Wertham's Ghost, Part 1
by The Old Maid
Why does our civilization give to the child not its best but its worst, in paper, in language, in art, in ideas? —Fredric Wertham
Every comic-book reader has been influenced by Dr. Wertham whether or not they know his name. It was Wertham who wrote Seduction of the Innocent (1954) and testified in the Senate that comic books should be outlawed. The Comic Code seal of approval was the industry’s attempt to placate the government. Wertham remained unimpressed. He insisted that the new comics were as bad as the old, and they still sold age-inappropriate advertisements for patent medicines (body-builder or diet potions, breast-enhancement products) and weapons, including switchblades and guns. Hence his crusade for a legal ban.
Popular history tends to dismiss Dr. Wertham as a quixotic figure who didn’t "get" the comic industry. In fact, he was one of the unsung heroes of the early Civil Rights movement:
Quote:
"During a distinguished career at some of the nation’s leading hospitals, he fought tirelessly to bring the first psychiatric clinic to Harlem, one that served its patients free of charge. He had become friends with Clarence Darrow when he proved himself one of the few psychiatrists anywhere willing to testify for indigent black defendants, and his research and testimony would play a crucial role in the landmark Brown vs. Board of Education case that ended segregation in public schools. For his time, Dr. Wertham was a broad-minded, tolerant, and idealistic advocate for poor and troubled children—and it was from his idealism that his worst excesses would follow." (American Heritage, July/August 2001, pp. 20-21) |
Like Herbert Hoover, Wertham was a man whose successes changed the world. Yet when popular history mentions his name, that one failure is all it remembers.
What the Internet was (and is) without filters and parental supervision, the comics were in Wertham’s day. Lazy parents … lazy parents are the same now as always. Just as parents nowadays assume that animation equals child-friendly, so the parents of yesteryear assumed that comic books meant comic strips (a very different and heavily censored medium) or coloring books. They were wrong. Anyone could print anything, and did:
Quote:
"It is impossible to deny much of Wertham’s indictment of the medium. Many comics had begun to feature Grand Guignol depictions of severed heads and limbs and graphic shootings and stabbings. The violence was heavily flavored with sex, and nonwhites were depicted as semihuman. Some contained detailed plans for committing crimes" (ibid, p. 20) |
Wertham challenged lazy parents to wake up and join his cause. Parents didn’t read comic books. Almost all children read them. Comic books were a new medium, financed primarily by children, and those children were unsupervised. While all of Wertham’s examples were true, the ones he published were chosen for shock value, to force lazy parents to re-examine their assumptions and their actions.
Finally, Wertham expressed frustration with a child-welfare system he viewed as outdated and indifferent. "I have gone over many psychiatric charts of children taken in hospitals, in clinics and by consultants of private agencies. And I have often been astonished how few quotes, if any, they contain, of what the children themselves actually say" (Wertham p. 52). He interviewed children. Many times he was the first or only professional who listened to them. Without a second opinion, though, this meant that if he ever made a mistake, he would not necessarily know it.
Wertham himself admitted there were good comics, and that comic books alone had not turned an entire generation of children into delinquents. He did believe they tipped the scales. Comic books introduced new ideas; they normalized those ideas; they rationalized those ideas. Wertham believed that parents and governments who let their children read comic books were probably neglecting those children in other ways. Even superhero comics were suspect: Wertham stated that children wouldn’t have been attracted to escapist fantasies if they had a better life at home.
Those readers interested in learning more about Fredric Wertham and the comic industry may wish to read Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code, by Amy Kiste Nyberg. Wertham’s book is harder to obtain but worth the effort. Wertham was a brain physiologist; a writer of medical textbooks (his The Brain as an Organ set the standard for its day); a medical anthropologist; a forensic psychiatrist; a social reformer; and an outspoken critic of all media. It is a snapshot of the mind of a relentless and complicated man.
Superhero comics were among the most wholesome entertainment of the genre. Yet Wertham (and the unnamed California doctor from whom he obtained the rest of his research) concluded that the superheroes contributed heavily to the emotional problems of his underage patients. Why? Because the patients said it. That, or Wertham believed they said it, which is not quite the same thing.
Superman, for example, supposedly promoted violence. Complaints about Superman are scattered throughout the book, but in total complaints he earned more ink than any other superhero. (Admit it. You thought Batman held that distinction.) Superman attacked the same people again and again, while he himself remained immune to pain or punishment. The more "super" he was, the better the crowd liked it. The message Wertham got from Superman is that bullying is fun and socially acceptable. Also, the Kryptonian was identified and adored as the rightful heir of his superior race, a term Wertham found chilling.
