Cultural Propagana & Stereotyping in Children's Comics (CPSCC) is a qualitative and quantitative investigation of children's comic book literature in Greece in the '80s. This is a thesis submitted at the University of Wales, College of Cardiff, back in 1986, as part of a MEd degree. Inspired by Dorfman and Mattelart's earlier work How To Read Donald Duck:Donald Duck this is a thesis that examines ideas and stereotypes in children's comics, and although it was written twenty years ago, it can be read in comparison with the content of contemporary popular comic, cartoon and new media cultures.
The introductory part the thesis examines some aspects of mass communication and popular culture. Mass communication is described as a special kind of communication, an endless process, of constant exchange of messages. It involves distinctive operating conditions primary among which are the nature of the audience, of the communication experience and the communicator. The rapid development of mass media and their potential influence has led many to wonder about the actual role they play in social life and their contribution to the popular culture. It is suggested that the function of the media is responsible for certain socio-political implications either at national or global context. The structure and organization of the modern mass media communication and the influences on the mass audience have been the focus of the first chapter.
The comics industry has been part of the U.S. media network and its development and function is of particular interest. The comic industry is seen as ‘the advertising sector’ of a powerful complex of multinational enterprises of the western capitalist world. Comics, together with other mass media, developed, as a substitute for genuine folklore and culture, into a self-perpetuating institution, an integral part of the American way of life. They reflect American archetypes but most importantly they promote and advertise certain economic interests. The comic industry is a very profitable economic enterprise, with comic characters playing the role of sales promoting agents..
A content analysis of children's comic magazines, published in Greece in mid 1980s, attempted to provide the evidence that the themes these comics are preoccupied with, reflect values and attitudes of the dominant Anglo-American capitalist structure. The main concern of the thesis is the analysis of the message conveyed through comics and its origin. The results indicate that, comic culture can be seen as one of the forms of modern neo-colonialist attempts to affect and form human opinion and consciousness therefore, comics can be characterized as powerful cultural invaders.
A qualitative approach attempted to indicate elements of explicit socio-political and historical themes, and implicit themes of cultural propaganda, in the Anglo-American cultural context. The distinctive idealized image of society comics portray has certain characteristics which are indicative of the social structure and organization of the western capitalist societies.
The results of the analysis indicate that each of the three categories of comic magazines examined (humor, adventure and human interest) provides a distinctive socialization pattern of ideas and attitudes, addressed to specific age or sex. In general, a pattern of basic stereotypes of traditional societal values of authoritarian and strongly disciplined societies is presented through all the comics. Comics for boys stress on themes of power, menace and war, with political and national issues more prevalent. Fashion, gossip, household activities and romance, are mainly favored in comics addressed to girls.
A quantitative content analysis examined the racist, sexist and violent aspects of children's comic magazines. Any ethnic minority has been found to be negatively stereotyped. Women and girls are also the targets of a traditional sex-role stereotyping pattern, which places them in a subordinate and inferior role towards men in the social system. Violence, is explicitly glorified in these comics, and surely provides the material means to express these ideas in more significant and realistic ways in social life.
In summary, pointing out that the mass media network, the structure of the comic industry, or the cultural pattern in children's comics, all are either in control or close association with American values and attitudes, creates social-political and philosophical implications. The thesis successfully attempted to provide the evidence of the cultural invasion, in operation through children's comic magazines, and to the foreign cultural context of Greece. The thesis suggests that children's comic magazines provide a case of cultural propaganda and stereotyping in favour of socio-political and economic interests developed within the Anglo-American culture.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
INTRODUCTION
MASS COMMUNICATION AND POPULAR CULTURE
Processes of mass communication, the aims and functions of mass communication, the notion of popular culture as a product of mass communication, are all issues relevant to comic magazines and are briefly defined in this introductory part of the thesis.
Communication is the process of transmitting meaning between individuals. It always involves at least three elements - the source, the message and the destination. A source may be an individual or a communication organization. The message can take many forms, and the destination may be an individual or a group, or what is known as a mass audience. In this last case the terms mass communication in popular usage evokes the meanings of television, radio, motion pictures, newspapers and magazines. ‘Mass communication’, is rather, ‘a special kind of communication involving distinctive operating conditions, primary among which are the nature of the audience, of the communication experience and the communicator’ (Wright, 1974:242).
The process, by which communication works, whether it is mass communication or communication between individuals, has a distinctive pattern of characteristics, an outline of which has been described by Scramm (1974). The basic communication system is shown in Figure 1. Such a system involves a continuous exchange of messages. Messages in the communication process are made up of signs in the form of signals that stand for something in experiences. The sign is different from an object that it only represents the object in a reduce level of cues. One of the most important aspects of such a system might be that receiver and sender must be in tune (Figure 2). If each circle represents the accumulated experience of the sender and the receiver respectively, then, for communication to be possible, the circles must meet in a common experience field.
To understand the process of communication one should consider first of all the receiver and the sender in the communication system as described in Figure 3. When a signal comes to the receiver, this is in the form of a sign. If the receiver learns the sign, then certain learned responses are acquired with it (mediatory response). These responses are the meaning the sign has for the receiver, and will then determine what the receiver will do about the sign, as other sets of reactions have also been learned, connected to the mediatory responses. Whether this encoding process actually results in some overt communication or action depends partly on the barriers in the way. These barriers may account for moral or social restrictions. Whatever the result, this is the process of communication, which is really nowhere starting or ending; it is really endless.
Figure 1: Human communication process (adapted from Schramm, 1974:7)
Figure 2: Common experience necessary for communication (adapted from Schramm, 1974:8)
Figure 3: Sender or receiver model in communication (adapted from Schramm, 1974:10)
Figure 4: Feedback from the environment in communication process (adapted from Schramm, 1974:11)
Figure 5: Feedback from our own messages in communication process (adapted from Schramm, 1974:11)
One important aspect in communication is a process called feedback, which tells us how our messages are being interpreted. Feedback in communication can be provided either from the environment or another individual (Figure 4), or it can be provided from our own messages (Figure 5). Finally it should be noted that in communication messages are rarely sent out in a single channel; there is rather a multiplicity of channels, even in printed mass communication where the channels are perhaps more restricted. The parallel relationships between channels are complex, as the communicator can emphasize a point by adding as many parallel messages as she or he feels are discerned.
This model of communication process can be applied to mass communication, whose aims and function have long been the focus of social, political and media researchers. Lasswell (1948) noted three major activities of communication specialists: (1) surveillance of the environment, referring to the collection and distribution of information concerning events in the environment; (2) correlation of the pats of society in responding to the environment, including interpretations of information about the environment and prescriptions for conduct in reaction to these events; and (3) transmission of social heritage, focusing on the communication of information, values and social norms, from one generation to another; part of this activity is entertainment, referring to communicative acts primarily intended for amusement, irrespective of any instrumental effects they might have.
Transmission of culture (socialization) and entertainment have raised the issue of mass culture and its possible role in creating a conformist mass audience. A complex set of relations exists between mass media and their consumers. Mass media transmit material, out of popular culture, for the average tastes of a socially undefined public. The thoughts, values and tastes of various social groups, are in turn made to conform mass distribution (Loveday & Chiba, 1981). American critics of popular culture, mass media and information technologies, have focused on media and the private sphere of leisure. The ‘mass society’ paradigm argues that the diffusion of mass culture provides a pay-off for whatever subjugation the individual must endure in the workplace. A mass society of atomized individuals is its unfortunate and unanticipated consequence (DeFleur & Ball-Rockeach, 1975).
Dallas Smythe has argued that the main purpose of mass media is to provide, not entertainment or news, but ‘people’ in audiences who work at learning the theory and practice of ownership of civilian goods and who support the military demand management system (Smythe, 1977:20). A mass society is not the unfortunate consequence of people who cherish conformity and upward mobility, but it is the necessary requirement of a capitalist system that extracts surplus value from the labour of audiences to satisfy the need for capital accumulation, legitimation and repression. According to Smythe, leisure time is work, the process of building the audience commodity, What Aronowitz (1979) has described as the colonization of leisure. Garnham (cited in Mosco & Herman, 1980:261) suggests therefore, that the research strategy appropriate to understand the audience commodity is: to look at the way in which the mass media structure socially necessary consumption time in ways that are functional to the general reproduction of the capitalist mode of production at the economic level (Garnham, 1976:48).
Because commercial mass media enable the capitalist system to create surplus value, when viewed dialectically, contemporary culture is more than a powerful instrument of ruling class hegemony (Mosco & Herman, 1980). The goal of media programs in operation, argues Enzersberger (1979), is to create isolated passive consumers with production in the capitalist system controlled by property owners and elite bureaucrats. The capacity of mass media to express and to produce consumer needs accounts for the power of mass culture (Aronowitz, 1979:50).
Mass culture, or mass art, is seen this way as just one more product of mass society of standardized individuals, consumers of the stereotypes offered by the mass media. Romano (1984:213) has described the following traits of this type of art: its unproblematic character; the avoidance of reality; dehumanization; sweet and/or bitter sentimentalism; the anxiety to entertain; bad taste; the evocation of fixed associations and of stereotypes; the intention of manipulating consciousness in a conformist direction. Therefore, mass culture as a market-oriented product and as embodiment of the above traits in the different mass media forms it appears, has given rise to intellectual and moral controversies. Literature has long been an expressive form of culture, and by studying its organization, content and linguistic or pictorial symbols, we learn about the typical forms of behaviour, attitudes, commonly held beliefs, prejudices and aspirations of large numbers of people (Lowenthal, 1961).
