is that in the decades that have followed Wertham's assault, comic books have
garnered respect within academic circles while video games as well are beginning to garner attention within the
academic community (and not just from a design perspective).
8

Ibid., 172.

Seen more as a cause for juvenile delinquency in the second wave of critique, it would seem that comic
books garnered more attention the second time around due to an increase attention that parents gave to the issue.
10

Jason Barnosky, "The Violent Years: Responses to Juvenile Crime in the 1950s," Palgrave Macmillan
Journals 38, no. 3 (2006), http://www.jstor.org/stable/3877070 .
11

Ibid.

12

Kenneth Burke, "A Rhetoric of Motives," The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to
the Present, 2nd ed. Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston/New York: Bedford/St Martin's, 2001), 1324.
13

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 175 (emphasis mine).

14

Burke, "A Rhetoric of Motives, 1325.

15

There were other critics who addressed the rise in youth crime and its apparent connection to comic book
reading. According to Cohen, Marynia Farnham was one such critic. Her book, The Adolescent, appeared in 1951
and stated that adolescents had "become a problem," as Cohen states (254). According to Cohen, Farnham felt that
the term adolescence was tantamount to misbehavior. Though not all voices were so radical, many felt that the
youth in America needed to be watched over carefully and that the forms of media that adolescents had access to
needed to be vigilantly censored for any material that could cause deviant behavior.
16

Aristotle. "Rhetoric." The Rhetorical Tradition: Readings from Classical Times to the Present, 2nd ed.
Ed. Patricia Bizzell and Bruce Herzberg (Boston/New York: Bedford/St Martin's, 2001), 182.
17

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, v.

18

Cohen, The Delinquents, 254.

19

Ibid., 254.

Flores 28

20

Ramona Caponegro. "Where the 'Bad' Girls Are (Contained): Representations of the 1950s Female
Juvenile Delinquent in Children's Literature and Ladies' Home Journal." Children's Literature Association. (2009).
21

Caponegro, "Where the 'Bad' Girls Are (Contained), 313 (emphasis mine). She states that Hine attributes
these concerns to "three main causes: worry about the family disruptions that had occurred during World War II;
concern over the increase in popular media forms, such as television and comic books; and fears about an expanding
anti-authority youth culture that grew out of increased high school attendance" (313).
22

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 174 (emphasis mine).

23

Cohen, The Delinquents, 251.

24

Ibid., 253.

25

Bradford W Wright, Comic Book Nation: The Transformation of Youth Culture in America,
(Baltimore/London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 86.
26

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 177.

27

Ibid., 395.

28

Cohen, "The Delinquents", 253.

29

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 174. This is one of many examples Wertham uses to show the
deviant influence comic books have on children without stating whether or not this child read comic books. While it
is true that several of the children Wertham studied read comic books, he does not state that every child he brings up
read comic books.
30

Ibid., 174-75.

31

Ibid., 176. Of note here is that Wertham never addresses ideas of right versus wrong in comic books like
Superman nor does he illustrate how "crime doesn't pay." For Wertham, it's enough that criminal activity is
portrayed in comic books.
32

Ibid., 177.

33

A former Instructor at Illinois State University as well as a rabid Batman fan.

34

Michael Uslan, The Boy Who Loved Batman: A Memoir, California: Chronicle Books, LLC, 2011, 43.

35

Ibid., 43.

36

Ibid., 43.

37

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 177.

38

Ibid., 177.

39

40

William A. Covino, The Elements of Persuasion, (Boston/London: Allyn & Bacon, 1998), 10-11.

Edward P. J. Corbett, Classical Rhetoric for the Modern Student, 3rd ed. (Oxford/New York: Oxford
University Press, 1990), 60.

Flores 29

41

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 177. Interestingly, in a time of "perceived" conservatism, Wertham
states that "masturbation is harmless enough" when, even today, masturbation (while not necessarily sinful) is still
note discussed or at least discussed in hushed tones.
42

Ibid., 178.

43

Even though Wertham never states what comic books Ronnie read and how much time he dedicated to
reading comic books.
44

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 179.

45

Ibid., 179.

46

Burke, "A Rhetoric of Motives, 1326.

47

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 179.

48

Ibid., 179.

49

Ibid., 180. Of note here, the images Wertham uses from comic books primarily come from one subgenre, the crime-comic books. These comics were equated by Wertham to be a standard of the industry, implying
that most comic books portrayed the same acts of violence and deviancy.
50

Covino, The Elements of Persuasion, 11.

51

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 179; 183.

52

Ibid., 186.

53

Ibid., 186.

54

Ibid., 187.

55

John E. Ingulsrud and Kate Allen, "Analyzing the 'Critical' in Media Control Discourse." Critical
Approaches to Discourse Analysis across Disciplines. 3.1 (2009), http://cadaad.net/ejournal.
56

Ibid., 86.

57

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 190.

58

Ibid., 190.

59

Ibid., 191.

60

Ibid., 191-92.

61

Ibid., 192.

62

Ibid., 192-93.

63

Ibid., 193.

64

Ingulsrud and Allen, "Analyzing the 'Critical'", 86-87.

65

Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, 61.

Flores 30

66

John E. Twomey, "The Citizens' Committee and Comic-Book Control: A Study of Extragovernmental
Restraint." Law and Contemporary Problems, 20, no.4 (1955): 623.
67

Wright, Comic Book Nation, 159.

68

Ibid.,162

69

Mike Gold, "Introduction." 1950s: The Greatest Stories Ever Told. Ed. Mike Gold, (New York: DC
Comics. 1990), 7-8.
70

Corbett, Classical Rhetoric, 61.

71

Craig A. Anderson, Douglas A. Gentile, and Katherine E. Buckley, Violent Video Game Effects on
Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy, (Oxford/New York: Oxford University Press,
2007), 3.
72

Anderson et al., Violent Video Game Effects, 3-4 (emphasis mine).

73

Ibid., 148-9.

74

Ibid., 148.

75

Anderson et.al., Violent Video Game Effects, 43. Throughout their book, Anderson et al. show their
results through figures, tables, and graphs. In this way, they come off as more adept in their research methods and
more credible to their readers. Their case studies are backed up by quantitative data.
76

Anderson et al. detailed accounts of their studies and findings establish a stronger ethos than Werthams
case studies. It maybe that when it comes to critiquing media these days, enthymemes and anecdotes do not carry
the same weight as they did in the 1950s.

Flores 31

77

Anderson et al., Violent Video Game Effects, 83.

78

It is important to note that Anderson et al. do not give any examples of any of their studies participants
actually committing violent acts; they only suggest that violent video games increases violent impulses within
players the more they play.
79

Anderson et al., Violent Video Game Effects, 84.

80

Ibid., 163.

81

Wertham, Seduction of the Innocent, 393.

82

Ibid., 395.

Flores 32

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Flores 33

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