Wertham’s four pages on Batman is his longest single diatribe on any superhero, and anchors the chapter listed as "I want to be a sex maniac!" Batfans may have heard the charges: that Batman turned Robin gay and would turn readers gay. No one was more surprised than the Batman creators themselves. Surely they would know what was going on in Bruce Wayne’s mind, but they didn’t know this. How did Wertham come to this conclusion? He based it on the following items. (All quotes are from Seduction.)
- Bruce Wayne was rich. Several of Wertham’s patients said they wanted to live with Bruce and be rich too. "It is like a wish dream of two homosexuals living together" (p. 190). Here Wertham proposed that Bruce’s money was an aphrodisiac.
- Alfred served lavish meals and kept Wayne Manor filled with freshly cut flowers. This is called stereotyping. So we will address this point immediately and say that a person’s attitude toward flowers or breakfast is not a gender-based or gender-defining characteristic.
- Batman and Robin spent a lot of time caged, trapped or tied up while the other tried to save him. "Like the girls in other stories, Robin is sometimes held captive …. They constantly rescue each other from violent attacks by an unending number of enemies. The feeling is conveyed that we men must stick together because there are so many villainous creatures who have to be exterminated. They lurk not only under every bed but also behind every star in the sky" (p. 190-1). Wertham argued that danger could be stimulating, and that in the wrong circumstances that stimulation could take a sexual turn. He called such stories "erotic rescue fantasies." They were intended, he said, to make Robin more devoted to Batman than to anyone else on earth.
- Bruce and Dick must be homosexual because there were no women in their home. The underlying assumption was that these were sexually active characters and that, lacking appropriate outlets for their passionate urges (i.e. wives) they were compelled to sate those urges with each other. In response let the record show that Robin had been born a boy because the creators didn’t want their moral crusader living alone with an adolescent girl. They were trying to avoid even the appearance of wrongdoing. They had not anticipated this alternate interpretation.
- Bruce and Dick had to be homosexual because the only women in their lives were criminals like Catwoman. Very different from the above. Here Batman stood accused of two counts of misogyny. On one count, it was implied that the horrible women in Batman’s life would turn anybody gay. On the other count, it was implied that if a good woman ever did visit Batman’s world she wouldn’t live very long. Yes, it is true that Batman rarely associated with any person, male or female, who had no connection to a crime (and therefore no connection to the plot). It should be noted, though, that Wertham had not invented this complaint the day he read his first Batman book. It was a pre-existing plank in his reformist campaign. Wertham loathed all media for their portrayals of women. Crime stories ranked among the worst offenders. If good women became victims, empowered women became criminals, and all women characters were reckless or stupid, then to Wertham’s mind the solution was to stop putting them in crime stories. This in turn could kill the crime story genre – which was exactly what he wanted.
- Bruce Wayne wore pajamas and dressing gown around his house; he sat on the same sofa or couch as his youthful ward; Dick often sat at Bruce’s bedside when his guardian was injured or ill. This point is hard to address because family norms are influenced by ethnic and/or cultural bias. They’re also a product of their time. It’s easy for a Batfan to ask why Bruce cannot wear pajamas in the privacy of his own home, but that’s an ethnocentric attitude. Even in the 21st Century many families insist that their members be fully dressed before they mingle or meet at the breakfast table. There were even more such families in Wertham’s day. In any event Wertham considered Bruce’s behavior immodest and inappropriate because the little boy was a guest in Bruce’s home, not a blood relative. See the next point.
- Robin had no pants on. This does not prove Batman and Robin are gay. Proves they’re idiots, though. Wertham’s patients commented that Robin looked like a girl. Why? Because he had no pants on. The problem was not that Robin dressed like a girl (he certainly did not; girls wore more clothes than he wore), but that he was undressed like a girl. That is, Robin presumably began with all his clothes then systematically lost them. By definition a sexual object must lose her clothing as the story progresses; it illustrates her degradation. The fact that the civilian character, Dick Grayson, knew perfectly well what constituted polite dress only made the characters look more guilty. Robin trespassed on the comic-book formula that only victims/sexual objects had no pants on.