Building up a theory of popular culture, Lownthal (1961) notes that all forms of literature show not only the socialized behaviour of people, but the process of their socialization as well; it speaks not only of individual experience, but of the meaning of that experience. ‘the fictional work in literature’, argues Lowenthal, ‘ at its best embodying the general, in particular combines the advantages of two extremes: it presents the important theme as it is acted out and felt by the individual, and at the same time gives us a sociologically meaningful detail’ (Lowenthal. 1961:XIII). Popular culture, in summary, is a great pattern, of patterns of thought and behavior worked out by trial and error over the ages to meet the common basic needs of people (O Caollai, 1975:332). Since the circumstances of life are continually changing, culture must also continually change. Lowenthal argues there is little doubt that popular culture changes have been associated with the broader social and technological changes which ushered in the beginnings of a middle class.
Yet, there is not an all-embracing formula for the study of popular culture. Lowenthal (1961:XXI-XXII) though, makes some possible points to be taken under consideration in an examination of popular culture. These include, patterns of influence, since an artist is of course influenced by his predecessors, and in turn influences his successors, while also influencing the standards of his/her audience; in turn, he/she is influenced by their standards. ‘Considering the concern of mass media producers’, argues Lowenthal, ‘the question what the audience wants becomes increasingly important’. That is specially the case in societies dominated by the mass media, such as those of the Western capitalist world, where ‘there are discernible programming standards beyond the needs and choices of the audience’. Still, a study of popular culture, argues Lowenthal, should center more on content than on channels, and attempts should be made to refer to historical as well as contemporary phenomena and to select sources from different national contexts.
Comic magazines are an important part of children's literature, and their power mainly consists in their characterisation as ‘collective symbolic systems’ (Stahl, 1976:31). As such, they provide a corpus of information about the beliefs, values and practices of the culture in which they are conceived. As it is later examined, this culture is often indicated to be expressing the American monopoly capital and modern financial imperialism context. Comic magazines ‘offer a determinate form of thought, of knowledge and of social consciousness, subject to the laws of the aesthetic interpretation of reality’ (Terron, 1970). Moreover, they produce and retain social values when the need for them exists (Fisher, 1963). Above all, the philosophy and the ideological value patterns in children's comic magazines assume a more important role. Acosta (1973) sees all forms of mass media as an ideological-industrial complex devoted to the justification and perpetuation of the capitalist system. This system, he argues, is the North-American complex of financial, political and military interests that constitutes the core of American imperialism.
A critical content analysis through the heuristic microcosm of children's comic magazines was conducted for the purposes of this dissertation. The main concern in the analysis has been to provide clear illuminations of the values and attitudes expressed in children's comics, and to associate this pattern of cultural elements to the Anglo-Americans cultural macrocosm. Different literary materials are interpreted as indicators of the close association between the comics' cultural pattern and socio-psychological and political habitudes of the capitalist model of society over a period of time. Part one examines the structure and organization of the mass media complex and the possible effects on social behaviour. This part of the work stresses on the fact of American ownership and control over the ‘social construction of reality’ through the mass media. Part two focuses on the development and function of comic industry as ‘the advertising sector’ of immense networks of multinational companies, which originate again in the Western capitalist world. Part three concentrates more on the ideological aspects of comic culture. Through an exemplified content analysis of children's comic magazines, the fact pointed out, is that the overall cultural pattern identified in these magazines is indicative of the Anglo-American imperialist and capitalist cultural elements.
Pointing out that the mass media complex as a whole, the comic industry, and the comic culture, all have the American stamp on them, clearly creates certain socio-political and economic implications, which need further to be investigated. The principal concern of this thesis is to provide evidence of cultural invasion of a foreign cultural context through children's comics; furthermore, the thesis suggests that children's comic magazines provide a case of cultural propaganda and stereotyping in favour of the Anglo-American exploitative and manipulative interests.
Processes of mass communication, the aims and functions of mass communication, the notion of popular culture as a product of mass communication, are all issues relevant to comic magazines and are briefly defined in this introductory part of the thesis.
Communication is the process of transmitting meaning between individuals. It always involves at least three elements - the source, the message and the destination. A source may be an individual or a communication organization. The message can take many forms, and the destination may be an individual or a group, or what is known as a mass audience. In this last case the terms mass communication in popular usage evokes the meanings of television, radio, motion pictures, newspapers and magazines. ‘Mass communication’, is rather, ‘a special kind of communication involving distinctive operating conditions, primary among which are the nature of the audience, of the communication experience and the communicator’ (Wright, 1974:242).
The process, by which communication works, whether it is mass communication or communication between individuals, has a distinctive pattern of characteristics, an outline of which has been described by Scramm (1974). The basic communication system is shown in Figure 1. Such a system involves a continuous exchange of messages. Messages in the communication process are made up of signs in the form of signals that stand for something in experiences. The sign is different from an object that it only represents the object in a reduce level of cues. One of the most important aspects of such a system might be that receiver and sender must be in tune (Figure 2). If each circle represents the accumulated experience of the sender and the receiver respectively, then, for communication to be possible, the circles must meet in a common experience field.
To understand the process of communication one should consider first of all the receiver and the sender in the communication system as described in Figure 3. When a signal comes to the receiver, this is in the form of a sign. If the receiver learns the sign, then certain learned responses are acquired with it (mediatory response). These responses are the meaning the sign has for the receiver, and will then determine what the receiver will do about the sign, as other sets of reactions have also been learned, connected to the mediatory responses. Whether this encoding process actually results in some overt communication or action depends partly on the barriers in the way. These barriers may account for moral or social restrictions. Whatever the result, this is the process of communication, which is really nowhere starting or ending; it is really endless.
One important aspect in communication is a process called feedback, which tells us how our messages are being interpreted. Feedback in communication can be provided either from the environment or another individual (Figure 4), or it can be provided from our own messages (Figure 5). Finally it should be noted that in communication messages are rarely sent out in a single channel; there is rather a multiplicity of channels, even in printed mass communication where the channels are perhaps more restricted. The parallel relationships between channels are complex, as the communicator can emphasize a point by adding as many parallel messages as she or he feels are discerned.
This model of communication process can be applied to mass communication, whose aims and function have long been the focus of social, political and media researchers. Lasswell (1948) noted three major activities of communication specialists: (1) surveillance of the environment, referring to the collection and distribution of information concerning events in the environment; (2) correlation of the pats of society in responding to the environment, including interpretations of information about the environment and prescriptions for conduct in reaction to these events; and (3) transmission of social heritage, focusing on the communication of information, values and social norms, from one generation to another; part of this activity is entertainment, referring to communicative acts primarily intended for amusement, irrespective of any instrumental effects they might have.
Transmission of culture (socialization) and entertainment have raised the issue of mass culture and its possible role in creating a conformist mass audience. A complex set of relations exists between mass media and their consumers. Mass media transmit material, out of popular culture, for the average tastes of a socially undefined public. The thoughts, values and tastes of various social groups, are in turn made to conform mass distribution (Loveday & Chiba, 1981). American critics of popular culture, mass media and information technologies, have focused on media and the private sphere of leisure. The ‘mass society’ paradigm argues that the diffusion of mass culture provides a pay-off for whatever subjugation the individual must endure in the workplace. A mass society of atomized individuals is its unfortunate and unanticipated consequence (DeFleur & Ball-Rockeach, 1975).
Dallas Smythe has argued that the main purpose of mass media is to provide, not entertainment or news, but ‘people’ in audiences who work at learning the theory and practice of ownership of civilian goods and who support the military demand management system (Smythe, 1977:20). A mass society is not the unfortunate consequence of people who cherish conformity and upward mobility, but it is the necessary requirement of a capitalist system that extracts surplus value from the labour of audiences to satisfy the need for capital accumulation, legitimation and repression. According to Smythe, leisure time is work, the process of building the audience commodity, What Aronowitz (1979) has described as the colonization of leisure. Garnham (cited in Mosco & Herman, 1980:261) suggests therefore, that the research strategy appropriate to understand the audience commodity is: to look at the way in which the mass media structure socially necessary consumption time in ways that are functional to the general reproduction of the capitalist mode of production at the economic level (Garnham, 1976:48).
Because commercial mass media enable the capitalist system to create surplus value, when viewed dialectically, contemporary culture is more than a powerful instrument of ruling class hegemony (Mosco & Herman, 1980). The goal of media programs in operation, argues Enzersberger (1979), is to create isolated passive consumers with production in the capitalist system controlled by property owners and elite bureaucrats. The capacity of mass media to express and to produce consumer needs accounts for the power of mass culture (Aronowitz, 1979:50).
Mass culture, or mass art, is seen this way as just one more product of mass society of standardized individuals, consumers of the stereotypes offered by the mass media. Romano (1984:213) has described the following traits of this type of art: its unproblematic character; the avoidance of reality; dehumanization; sweet and/or bitter sentimentalism; the anxiety to entertain; bad taste; the evocation of fixed associations and of stereotypes; the intention of manipulating consciousness in a conformist direction. Therefore, mass culture as a market-oriented product and as embodiment of the above traits in the different mass media forms it appears, has given rise to intellectual and moral controversies. Literature has long been an expressive form of culture, and by studying its organization, content and linguistic or pictorial symbols, we learn about the typical forms of behaviour, attitudes, commonly held beliefs, prejudices and aspirations of large numbers of people (Lowenthal, 1961).
Building up a theory of popular culture, Lownthal (1961) notes that all forms of literature show not only the socialized behaviour of people, but the process of their socialization as well; it speaks not only of individual experience, but of the meaning of that experience. ‘the fictional work in literature’, argues Lowenthal, ‘ at its best embodying the general, in particular combines the advantages of two extremes: it presents the important theme as it is acted out and felt by the individual, and at the same time gives us a sociologically meaningful detail’ (Lowenthal. 1961:XIII). Popular culture, in summary, is a great pattern, of patterns of thought and behavior worked out by trial and error over the ages to meet the common basic needs of people (O Caollai, 1975:332). Since the circumstances of life are continually changing, culture must also continually change. Lowenthal argues there is little doubt that popular culture changes have been associated with the broader social and technological changes which ushered in the beginnings of a middle class.
Yet, there is not an all-embracing formula for the study of popular culture. Lowenthal (1961:XXI-XXII) though, makes some possible points to be taken under consideration in an examination of popular culture. These include, patterns of influence, since an artist is of course influenced by his predecessors, and in turn influences his successors, while also influencing the standards of his/her audience; in turn, he/she is influenced by their standards. ‘Considering the concern of mass media producers’, argues Lowenthal, ‘the question what the audience wants becomes increasingly important’. That is specially the case in societies dominated by the mass media, such as those of the Western capitalist world, where ‘there are discernible programming standards beyond the needs and choices of the audience’. Still, a study of popular culture, argues Lowenthal, should center more on content than on channels, and attempts should be made to refer to historical as well as contemporary phenomena and to select sources from different national contexts.
Comic magazines are an important part of children's literature, and their power mainly consists in their characterisation as ‘collective symbolic systems’ (Stahl, 1976:31). As such, they provide a corpus of information about the beliefs, values and practices of the culture in which they are conceived. As it is later examined, this culture is often indicated to be expressing the American monopoly capital and modern financial imperialism context. Comic magazines ‘offer a determinate form of thought, of knowledge and of social consciousness, subject to the laws of the aesthetic interpretation of reality’ (Terron, 1970). Moreover, they produce and retain social values when the need for them exists (Fisher, 1963). Above all, the philosophy and the ideological value patterns in children's comic magazines assume a more important role. Acosta (1973) sees all forms of mass media as an ideological-industrial complex devoted to the justification and perpetuation of the capitalist system. This system, he argues, is the North-American complex of financial, political and military interests that constitutes the core of American imperialism.
A critical content analysis through the heuristic microcosm of children's comic magazines was conducted for the purposes of this dissertation. The main concern in the analysis has been to provide clear illuminations of the values and attitudes expressed in children's comics, and to associate this pattern of cultural elements to the Anglo-Americans cultural macrocosm. Different literary materials are interpreted as indicators of the close association between the comics' cultural pattern and socio-psychological and political habitudes of the capitalist model of society over a period of time. Part one examines the structure and organization of the mass media complex and the possible effects on social behaviour. This part of the work stresses on the fact of American ownership and control over the ‘social construction of reality’ through the mass media. Part two focuses on the development and function of comic industry as ‘the advertising sector’ of immense networks of multinational companies, which originate again in the Western capitalist world. Part three concentrates more on the ideological aspects of comic culture. Through an exemplified content analysis of children's comic magazines, the fact pointed out, is that the overall cultural pattern identified in these magazines is indicative of the Anglo-American imperialist and capitalist cultural elements.
Pointing out that the mass media complex as a whole, the comic industry, and the comic culture, all have the American stamp on them, clearly creates certain socio-political and economic implications, which need further to be investigated. The principal concern of this thesis is to provide evidence of cultural invasion of a foreign cultural context through children's comics; furthermore, the thesis suggests that children's comic magazines provide a case of cultural propaganda and stereotyping in favour of the Anglo-American exploitative and manipulative interests.
CHAPTER 1
SOCIAL ORGANIZATION AND INFLUENCES OF MASS MEDIA IMPERIALISM
The structure and organization of modern mass media communication are the focus of this chapter. The discussion centres on the diversity of media effects and their social-political implications. Furthermore, the Anglo-American media expansion and domination is pointed out and discussed in relation to the concepts of ‘media’ and ‘cultural’ imperialism.
Our century has been characterized as the age of mass communication. The different forms of mass media such as newspapers, radio, television, books or magazines have become the principal purveyors, in our societies, of fact, fiction, entertainment and information. The rapid development of mass media and their potential influence have led many to wonder about the actual role they play in social life and behaviour. It is a reoccurring theme in mass communication research that mass communications are all-powerful, in fact they determine thought and action to a major degree. The effects of media communication have been the principal concern of mass communication research and a major body of data derives from basic principles of communication.
It is argued therefore in this chapter that the ways in which modern mass communications are organized partly reveal their twofold function on economic and ideological levels. This function of the media is consequently responsible for certain socio-political implications either in a national, or more interestingly in an international context. Mass media influences are the main concern in this chapter and they are examined through a series of case studies and proposed analytical models of mass media effects. It is also stressed that the Anglo-American mass media own and control the international media flow. Still, it should be kept in mind that the comic industry, which is the focus of the next chapter, is subject to this American control over the international media network. Moreover, the media effects discussed here may also account for the social effects of comic magazines.
Economic and ideological aspects of mass media organization
Most of the cultural products supplied by the media are market commodities; they have to be sold and they have to be sufficiently profitable to persuade the organizations that provide them that it is worth continuing to do so. Golding (1974:44-47) describes four main sources of revenue for culture producing organization: directly from sales of the product; from advertising; from public subscription, normally through license fees; and, financial support for their operation from the government.
The contemporary evolutionary stage of the mass media is characterized by two elements which account for the economic level of media operations: industrialization and internationalization. Industrialization, argues Golding (1974), described as concentration, is a part of the wider ‘takeover boom’ of the 1960s when large numbers of media companies have become integrated into large combines. To spread risks into a wider range of profits and facilitate cost reduction, the media industries have diversified into a series of related activities in leisure and general industrial sectors. Sometimes though, solutions to problems are sought overseas, what Golding refers to as ‘a multifaceted process of internationalization’, in three aspects: the growth of exports; the ownership of foreign media companies by British media; or, foreign American ownership of British media (‘Americanisation’).
On a final paper of an international seminar on mass communications organization within the Latin America countries (International General, 1981) an important ideological aspect of mass media operation was pointed out. The seminar concluded on the general aims of the messages transmitted by the mass media as being: (1) to maintain in operation the existing system of production through the greatest possible consumption of commodities of commodities produced, generally, the creation of needs for new, unnecessary and alienating commodities... (2) To sustain the structure of political power, and thus strengthen the reigning economic and social order, obscuring its inherent contradictions... (3) The reinforcement of an individualistic and atomized overall vision of society..., and (4) to reduce the consumers' critical capacity through the constant saturation of the market for messages... (International General, 1981:236).
These ends of the mass media make clear the political implications of media organization in both national and international contexts. It was argued in the same seminar that these goals are achieved through a deliberated and systematic manipulation of the ideological content of messages. This process would include: (1) the fabrication of false news-items usually intended to discredit popular governments, parties or movements; (2) the deliberate omission or mutilation of information; (3) the practical absorption of ideologies and values opposed to the statues quo in order to create an apparent identification of the media with popular interests; and (4) the edification of an ideology of neutrality and objectivity (International General, 1981:236-237).
Klapper (1960) has also noted that commercial mass communication in a free enterprise society has been widely claimed to be of necessity a force toward the reinforcement of dominant cultural values, and to be economically constrained from exposing any view which is questioned by any significant portion of its potential audience. The economic character of commercial media, too, in a free enterprise society is such that they appear destined forever to play to social attitudes. Moreover they appear to reinforce socially prevalent attitudes far more often than they are likely to create or convert attitudes.
There are then interrelated elements of economic and ideological nature operating within the structure and organization, and which partly account for the social power, of mass media. But it is also a fact that the mass media are themselves invested with an aura of prestige by a large portion of their audience. Lazarsfeld and Merton (1948:101-102) argued that this is partly explained of the fact that ‘the mass media bestow prestige and enhance the authority of individuals and groups by legitimating their status...’
Effects of the mass media
Communication processes, it was argued in the introductory part of the work, are an essential entity of our world. Therefore they can be expected to have a great effect upon the nature of a society. The major focus of traditional communication research has been on media effects with the major question being, ‘what effect do the media have on their audience?’
Mass media have shown a diversity of effects. This accounts for the different classifications of media effects under which researchers have developed their analyses. Hovland (1968) has pointed out mass media effects operating in a variety of areas such as entertainment, knowledge, information and skill; predispositions, in terms of preferences and tastes, opinions, beliefs and attitudes, and prejudice; and, stereotypes, what Lippmann (1922) has termed the ‘faulty generalizations about the characteristics of various groups.’
Researchers have also defined ‘political effects’, referring typically to media-induced changes in the political attitudes of individuals considered in isolation. One aspect of political communication processes has been the political context of effects. Seymour-Ure (1974:63) argues with respect to the political implications of media effects that they may vary according to the level of political relationships considered. Moreover, the significance of media-induced effects on those relationships, argues Seymour-Ure, will depend upon the virtually endless range of political questions in which an inquirer may be interested.
Klapper (1974) has pointed out some broad general principles applicable to short-term effects of mass communication within specific areas, such as the aesthetic and intellectual taste of its audiences, or their predispositions towards crime and violence. In general, mass communication, according to Klapper, reinforces the existing attitudes, tastes, predispositions, and behavioral tendencies of its audience members, including tendencies toward change. Its reinforcement effect is potent and socially important, though its social effects depend primarily on the way the society as a whole fashions the audience members whom mass communication serves. Some societies, for example, as those under military regime, may stress more on media operation in the manipulation of the audience's social attitudes and opinion. So the important question would probably be it is possible to create in people predispositions. Children seem to be particularly good subjects for such an attempt since they are naturally ‘changers’.
A considerable number of both disciplined social researchers and lay critics have expressed the belief that the plethora of escapist material in the mass media may tend to promote social apathy. It has been argued that escapist material, by producing habitual mode of relief for the tensions, can thus reduce the likelihood of social criticism (Walpes, Berelson & Bradshaw, 1940; Dollard, 1945; Lazarsfeld & Merton 1948).