Quote:
"One young homosexual during psychotherapy brought us a copy of Detective Comics, with a Batman story. He pointed out a picture of ‘The Home of Bruce and Dick,’ a house beautifully landscaped, warmly lighted and showing the devoted pair side by side, looking out a picture window. When he was eight this boy had realized from fantasies about comic-book pictures that he was aroused by men. At the age of ten or eleven, ‘I found my liking, my sexual desires, in comic books. I think I put myself in the position of Robin. I did want to have relations with Batman. The only suggestion of homosexuality may be that they seem to be so close to each other. I remember the first time I came across the page mentioning the Secret Bat Cave. The thought of Batman and Robin living together and possibly having sex relations came to my mind. You can almost connect yourself with the people. I was put in the position of the rescued rather than the rescuer. I felt I’d like to be loved by someone like Batman or Superman.’" |
Excuse me? Batman or Superman? We know the speaker did not propose that Superman turned him gay. But if Batman and Robin had never existed, could the speaker have had the same feelings and problems? It’s possible this interview included "leading" questions and answers of which we are unaware. The speaker may have been struggling with his sexual orientation, but it does not follow that the superheroes have changed theirs.
Loneliness, fear, and a desire to feel safe and loved are not gender-based or gender-defining characteristics. The problem is the introduction of sexual attraction into the caregiver-and-child context. Any such contact, under any circumstances, is unacceptable. This is why Wertham argued that Batman had turned Robin gay instead of, say, choosing a lover of consenting age who was already homosexual (though Wertham wouldn’t have liked that either). He proposed that the Bat selected an impoverished youth, enticed him with wealth and adventures, and then seduced him with sensual behavior. Batman had taught him that it was normal for caregivers to behave in a seductive manner. Only after Robin internalized this lesson would Robin reciprocate. Therefore if Robin could be taught, so could the audience.
In one sense Wertham was correct: the comics may have helped patients find words for their troubles. He then argued that comic books caused such troubles. However, this meant Wertham had to convince people that if comic books did not exist, more of his patients could have grown up heterosexual.
Wertham’s case against non-superhero comics was surprisingly strong, but his case against Batman was weak. (The opposite of public perception.) Even so, the charges stuck. How could the Bat mythos respond to this attack? Well, it could take the direct approach. (More on this later.) Instead it took the indirect approach – and dug such a deep hole for itself that Bats still struggles to climb out to this day.
"Oh, Batman, I’m afraid you’ll just have to hold me," trills the Batwoman (Batman #159, November 1963). "I’m still shaky after fighting Clayface, and you’re soooo strong!" Kathy Kane had strategy, no doubt about it: if the man is reluctant, wait until he’s dazed and can hardly stand and then pounce on him. And so ends another episode in the new Bat soap opera.
Meet Kathy Kane (Batwoman) and Betty Kane (the Bat-Girl), two female leads supposedly created to fight crime, but in fact intended by the publishers to meet three goals:
1. To attract a younger audience to the Batman titles.
2. To attract more girls into that audience.
3. To socialize (i.e. lighten up) the Batman they worked for.
These are marginal reasons to create a character. Certainly the timing couldn’t have been worse. Television had arrived to threaten printed media. More comic characters now competed for fewer readers. Also, the Kanes were created after Wertham’s campaign. This meant they were expected to address his complaints (which was something the leading men should have done themselves). Therefore the socialization of Batman and Robin included proving that the men were heterosexual—and the burden shifted to the Kanes to be woman enough for the job.
Les Daniels, author of Batman: The Complete History, points out a flaw in this strategy:
Quote:
"When Bruce Wayne was mistakenly jailed, [Batwoman] took over as Robin’s boss, and it wasn’t much later that Dick Grayson had a story-length nightmare, immortalized on the cover of Batman #122 (March 1959), concerning ‘The Marriage of Batman and Batwoman.’ The happy couple are depicted leaving the church arm in arm, while Robin stands on the sidelines and worries, ‘Gosh! What’ll become of me now?’ Whether or not the creators were attempting to reassure everyone that Batman was heterosexual, this story may have succeeded in creating anxieties in boys about females being the enemies of friendship and loyalty" (p. 92). |
A more blatant casualty was honesty. Batman had a problem (an enamoured woman he didn’t want), and he decided the best way to handle it was to lie. "In Batman #153 (February 1963), Batwoman responded to an apparently impending doom by pledging her love to Batman, and he reciprocated, only to declare his comments a white lie once the danger was past" (ibid, p. 92). Why would Batwoman want such a man? These antics made it hard for readers to root for either one of them.