The media message as a propaganda message was an old favorite of social and media research though of considerable contemporary importance. Propaganda can be called ‘the attempt to affect the personalities and to control the behaviour of individuals toward ends considered unscientific or of doubtful value in a society at a particular time’ (Doob, 1949:58). Propaganda operates when there is no science or when people's values are in conflict, and it has been seen as an assort to limit the ‘freedom of choice’ available to audience members. Propaganda has an intentional character and when it is directed toward a single individual takes the form of ‘persuasion’. An ‘action response’ is the learned attitude and the objective of the propagandist. Photographs, drawings or cartoons have often been thought to evoke the responses desired by the artist or propagandist. The propaganda message is often within the text and the illustration serves the perceptual framework of directing the reader to the text.
The media have often been criticized for being strongly pervasive forms of communication as they degrade the taste of the masses, and they encourage people to do things they would otherwise not consider. One of the theoretical perspectives providing an explanation of the influences of the media on people has been Kelman's (1961) social influence model. He suggests three basic processes of social influence: (1) compliance, which occurs when an individual accepts influence from another person or group because he or she hopes to obtain a favorable reaction from the others: (2) identification, referring to the case where an individual adopts a particular behaviour because it is associated with a satisfying self-defining relationship to the other person or group; and (3) internalization, meaning the process by which an individual accepts influence because the behaviour is congruent with his or her value system, or because the content of behaviour is rewarding. Kelman's summary of the distinction between the three processes appears in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1: Summary of the distinction between the three processes (Kelman, 1961:67)
McQuail (1977:72-74) argues on the stages of research interests of media effects. He notes that after the 1960s the main concern was concentrated around the influence of mass communication especially television and newspaper news. Consequently media research of that time re-opened the question of mass media effects resting on several bases, but mainly concentrating on the key concept of attitude. We are now in a phase where the concern is on the social power of the media. What we know about the effects of mass media is not only the result of research, but of more recent arguments dealing with the needs of the media industry. Gebner (1967) sees the key of the effects of mass media in their capacity to take over the ‘cultivation’ of images and consciousness in an industrial society: The truly revolutionary significance of modern mass communications... is the ability to form historically new bases for collective thought and action quickly, continuously and pervasively across the previous boundaries of time, space and status (Gebner, 1967:41). A common theme is the observation that experience, or what we take for experience, is increasingly directed and ‘mediated’, and more people receive a similar ‘version’ of the world.
The social power of the media, then, can be seen in five aspects summarized by McQuail (1977). He points out that the mass media can: (1) attract and direct attention to problems, solutions, or people; (2) confer status and confirm legitimacy; (3) be a channel for persuasion and mobilization; (4) help to bring certain kinds of public into being and maintain them; and (5) be a vehicle for offering psychic rewards and gratification (McQuail, 1977:90-91).
A new line of communications inquiry and work seeks to shift sharply the context of the discussion and research about the relations among the media, society and the individual, what has been termed as critical research. Critical research seeks to examine the relationship among media, communication and social power, and also the role the media play in maintaining the class stratified societies of the Western world.
Following Curran, Gurevitch and Woollacott (1982) it is possible to define three major research approaches on media effects within the critical research perspective. First, the structuralist approach which seeks to examine the implicit categories of thought in media texts through which the individual experiences the world. Secondly, the political economy approach which focuses upon the economic structure and processes of media production (Murdock & Golding, 1977); in particular, this approach studies the increasing monopolization and concentration of control within the media industries. It sees the media producing and disseminating a false consciousness which legitimates the class interests of those who own and control the media. Finally, cultural studies focus on the media message and assume that the media content and impact are shaped by the societal environment in which media message are produced and received (Hall, 1980).
Take all together, the critical perspective focuses either on the control and production of media messages or their content in the context of examining how the media develop a specific ideology that supports a class-dominated society. The concern is away from an analysis of the media effect and more toward an analysis of message content and moreover of message production. It is among these lines that the content analysis of this thesis is conducted, stressing on the comics message and drawing upon a multi-viewpoint based on historical, political, economic and sociological analytical principles. Four sociological-based models of media impact have been developed focusing on message content and/or message production. As McQuail and
Windahl (1981:6091) have noted these models view effects as long-term and indirect. Moreover, they reintroduce the notion of powerful media.
Figure 1.2: The agenda-setting model: matters given most attention in the media will be presented as the most important (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
Figure 1.3: An example of a spiral of silence: mass media expressing dominant opinion together with an increasing lack of interpersonal support for deviant views bring about a spiral of silence, with an increasing number of individuals either expressing the dominant opinion or failing to express deviant ones (after Noelle-Neumann,1974) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
(Figure pending)
Figure 1.4: Non-closing information gap (after Thunberg et al, 1979) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
The basic idea behind the agenda setting model is that the media developed agendas for the audience (McCombs, 1981). The media select from a wide range of possible issues and topics and by giving them differential attention and emphasis, define for the audience the relative importance of each. The model emphasizes on ways the media shape the larger cultural environment of the audience in terms of the issues or topics they deemphasize or ignore (Figure 1.2.).
The spiral of silence model developed by Noelle-Neumann (1974, 1980) centres on the ability of the media to remove from public view and discussion certain issues and topics (Figure 1.3.). The model is based on the assumption that individuals strive to avoid isolation by avoiding to hold attitudes, beliefs or opinions not held by the majority of society. The spiral of silence develops as people look to the media for prevailing definition of reality, which reality is in agreement among the media because of the monopolistic nature of the media and the inherent routines of media production.
The knowledge-gap model focuses on the examination of relationships between media impact and social power in terms of the distribution of media information among various social classes (Tichenor, 1982). The basic idea behind this model is that ‘as the inflation of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower socio-economic segment’, so that the gap in knowledge between the segments tend to increase than decrease (Tichenor, 1982:81). The model (Figure 1.4.) presents insights into the manner the media can act to strengthen the political and economic structure of class-stratified capitalist societies.
Figure 1.5 : Ball-Rokeach and Defleur’s dependency model, showing the interdependence between society,
mass media, audience and effects (after Ball-Rokeach and Defleur) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
Finally, the dependency model of media effects (Figure 1.5.) formulated by Ball-Rockeach and DeFleur (1976, 1982), views audience effects in the context of the complexity of the larger social structure in which the individuals become more dependent on the media for information about, and orientation to, the larger social world. The model seeks to explain effects in terms of the historical conditions of society and its media. Ball-Rockeach and DeFleur are suggesting that it is the societal conditions that determine the power and type of media effects.
Mass media imperialism
Studies of media development and processes of mass communication in the developed and advanced industrial countries of the World have typically adopted framework of reference. Nevertheless, forms of international media activities have contributed to the emergence of an entirely different perspective and evaluation of the role of modern communication, what has been termed as media imperialism. The term refers to the processes by which ownership, structure, distribution or content of modern mass communications have operated to create, maintain and expand systems of domination and dependence on a world scale.
The media imperialism approach is based on, ‘an emphasis on global structure, whereby it is precisely the international socio-political system that decisively determines the course of development within the sphere of each nation’ (Fejes, 1981:281). It is especially the phenomenal acceptability of American cultural influence through the media that led to an analysis of international media activities. The analysis, as Boyd-Barrett (1977:117) notes, reveals two outstanding features of the influence process. First, the unidirectional nature of international media flow, with exported media products from the U.S. without return flow. Secondly, the relatively small source of international media influences, which if identified, they are in a handful of giant media conglomerates, mostly American. This absence of reciprocation of media influence by the affected country combines both the element of cultural invasion by another power and the element of imbalance of power resources between the countries concerned. Both justify the use of ‘imperialism’ term.
The media imperialism approach then is a point of view that is implicitly adopted in this thesis. The approach views the media situated as they were in a transnational context, as an obstacle to meaningful and well-balanced socio-economic progress. This focus of research on transnational agents dominating the international structure and flow of communication has been probably best reflected in the works by Schiller (1969, 1971), Mattelart (1979), Varis (1973) and others. Media imperialism can be seen as one part of the larger change in development thinking with the appearance of the dependency model.
The major conclusion of the dependency model is that the Third World countries occupy a subordinate position in the international economic and political systems which are seen as being structured primarily according to the needs of the developed countries. The dependency model can be seen as a counterpart of earlier theories of imperialism, reformulated from the point of view of underdeveloped countries (Portes, 1976). In that sense ‘effective national development’ comes to be interpreted as the ‘liberation from dependency’. It is within the broad context of the dependency approach of communication researchers investigate media imperialism (Cruise O'Brien, 1979; Salinas & Paldan, 1979; Lee, 1980). This broad context concentrates on (1) the role of transnational corporations or media interests in shaping communications between developed and underdeveloped countries; (2) an analysis of media imperialism as a historical phenomenon; and (3) cultural consequences of the content of various media products (Fejes, 1981:286-287).
Media imperialism analysis of communication networks reveals another aspect: control, as a basic form of imperialism. Mattelart (1974, 1976) was the first to study the problems of internationalization in the communication sphere. The motive was the principle of the free flow of information that the U.S. had been defending for more than thirty years, and which allowed American producers of programmes to flood the world with there goods. But it was also the fact that the U.S. has also possessed technological tools which allow them to impose their domination in wider, not only economic but ideological spheres too. The latter led to the development of another aspect of media imperialism, with reference to national cultures, that of cultural imperialism. Flitchy (1980) notes: National culture in the era of the multinationals must assume the reproduction on the dependence of the national bourgeoisie of the United States while at the same time assuring the reproduction of their hegemony as the dominant class of a given nation; that is to say, must continue to confirm them as national bourgeoisies (Flitchy, 1980:183).
The same problematic is found again in Mattelart and Mattelart's (1979) work where they examine ways in which national and multinational cultures are articulated in each of the sectors of mass culture.
Control and ownership of mass communication
With respect to the origin and location control of modern mass communications, and its subsequent socio-political implications, Tunstall (1977) has mad it clear in the title of his work, that ‘The Media Are American’. The cultural imperialism thesis claims similarly that authentic, traditional and local culture in many parts of the world is being battered out of existence by the indiscriminate dumping of large quantities of slick commercial and media products, mainly from the United States. This is inevitably leading to the creation of a problem of cultural identity, consequently to problems of national identity. Tunstall's central thesis is that the media are about commerce, politics and ideas. Therefore, he argues, the Anglo-American media - operating in the fields of politics, entertainment, culture and commerce on a world scale - cannot possibly be ‘value neutral’ (Tunstall, 1977:201).
The United States media, argues Tunstall, emerged from and reflect the assumptions of American politics: ‘U.S. media do not just 'fit' the system... they are an essential part of it ‘ (Tunstall, 1977:263). Certain links can be indicated between the United States government's domestic and external media policies. A report of the Congressional Committee concerned with ‘winning the cold war’ and ‘ideological operation and foreign policy’ illustrates the link between the political aspect of mass media and American foreign policy: For many years military and economic power, used separately, or in conjunction, have serves as the pillars of diplomacy. They still serve that function today but the recent increase in influence of the masses of the people over governments, together with greater awareness on the part of the leaders of the aspirations of people, brought about by the concurrent revolution of the twentieth century, has created a new dimension for foreign policy operation. Certain foreign policy objectives can be pursued by dealing directly with the people of foreign countries, rather than with their governments. Through the use of modern instruments and techniques of communication it is possible today to reach large or influential segments of national populations, to inform them, to influence their attitudes, and at times perhaps even to motivate them to a particular course of action. These groups, in turn, are capable of excerpting noticeable, even decisive, pressures, on their governments (Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1964:6).
An Intra-Governmental Committee on International Communications, including representatives of the Federal Communications Commission, the Office of Telecommunication Management, and the State, Justice and Defense Departments, reported in April 1966 that ‘telecommunications has progressed from being an essential support of our international activity in being also an instrument of foreign policy’ (Intra-Governmental Committee on International Telecommunications, 1966:1). Since 1950, the tendency for American commercial media and U.S. government agencies to help each other becomes more evident. The Americans become the senior partners in a government media alliance which turned anti-Nazi to Anti-Communist propaganda. The convert media operations of the U.S. government were carried on primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), which set up Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberation, and various transmitters of the Voice of America.
Commercial assumptions, based on the U.S. domestic market also lie behind all American media. Tunstall (1977:265) points out that some fifteen American and five British organizations each offering a variety of materials and services, together sell the entire media range from foreign news to hit songs, and from features films to comic strips. These media exports both predate and still run ahead of the general American economic presence overseas or the multinational company phenomenon. Moreover, ‘a non-American way of the media box is difficult to discover because it is an American or Anglo-American build box...’ (Tunstall, 1977:63). Nevertheless, an illustration of how Anglo-American media values are diffused around the world is provided by a batch of six international media organizations, sharing common goals, such as development of media networks, international ‘help and advice’, or encouragement of media autonomy and freedom, within and between individual countries (Tunstall, 1977:219). Two organizations of newspaper owners and broadcasters, the Inter-American Press Association and the Inter-American Association of Broadcasters, deal with the entire American continent. The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, and the equivalent in press, the C.P.U., deal with the British Commonwealth. Two more organizations are open to the entire world, The International Press Institute (I.P.I.) and the International Broadcast Institute (I.B.I.). That international media organizations of this kind should be dominated by American and British Commonwealth values and personnel is, if not inevitable, then at least extremely probable. Exposure to and assistance towards international markets, then is more likely to assist and promote Anglo-American media products and influences.
Mattelart (1978) argues that the current phase of capitalism is characterized by the acceleration of monopolization, a process of the concentration of enterprises, which beyond the economic sphere, mobilizes all sphere of human activity, the entire mode of production of life in a society. This process, Mattelart (1978:39) notes, reinforces the ensemble of apparatuses of ideological control: ‘Any transmission of knowledge comes under the rule of the media and mass culture becomes a spectacle... this tendency, which has reached its highest point in the vanguard of international capitalism, the United States, is better understood if we turn to the notion of mass media and culture as a system’. The current conditions of capitalism require us to regard all these supports as a system. Each specific medium reflects a different state of productive forces and thus of the maturation of monopoly capital.
Summarizing then, the main points stressed in this chapter are:
(1) the structure and organization of modern mass communications is clearly pointing out their economic and ideological interrelated characteristics functions;
(2) the considerable prestige the media have obtained from their audience accounts for the social power of mass media;
(3) there is a diversity of the types of mass media effects ranging from reinforcive short-term effects on knowledge, information and predispositions, to strong long-term socio-political influences either on individuals such as social apathy, or on political regimes, such as cultural invasion;
(4) propaganda is a pervasive function of mass media communication and aims to limit the ‘freedom of choice’ available to the audience. Compliance, identification and internalization have been suggested to be basic stages of media social influence process (Kelman, 1961).
(5) the concern of critical discussion and research of media effects has focused on the social power of the media, especially the control and production of media messages or their ideological content;
(6) the various theoretical perspectives in mass communication research have rated, and tried to explain media effects, as shaping the cultural environment of the audience, maintaining monopolistic control over public opinion, or strengthening the political and economic structure of class-stratified capitalist societies;
(7) the unidirectional nature and small source of international media flow as well as the Anglo-American media expansion and domination have led to the development of the dependency model on an international level, that has been termed media imperialism, and its associated notion of cultural imperialism; and,
(8) transnational agents located and originated in the Anglo-American context tend have to a great extent managed to create, through a powerful international mass media network, cultural and ideological control of under or less-developed countries.
The origins and location of social power of the comic industry, as a form of media imperialism, is the main concern of the next chapter. The American ownership or control identified in this chapter, in the media network over the world, is also reflected in the development and expansion of the comic industry. Moreover, as it is examined in the last chapters, cultural values in the ideological content of comic magazines, are also reflections of dominant values of American culture. It would seem then reasonable to suggest that comic magazines are about American business.
The structure and organization of modern mass media communication are the focus of this chapter. The discussion centres on the diversity of media effects and their social-political implications. Furthermore, the Anglo-American media expansion and domination is pointed out and discussed in relation to the concepts of ‘media’ and ‘cultural’ imperialism.
Our century has been characterized as the age of mass communication. The different forms of mass media such as newspapers, radio, television, books or magazines have become the principal purveyors, in our societies, of fact, fiction, entertainment and information. The rapid development of mass media and their potential influence have led many to wonder about the actual role they play in social life and behaviour. It is a reoccurring theme in mass communication research that mass communications are all-powerful, in fact they determine thought and action to a major degree. The effects of media communication have been the principal concern of mass communication research and a major body of data derives from basic principles of communication.
It is argued therefore in this chapter that the ways in which modern mass communications are organized partly reveal their twofold function on economic and ideological levels. This function of the media is consequently responsible for certain socio-political implications either in a national, or more interestingly in an international context. Mass media influences are the main concern in this chapter and they are examined through a series of case studies and proposed analytical models of mass media effects. It is also stressed that the Anglo-American mass media own and control the international media flow. Still, it should be kept in mind that the comic industry, which is the focus of the next chapter, is subject to this American control over the international media network. Moreover, the media effects discussed here may also account for the social effects of comic magazines.
Economic and ideological aspects of mass media organization
Most of the cultural products supplied by the media are market commodities; they have to be sold and they have to be sufficiently profitable to persuade the organizations that provide them that it is worth continuing to do so. Golding (1974:44-47) describes four main sources of revenue for culture producing organization: directly from sales of the product; from advertising; from public subscription, normally through license fees; and, financial support for their operation from the government.
The contemporary evolutionary stage of the mass media is characterized by two elements which account for the economic level of media operations: industrialization and internationalization. Industrialization, argues Golding (1974), described as concentration, is a part of the wider ‘takeover boom’ of the 1960s when large numbers of media companies have become integrated into large combines. To spread risks into a wider range of profits and facilitate cost reduction, the media industries have diversified into a series of related activities in leisure and general industrial sectors. Sometimes though, solutions to problems are sought overseas, what Golding refers to as ‘a multifaceted process of internationalization’, in three aspects: the growth of exports; the ownership of foreign media companies by British media; or, foreign American ownership of British media (‘Americanisation’).
On a final paper of an international seminar on mass communications organization within the Latin America countries (International General, 1981) an important ideological aspect of mass media operation was pointed out. The seminar concluded on the general aims of the messages transmitted by the mass media as being: (1) to maintain in operation the existing system of production through the greatest possible consumption of commodities of commodities produced, generally, the creation of needs for new, unnecessary and alienating commodities... (2) To sustain the structure of political power, and thus strengthen the reigning economic and social order, obscuring its inherent contradictions... (3) The reinforcement of an individualistic and atomized overall vision of society..., and (4) to reduce the consumers' critical capacity through the constant saturation of the market for messages... (International General, 1981:236).
These ends of the mass media make clear the political implications of media organization in both national and international contexts. It was argued in the same seminar that these goals are achieved through a deliberated and systematic manipulation of the ideological content of messages. This process would include: (1) the fabrication of false news-items usually intended to discredit popular governments, parties or movements; (2) the deliberate omission or mutilation of information; (3) the practical absorption of ideologies and values opposed to the statues quo in order to create an apparent identification of the media with popular interests; and (4) the edification of an ideology of neutrality and objectivity (International General, 1981:236-237).