Robin fared worst of all. His ordeal in Batman #144 (December 1961) proved so unforgettable that it has been immortalized in the collection Batman in the Sixties.
The plot is straightforward. Robin dreads the very sight of Bat-Girl. She likes to hug and kiss him. When he is informed that he must spend a whole week alone with her, Robin gasps. Bat-Girl rejoices. Let the smooching begin! Suddenly Robin can endure no more. He is sick of feeling like a hunted animal (he’s only twelve). What is the fastest, surest way to get rid of her?
Robin could say the first thing that comes to his mind, namely, that he’s at that age when girls still have cooties. This might prompt Betty to declare, "I will wait for you," which is not what he wants. He could be brutally honest: that he doubts he will ever want her, at any age, and must list all her character flaws as proof of her unsuitability. This would work but would hurt her feelings. Worse, it would not make her vanish; as far as the characters know, they will be co-workers for life. Therefore Robin pretends to be flattered but unavailable. He tells Betty that his heart belongs to another. This makes the Bat-Girl so jealous that she goes home in tears.
Later Bat-Mite visits to comfort her. He likes Betty Kane. He believes he can make Robin like her. What has The Other Woman got that Bat-Girl hasn’t got? And so the two set out on a series of misadventures designed to make Robin notice her. Robin notices, all right, because their harebrained schemes get the Bat-Girl kidnapped.
Robin realizes that Bat-Girl will continue trying to impress him, even if she endangers innocent bystanders or herself or him. He must convince her that she is no match for the other woman. Only then will she become discouraged and quit trying. So Robin introduces her to her rival: a statue of Justice holding her scales. This is the woman who has stolen his heart.
Quote:
"You see, Batman has often told me that his crime-fighting career is a full-time job, and that he can't risk a big romance now -- not until he's ready to retire. If Batman can make that kind of sacrifice, I guess I'm man enough to do it too." |
To Robin’s horror the adults interfere. They "announce that Robin is too young to make such a decision and will therefore be obliged to endure Bat-Girl’s unwanted advances while the adults look on approvingly" (Daniels p. 94). ("Oh, Robin! Then it’s all right for me to kiss you now!" And she does … after putting his burning face in a headlock.) Daniels concludes dryly, "If a comic book could actually turn people gay as Dr. Wertham had suggested seven years earlier, this one might have had the power to do it."
Let us return to Wertham’s allegation that Batman and Robin themselves were gay. The comics tried to meet this allegation indirectly, by giving Batman and Robin female love interests. The attempt failed. The men did not want the specific women created for them. So what did the indirect approach do?
First of all it robbed Batwoman and Bat-Girl of the few triumphs they did earn, by reducing their accomplishments to a form of courtship display. While their peers studied piano and dance to attract and please a man, they fought crime to attract and please a man. Thus their motives ceased to be to fight crime for its own sake.
The indirect approach also legitimized Wertham’s once-groundless accusation that newer characters were created to serve as sexual outlets for the older ones. It implied that Batman should be expected to utilize any partner, adult or minor, male or female, who happened to cross his field of vision. Therefore any partner created to work with Batman ought to consider this "service" part of the job description.
These problems made it easy for the "New Look" of 1964 to discard the Kanes without debate or explanation.
The Barbara Gordon character owes her existence to the Sixties live series. The show was high camp and proud of it. When it became a runaway hit, the television network asked DC Comics to create a Batgirl so the series could broaden its appeal by including her. The result was an adult Batgirl, Jim Gordon’s daughter Barbara.
Barbara was a transitional figure between girly stereotypes and Grrl Power. She tended to scream for no reason. She still decided that kissing Robin full on the mouth was the best way to win an argument with him (Batman Family #1). (Robin retains just enough of that flummoxed run-for-the-hills instinct to make this believable.) Batgirl fussed over her appearance, but did it to please herself rather than a man. Consider how the 1968 comic Batgirl’s Costume Cut-ups! (Detective #371) winks at the inconsistencies in the character. Batgirl has judo and karate skills, but the plot shows her repeatedly freshening up while Batman and Robin fight for their lives. At one point Batgirl drops out of a brawl to inspect a run in her tights. Incredibly the criminals stop pummelling Batman and Robin to whistle at her exposed leg. The heroes then dispatch the villains easily. Robin notes glumly that this distraction was the best help Batgirl has provided yet.