Klapper (1960) has also noted that commercial mass communication in a free enterprise society has been widely claimed to be of necessity a force toward the reinforcement of dominant cultural values, and to be economically constrained from exposing any view which is questioned by any significant portion of its potential audience. The economic character of commercial media, too, in a free enterprise society is such that they appear destined forever to play to social attitudes. Moreover they appear to reinforce socially prevalent attitudes far more often than they are likely to create or convert attitudes.
There are then interrelated elements of economic and ideological nature operating within the structure and organization, and which partly account for the social power, of mass media. But it is also a fact that the mass media are themselves invested with an aura of prestige by a large portion of their audience. Lazarsfeld and Merton (1948:101-102) argued that this is partly explained of the fact that ‘the mass media bestow prestige and enhance the authority of individuals and groups by legitimating their status...’
Effects of the mass media
Communication processes, it was argued in the introductory part of the work, are an essential entity of our world. Therefore they can be expected to have a great effect upon the nature of a society. The major focus of traditional communication research has been on media effects with the major question being, ‘what effect do the media have on their audience?’
Mass media have shown a diversity of effects. This accounts for the different classifications of media effects under which researchers have developed their analyses. Hovland (1968) has pointed out mass media effects operating in a variety of areas such as entertainment, knowledge, information and skill; predispositions, in terms of preferences and tastes, opinions, beliefs and attitudes, and prejudice; and, stereotypes, what Lippmann (1922) has termed the ‘faulty generalizations about the characteristics of various groups.’
Researchers have also defined ‘political effects’, referring typically to media-induced changes in the political attitudes of individuals considered in isolation. One aspect of political communication processes has been the political context of effects. Seymour-Ure (1974:63) argues with respect to the political implications of media effects that they may vary according to the level of political relationships considered. Moreover, the significance of media-induced effects on those relationships, argues Seymour-Ure, will depend upon the virtually endless range of political questions in which an inquirer may be interested.
Klapper (1974) has pointed out some broad general principles applicable to short-term effects of mass communication within specific areas, such as the aesthetic and intellectual taste of its audiences, or their predispositions towards crime and violence. In general, mass communication, according to Klapper, reinforces the existing attitudes, tastes, predispositions, and behavioral tendencies of its audience members, including tendencies toward change. Its reinforcement effect is potent and socially important, though its social effects depend primarily on the way the society as a whole fashions the audience members whom mass communication serves. Some societies, for example, as those under military regime, may stress more on media operation in the manipulation of the audience's social attitudes and opinion. So the important question would probably be it is possible to create in people predispositions. Children seem to be particularly good subjects for such an attempt since they are naturally ‘changers’.
A considerable number of both disciplined social researchers and lay critics have expressed the belief that the plethora of escapist material in the mass media may tend to promote social apathy. It has been argued that escapist material, by producing habitual mode of relief for the tensions, can thus reduce the likelihood of social criticism (Walpes, Berelson & Bradshaw, 1940; Dollard, 1945; Lazarsfeld & Merton 1948).
The media message as a propaganda message was an old favorite of social and media research though of considerable contemporary importance. Propaganda can be called ‘the attempt to affect the personalities and to control the behaviour of individuals toward ends considered unscientific or of doubtful value in a society at a particular time’ (Doob, 1949:58). Propaganda operates when there is no science or when people's values are in conflict, and it has been seen as an assort to limit the ‘freedom of choice’ available to audience members. Propaganda has an intentional character and when it is directed toward a single individual takes the form of ‘persuasion’. An ‘action response’ is the learned attitude and the objective of the propagandist. Photographs, drawings or cartoons have often been thought to evoke the responses desired by the artist or propagandist. The propaganda message is often within the text and the illustration serves the perceptual framework of directing the reader to the text.
The media have often been criticized for being strongly pervasive forms of communication as they degrade the taste of the masses, and they encourage people to do things they would otherwise not consider. One of the theoretical perspectives providing an explanation of the influences of the media on people has been Kelman's (1961) social influence model. He suggests three basic processes of social influence: (1) compliance, which occurs when an individual accepts influence from another person or group because he or she hopes to obtain a favorable reaction from the others: (2) identification, referring to the case where an individual adopts a particular behaviour because it is associated with a satisfying self-defining relationship to the other person or group; and (3) internalization, meaning the process by which an individual accepts influence because the behaviour is congruent with his or her value system, or because the content of behaviour is rewarding. Kelman's summary of the distinction between the three processes appears in Figure 1.1.
Figure 1.1: Summary of the distinction between the three processes (Kelman, 1961:67)
McQuail (1977:72-74) argues on the stages of research interests of media effects. He notes that after the 1960s the main concern was concentrated around the influence of mass communication especially television and newspaper news. Consequently media research of that time re-opened the question of mass media effects resting on several bases, but mainly concentrating on the key concept of attitude. We are now in a phase where the concern is on the social power of the media. What we know about the effects of mass media is not only the result of research, but of more recent arguments dealing with the needs of the media industry. Gebner (1967) sees the key of the effects of mass media in their capacity to take over the ‘cultivation’ of images and consciousness in an industrial society: The truly revolutionary significance of modern mass communications... is the ability to form historically new bases for collective thought and action quickly, continuously and pervasively across the previous boundaries of time, space and status (Gebner, 1967:41). A common theme is the observation that experience, or what we take for experience, is increasingly directed and ‘mediated’, and more people receive a similar ‘version’ of the world.
The social power of the media, then, can be seen in five aspects summarized by McQuail (1977). He points out that the mass media can: (1) attract and direct attention to problems, solutions, or people; (2) confer status and confirm legitimacy; (3) be a channel for persuasion and mobilization; (4) help to bring certain kinds of public into being and maintain them; and (5) be a vehicle for offering psychic rewards and gratification (McQuail, 1977:90-91).
A new line of communications inquiry and work seeks to shift sharply the context of the discussion and research about the relations among the media, society and the individual, what has been termed as critical research. Critical research seeks to examine the relationship among media, communication and social power, and also the role the media play in maintaining the class stratified societies of the Western world.
Following Curran, Gurevitch and Woollacott (1982) it is possible to define three major research approaches on media effects within the critical research perspective. First, the structuralist approach which seeks to examine the implicit categories of thought in media texts through which the individual experiences the world. Secondly, the political economy approach which focuses upon the economic structure and processes of media production (Murdock & Golding, 1977); in particular, this approach studies the increasing monopolization and concentration of control within the media industries. It sees the media producing and disseminating a false consciousness which legitimates the class interests of those who own and control the media. Finally, cultural studies focus on the media message and assume that the media content and impact are shaped by the societal environment in which media message are produced and received (Hall, 1980).
Take all together, the critical perspective focuses either on the control and production of media messages or their content in the context of examining how the media develop a specific ideology that supports a class-dominated society. The concern is away from an analysis of the media effect and more toward an analysis of message content and moreover of message production. It is among these lines that the content analysis of this thesis is conducted, stressing on the comics message and drawing upon a multi-viewpoint based on historical, political, economic and sociological analytical principles. Four sociological-based models of media impact have been developed focusing on message content and/or message production. As McQuail and
Windahl (1981:6091) have noted these models view effects as long-term and indirect. Moreover, they reintroduce the notion of powerful media.
Figure 1.3: An example of a spiral of silence: mass media expressing dominant opinion together with an increasing lack of interpersonal support for deviant views bring about a spiral of silence, with an increasing number of individuals either expressing the dominant opinion or failing to express deviant ones (after Noelle-Neumann,1974) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
(Figure pending)
Figure 1.4: Non-closing information gap (after Thunberg et al, 1979) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
The basic idea behind the agenda setting model is that the media developed agendas for the audience (McCombs, 1981). The media select from a wide range of possible issues and topics and by giving them differential attention and emphasis, define for the audience the relative importance of each. The model emphasizes on ways the media shape the larger cultural environment of the audience in terms of the issues or topics they deemphasize or ignore (Figure 1.2.).
The spiral of silence model developed by Noelle-Neumann (1974, 1980) centres on the ability of the media to remove from public view and discussion certain issues and topics (Figure 1.3.). The model is based on the assumption that individuals strive to avoid isolation by avoiding to hold attitudes, beliefs or opinions not held by the majority of society. The spiral of silence develops as people look to the media for prevailing definition of reality, which reality is in agreement among the media because of the monopolistic nature of the media and the inherent routines of media production.
The knowledge-gap model focuses on the examination of relationships between media impact and social power in terms of the distribution of media information among various social classes (Tichenor, 1982). The basic idea behind this model is that ‘as the inflation of mass media information into a social system increases, segments of the population with higher socioeconomic status tend to acquire this information at a faster rate than the lower socio-economic segment’, so that the gap in knowledge between the segments tend to increase than decrease (Tichenor, 1982:81). The model (Figure 1.4.) presents insights into the manner the media can act to strengthen the political and economic structure of class-stratified capitalist societies.
Figure 1.5 : Ball-Rokeach and Defleur’s dependency model, showing the interdependence between society,
mass media, audience and effects (after Ball-Rokeach and Defleur) (McQuail and Windahl, 1981).
Finally, the dependency model of media effects (Figure 1.5.) formulated by Ball-Rockeach and DeFleur (1976, 1982), views audience effects in the context of the complexity of the larger social structure in which the individuals become more dependent on the media for information about, and orientation to, the larger social world. The model seeks to explain effects in terms of the historical conditions of society and its media. Ball-Rockeach and DeFleur are suggesting that it is the societal conditions that determine the power and type of media effects.
Mass media imperialism
Studies of media development and processes of mass communication in the developed and advanced industrial countries of the World have typically adopted framework of reference. Nevertheless, forms of international media activities have contributed to the emergence of an entirely different perspective and evaluation of the role of modern communication, what has been termed as media imperialism. The term refers to the processes by which ownership, structure, distribution or content of modern mass communications have operated to create, maintain and expand systems of domination and dependence on a world scale.
The media imperialism approach is based on, ‘an emphasis on global structure, whereby it is precisely the international socio-political system that decisively determines the course of development within the sphere of each nation’ (Fejes, 1981:281). It is especially the phenomenal acceptability of American cultural influence through the media that led to an analysis of international media activities. The analysis, as Boyd-Barrett (1977:117) notes, reveals two outstanding features of the influence process. First, the unidirectional nature of international media flow, with exported media products from the U.S. without return flow. Secondly, the relatively small source of international media influences, which if identified, they are in a handful of giant media conglomerates, mostly American. This absence of reciprocation of media influence by the affected country combines both the element of cultural invasion by another power and the element of imbalance of power resources between the countries concerned. Both justify the use of ‘imperialism’ term.
The media imperialism approach then is a point of view that is implicitly adopted in this thesis. The approach views the media situated as they were in a transnational context, as an obstacle to meaningful and well-balanced socio-economic progress. This focus of research on transnational agents dominating the international structure and flow of communication has been probably best reflected in the works by Schiller (1969, 1971), Mattelart (1979), Varis (1973) and others. Media imperialism can be seen as one part of the larger change in development thinking with the appearance of the dependency model.
The major conclusion of the dependency model is that the Third World countries occupy a subordinate position in the international economic and political systems which are seen as being structured primarily according to the needs of the developed countries. The dependency model can be seen as a counterpart of earlier theories of imperialism, reformulated from the point of view of underdeveloped countries (Portes, 1976). In that sense ‘effective national development’ comes to be interpreted as the ‘liberation from dependency’. It is within the broad context of the dependency approach of communication researchers investigate media imperialism (Cruise O'Brien, 1979; Salinas & Paldan, 1979; Lee, 1980). This broad context concentrates on (1) the role of transnational corporations or media interests in shaping communications between developed and underdeveloped countries; (2) an analysis of media imperialism as a historical phenomenon; and (3) cultural consequences of the content of various media products (Fejes, 1981:286-287).
Media imperialism analysis of communication networks reveals another aspect: control, as a basic form of imperialism. Mattelart (1974, 1976) was the first to study the problems of internationalization in the communication sphere. The motive was the principle of the free flow of information that the U.S. had been defending for more than thirty years, and which allowed American producers of programmes to flood the world with there goods. But it was also the fact that the U.S. has also possessed technological tools which allow them to impose their domination in wider, not only economic but ideological spheres too. The latter led to the development of another aspect of media imperialism, with reference to national cultures, that of cultural imperialism. Flitchy (1980) notes: National culture in the era of the multinationals must assume the reproduction on the dependence of the national bourgeoisie of the United States while at the same time assuring the reproduction of their hegemony as the dominant class of a given nation; that is to say, must continue to confirm them as national bourgeoisies (Flitchy, 1980:183).
The same problematic is found again in Mattelart and Mattelart's (1979) work where they examine ways in which national and multinational cultures are articulated in each of the sectors of mass culture.
Control and ownership of mass communication
With respect to the origin and location control of modern mass communications, and its subsequent socio-political implications, Tunstall (1977) has mad it clear in the title of his work, that ‘The Media Are American’. The cultural imperialism thesis claims similarly that authentic, traditional and local culture in many parts of the world is being battered out of existence by the indiscriminate dumping of large quantities of slick commercial and media products, mainly from the United States. This is inevitably leading to the creation of a problem of cultural identity, consequently to problems of national identity. Tunstall's central thesis is that the media are about commerce, politics and ideas. Therefore, he argues, the Anglo-American media - operating in the fields of politics, entertainment, culture and commerce on a world scale - cannot possibly be ‘value neutral’ (Tunstall, 1977:201).
The United States media, argues Tunstall, emerged from and reflect the assumptions of American politics: ‘U.S. media do not just 'fit' the system... they are an essential part of it ‘ (Tunstall, 1977:263). Certain links can be indicated between the United States government's domestic and external media policies. A report of the Congressional Committee concerned with ‘winning the cold war’ and ‘ideological operation and foreign policy’ illustrates the link between the political aspect of mass media and American foreign policy: For many years military and economic power, used separately, or in conjunction, have serves as the pillars of diplomacy. They still serve that function today but the recent increase in influence of the masses of the people over governments, together with greater awareness on the part of the leaders of the aspirations of people, brought about by the concurrent revolution of the twentieth century, has created a new dimension for foreign policy operation. Certain foreign policy objectives can be pursued by dealing directly with the people of foreign countries, rather than with their governments. Through the use of modern instruments and techniques of communication it is possible today to reach large or influential segments of national populations, to inform them, to influence their attitudes, and at times perhaps even to motivate them to a particular course of action. These groups, in turn, are capable of excerpting noticeable, even decisive, pressures, on their governments (Committee on Foreign Affairs, 1964:6).
An Intra-Governmental Committee on International Communications, including representatives of the Federal Communications Commission, the Office of Telecommunication Management, and the State, Justice and Defense Departments, reported in April 1966 that ‘telecommunications has progressed from being an essential support of our international activity in being also an instrument of foreign policy’ (Intra-Governmental Committee on International Telecommunications, 1966:1). Since 1950, the tendency for American commercial media and U.S. government agencies to help each other becomes more evident. The Americans become the senior partners in a government media alliance which turned anti-Nazi to Anti-Communist propaganda. The convert media operations of the U.S. government were carried on primarily by the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.), which set up Radio Free Europe, Radio Liberation, and various transmitters of the Voice of America.
Commercial assumptions, based on the U.S. domestic market also lie behind all American media. Tunstall (1977:265) points out that some fifteen American and five British organizations each offering a variety of materials and services, together sell the entire media range from foreign news to hit songs, and from features films to comic strips. These media exports both predate and still run ahead of the general American economic presence overseas or the multinational company phenomenon. Moreover, ‘a non-American way of the media box is difficult to discover because it is an American or Anglo-American build box...’ (Tunstall, 1977:63). Nevertheless, an illustration of how Anglo-American media values are diffused around the world is provided by a batch of six international media organizations, sharing common goals, such as development of media networks, international ‘help and advice’, or encouragement of media autonomy and freedom, within and between individual countries (Tunstall, 1977:219). Two organizations of newspaper owners and broadcasters, the Inter-American Press Association and the Inter-American Association of Broadcasters, deal with the entire American continent. The Commonwealth Broadcasting Association, and the equivalent in press, the C.P.U., deal with the British Commonwealth. Two more organizations are open to the entire world, The International Press Institute (I.P.I.) and the International Broadcast Institute (I.B.I.). That international media organizations of this kind should be dominated by American and British Commonwealth values and personnel is, if not inevitable, then at least extremely probable. Exposure to and assistance towards international markets, then is more likely to assist and promote Anglo-American media products and influences.
Mattelart (1978) argues that the current phase of capitalism is characterized by the acceleration of monopolization, a process of the concentration of enterprises, which beyond the economic sphere, mobilizes all sphere of human activity, the entire mode of production of life in a society. This process, Mattelart (1978:39) notes, reinforces the ensemble of apparatuses of ideological control: ‘Any transmission of knowledge comes under the rule of the media and mass culture becomes a spectacle... this tendency, which has reached its highest point in the vanguard of international capitalism, the United States, is better understood if we turn to the notion of mass media and culture as a system’. The current conditions of capitalism require us to regard all these supports as a system. Each specific medium reflects a different state of productive forces and thus of the maturation of monopoly capital.
Summarizing then, the main points stressed in this chapter are:
(1) the structure and organization of modern mass communications is clearly pointing out their economic and ideological interrelated characteristics functions;
(2) the considerable prestige the media have obtained from their audience accounts for the social power of mass media;
(3) there is a diversity of the types of mass media effects ranging from reinforcive short-term effects on knowledge, information and predispositions, to strong long-term socio-political influences either on individuals such as social apathy, or on political regimes, such as cultural invasion;
(4) propaganda is a pervasive function of mass media communication and aims to limit the ‘freedom of choice’ available to the audience. Compliance, identification and internalization have been suggested to be basic stages of media social influence process (Kelman, 1961).
(5) the concern of critical discussion and research of media effects has focused on the social power of the media, especially the control and production of media messages or their ideological content;
(6) the various theoretical perspectives in mass communication research have rated, and tried to explain media effects, as shaping the cultural environment of the audience, maintaining monopolistic control over public opinion, or strengthening the political and economic structure of class-stratified capitalist societies;
(7) the unidirectional nature and small source of international media flow as well as the Anglo-American media expansion and domination have led to the development of the dependency model on an international level, that has been termed media imperialism, and its associated notion of cultural imperialism; and,
(8) transnational agents located and originated in the Anglo-American context tend have to a great extent managed to create, through a powerful international mass media network, cultural and ideological control of under or less-developed countries.
The origins and location of social power of the comic industry, as a form of media imperialism, is the main concern of the next chapter. The American ownership or control identified in this chapter, in the media network over the world, is also reflected in the development and expansion of the comic industry. Moreover, as it is examined in the last chapters, cultural values in the ideological content of comic magazines, are also reflections of dominant values of American culture. It would seem then reasonable to suggest that comic magazines are about American business.
CHAPTER 2
ORIGINS AND ECONOMIC INTERESTS OF THE COMICS INDUSTRY
This chapter examines the development and function of the comic industry as ‘the advertising sector’ of a powerful complex of multinational enterprises, which originate in the western capitalist world. The discussion centres on the origin and location of power of the comic industry.