Part of Batgirl’s problem was that she acted younger and sillier than Barbara-the-librarian. She had no real reason to become an outlaw (for that is what vigilantes are); she was bringing her schoolgirl fantasies to life. The other part was the persistent use of the character to inject male-female tension into a storyline. Her role alternated between battle-of-the-sexes ("anything you can do, I can do better") and socializing (lightening up) the men in her new life. For example, in Detective #369 Batgirl teams up with Robin for a week. Enforcing her temporary role as senior partner, Batgirl makes Robin ride in her cycle’s sidecar, which she has thoughtfully monogrammed for him. (Shades of the Sixties series and its carefully labelled Bat Cave.) Batman groans that Robin has discovered girls. He’s annoyed. They have work to do. In fact this story had nothing to do with romance, but the idea of a Dick/Barbara relationship had to be mentioned whether relevant or not.
Note for future reference: in Batman Family #1 Barbara states plainly that she likes Dick Grayson because he’s "not like that guardian of his, that worthless playboy Bruce Wayne." In other words, Barbara does not like Bruce Wayne. In all her youthful incarnations, print and screen, the character remains consistent on this point. Sometimes she tolerates him better than at other times, but she is not attracted to him.
What made a Dick/Barbara romance possible was that both candidates apparently dated everyone else on the planet first. (At least they learned all the wrong ways to choose a mate.) Dick alone flirted with Princess Starfire (The New Teen Titans), Mig Brewster (Nightwing: Ties That Bind) and his landlady Bridget Clancy. Then of course there is Dick’s famous (or infamous) one-night stand with Huntress.
Dick never found anything in these women to match that spark, that intangible something he saw in Barbara. For years fans debated whether he saw more than was there. Some readers never could take Batgirl seriously, or Barbara either until she became Oracle (and that process took 21 years). This made it easier for them to overlook Dick’s wandering eye on the grounds that the Dominoed Daredoll, the Caped Chick, seemed too shallow for him.
Dick/Barbara proponents reacted to Dick’s social life with anger or amusement, but they never lost faith. After a decade (or two, or three), both characters met all their expectations. When Gotham City collapsed in the Cataclysm quake, Dick’s first thoughts were for Barbara. Where is she? Is she okay? Clearly their romance was inevitable. At this point in the post-quake comics Nightwing and Oracle are busy making up for lost time.
The animated continuity developed the Dick/Barbara romance differently. For one thing, the B:TAS Batgirl (“Shadow of the Bat”) was the only incarnation who had a compelling reason, a crime-relative motive, to resort to vigilantism. (Her father had been framed and nearly executed.) The characters were mature, intelligent and realistic from the start. Neither faced serious competition for the other’s affection, with the possible exception of the presumptuous Gil Mason.
“Sub-Zero” advances Dick and Barbara’s relationship to the point that the near-proposal in TNBA’s “Old Wounds” seems inevitable and believable. The couple have planned a romantic vacation on the coast. Dick almost dies trying to rescue Barbara from Freeze. He also proves he cares more for her than for money when he trades his roadster for a speedier motorcycle. (How many people would give their car away?) All that matters to Dick is Barbara’s welfare—a fact that’s not lost on her father.
Jim Gordon teases Dick for dating his daughter. He cautions Dick not to get complacent merely because he’s the frontrunner. There are many other young men anxious to take his place. That may be true, but everything Jim says and does makes plain that this suitor is his favorite.
Jim Gordon’s fondness for Dick is not an isolated incident or convenient plot device. It is consistent with the old commissioner’s character. Jim didn’t just watch Robin grow up at the Batman’s side. He watched young Dick grow up at Bruce Wayne’s side. It was Detective Gordon who interviewed Dick after his parents were killed (“Robin’s Reckoning”). It was he who approved Dick’s placement at Wayne Manor. Jim kept them informed of developments. He visited and checked up on them. Gordon genuinely cared about this orphaned boy and was determined to see that he got justice.
Gordon never did catch the man who killed Dick’s parents. When the killer (Tony Zucco) was finally apprehended, Gordon came down from police headquarters to arrest the man himself. Why not send someone else? Because Gordon wanted the killer behind bars as badly as the Batman did. Jim Gordon pursued this case, unseen and unappreciated, for almost ten years. Now he has the satisfaction of knowing that young Dick grew into an outstanding young man, and of knowing that he played a part in it. Jim is well prepared to accept Dick into his family.
It didn't happen.
The B:TAS Dick and Barbara were arguably the First Couple of the Bat mythos. If anyone could combine love and Duty, one thinks it would be them. So, if they cannot make a romantic relationship work, then maybe nobody can.