When in 1830 a steam driven printing machine was invented in America, it meant not only the beginning of a mass-produced press, but also a mass produced literature for the developing American nation. Early exchanges of ideas between the various entertainment media soon resulted in comic strips, which gradually overcoming the ‘danger to youth stigma’ (that is, creating criminal attitudes to young readers), set forward the conquest of new home and overseas markets. Comics together with other mass media developed, as a substitute for genuine folklore and culture, into a self-perpetuating institution, an integral part of the American way of life. Certain characteristics of American culture and history are being mirrored most faithfully in all mass media especially the distinctive form of comic magazine.
Comic magazines do not only reflect the American archetypes. The stereotyped figures of the American entertainment myth are there, not only to satisfy the expectations of readers of world over, but to advertise and promote certain economic interests through an ideological manipulation and exploitation of their reader's social attitudes. Comics create predispositions and desires whose satisfactions is to be found in an American oriented economic market. This part of the thesis attempts to exemplify the following observations about the comic industry:
(1) the comic industry is clearly a very profitable economic enterprise well covered behind the myth of entertainment;
(2) ideas prevalent in comics are associated with the development of the comic industry in the American cultural context, and they serve as sales promoting instruments of the American consumer society: and
(3) comic magazines, as a part of the socialization process, must be faced and analyzed as a contributory interrelated influence of the media entertainment network in general, whose origins are rooted in the imperialist desires of Anglo-American economic and cultural form.
These characteristics of the comic industry are investigated through a brief account of the emergence of comic industry in America and its subsequent transitory commercial expansion to Britain and continental Europe. Reasonable connections between the comic and other media industries, as different divisions of concrete and ‘healthy’ multinational enterprises, reveal that the comic industry's interests are anything but the entertainment and recreation of children. Finally a cultural/economic interrelationship is clearly portrayed in the advertising sections and the content of stories of comic magazines, whose forms and effects can be defined as direct and explicit and long-term, implicit and accumulative.
Emergence of the comic industry in America and Britain
America as well as Britain can be considered as the privileged progenitors of the modern comic strip, as they have developed a flourishing juvenile comic industry. The principal strategy has been that if it is to achieve mass readership, the strip must stay within defined limits of taste, so that it can de sold to wide non-specialized audience. Leo Boggart has defined the success of comics as a form of popular art as follows:
The appeal of the popular arts stems from the fact that they express the fantasies, longings and suppressed impulses of people living in a chaotic world. To lives burdened by frustration and monotony they bring a momentary release. Their heroes and heroines do all the things which the reading, listening, or viewing public would like to do (Boggart, 1963:244).
All mass media, however, have one great disadvantage: they cost money, and to make profits worthwhile, a public, as large as possible, has to be attached and given the opportunity to partake in the enjoyment of the mass media at the lowest possible price. Comics, as well, to be commercially viable must be addressed to the general public. Publishers therefore call themselves ‘the servants of public taste’. In the twentieth century a variety of ‘public taste services’, such as radio, television, pulps and comic books, are closely interrelated into a network of vast economic profits.
Comics have their own tradition originating in the United States, Britain and Europe. In America (i.e. the United States), the King Features Syndicate involved in 1913-1914, and from then comics started distributing throughout the American continent and eventually throughout the world. In the early 1970s there were twelve large and roughly two hundred smaller syndicates abroad, as well as branches of the big American firms which guarantee a world-wide distribution. United Features Syndicate and King Comics (later King Features) appeared in 1935, and Action Comics in 1938, featuring Superman, Batman and a number of early American folk heroes; it is these publishing groups that will dominate the comic industry for many years, alongside with Walt Disney's industry vigorous development. From a point of view of historical development, the following stages of American comic industry can be identified:
1900 to 1930 Funnies
1930 to 1940 Adventures
1940 to 1954 Super heroes
Autumn 1954 Comic code
1955 to 1962 Recession
1962 to 1970 New boom in comics
Spring 1971 Change in Comics Code - new content in comics
(Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:27)
Some of these dates are associated with peculiar historical moments in American history, and as it will be later examined, a socio-economic or political crisis becomes the motive for the comic industry to respond, but this respond quite often involves elements of American cultural forms and exploitative economic interests.
Some of the early comic book heroes are closely connected with the promotion of a certain consuming product, and can be characterized as sales promoting strip figures. Popeye the Sailor in 1930s made spinach desirable, and since a statue of him stands in Crystal City, Texas, heart of spinach; even his friend J. Wellington Wimpy (mad about hamburgers) has become immortalized in a chain of European hamburger houses (Figure 2.1.). But most often and as early as 1930s comic book heroes become symbols of patriotic faith. Such was Superman who rapidly became one of the most popular characters of modern American mythology. His own magazine achieved a circulation of 1.400.000, also put on the radio or animated cartoon for the movies.
Whereas the early funnies drew on humorous folklore and borrowed a popular culture, that of the eternal loser (the ‘fall guy’), later comic productions in the late 1930s, started using adventure as their main theme. The unbearable social conditions of the depression created by the laissez faire policies of the Republican Party, at that time, rocked American society and mad the rest of the capitalist world tremble. At this time of social upheaval the average American could find escape from his unending worries only in sports. in the funnies and the newly introduced adventure films and comics.
The vast comic book industry of the early forties was called by some people of the time the purveyor of opium to a nation of addicts. Fifteen million copies were sold each month, giving a total readership of over fifty million. Soon the first kind of female Superman, Wonder Woman appeared in 1942. The modern myth of superman originating in 1940s introduces a new series of hero to the comic book world - the man of steel, helper of all those in distress, defender of the weak and oppressed, strongest of all men, in short a man superior to any other human being. No matter this is the core of fascism, as it is argued elsewhere, this is clearly a traditional American ideal. Nevertheless, super heroes fighting crime undoubtedly provided a wide field for social criticism especially by Wertham (1954), which resulted to the introduction of the Comic Code in 1954.
Although a primary Crime Committee inquiry, set up in the U.S., found no definite connection between juvenile delinquency and comics, in October 26, 1954 the Comic Code of the Comic Magazine association of America (C.M.A.A.) comes into force (Figure 2.2). It was joined by Dell Publications and Gilberton Company who undertook to publish only ‘clean’ comics, displaying the ‘Dell-Pledge to Parents’ (Figure 2.3). The code is divided into three main parts, demanding clean dialogue, decently dressed characters and ‘good taste’ in the treatments of all matters relating to sex and marriage. The Code was, and still is, strictly applied. This way, as Reitberger and Fuchs argue:
... comic publishers created their own moral code to advert the danger threatening the industry and appease public opinion. In the United States self-censorship and control are always brought when pressure becomes too strong. In such cases self-censorship becomes self-defence in order to allow the affected medium to continue as a commercially viable part of the entertainments industry... it is a kind of barrier society erects to protect the status quo... (Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:137-8).
In 1962, Stan Lee and marvel Comics (‘The House of Ideas’) set of for a new era in the American comic business. Their most controversial national heroes, of most patriotic spirit, incorporated American ideology and the establishment's perpetuating principle: the concept of breeding Supermen. Heroes like Captain America mirrored the spirit of the era and American's attitude toward political problems. The renewed American comic boom of the early sixties had its own particular neuroses and foibles: ‘ a reaction to the public's growing boredom with stereotyped black and white presentation of good and evil by all the mass media. To this were added the explosions of social conflict and the Vietnam War... once again the success of comics was promoted by war...’ (Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:117).
In Britain, the first attempts to establish a comic industry emerged in the years immediately before the Second World War when the Dundee firm D.C. Thompson launched three comics, Dandy, Beano and Magic. The new type of comic, powerful in gag humor and slapstick, that Thompson papers provided, offered a satisfying escapist dream to appeal children.
After the war, in 1950, Hulton Press and Amalgated Press (later Fleetway Press, a division of the giant I.P.C.) enter the comic market, and along with D.C. Thompson will dominate the British comic production. The exploitative economic interests behind children's comic magazines are once more clearly illustrated here in a great reprint case of British comics.
British comic publishers found a neat way around the Copyright Act. Freelance artists working for the firms mentioned, did not normally sign any kind of contract with comic publishers. As a result hundreds of already published material is being reprinted and published over and over again, adding vast profits to the publishers' money silos. But it also creates certain socio-political implications, since the repeating themes of comics reflect the political and ideological beliefs of past times, so in a sense, they become anachronistic images of undesirable authoritarian disciplines of social control. As Baxendale (1978), one of the most successful Britain cartoonists of Beano, states about his work: I reflected that we live in a society that screws people up and screws people down. One section of the populace are selected to be a competitive ambitions elite, screwed up to go careering through life demented clockwork toys. A large section are screwed down to the floor, demoralized into acceptance of lives and jobs below their potential and hopes... this screwing of people's lives must lead to frustration, resentments, anger and feeling of inadequacy boiling away inside... I reflected my own working life... I am by nature placid, liking a tranquil life... it is very funny... but then, the comic industry is a very funny business (Baxendale, 1978:136).
The European follow-up to the American comic production
Baxendale's ‘very funny business’ also emerged in other European countries namely France and Belgium. The fact that home-made cartoon series cost seven times more than imported ones, is part of explaining the delayed European development of comic industry, which at the same time, served the exportation of American comic strips in the form of European reprints. Not many new comic strips were produced in Europe because the Second World War produced a shortage of newsprint, resulting in less space being available for comic strips.
France enters the market competition in 1929 with Tin Tin by Herge while in 1946 the Belgian Leblaue publishes the youth magazine Tin Tin taken from Herge's comic figure and reaching a weekly circulation of 650.000 copies sold in various parts of the world. In 1947 the Belgian Morris invents in Spirou his western Lucky Luke and later starts his cooperation with Rene Goscinny, the creator of Asterix the Gaul. In 1960 a European Federation for Youth Periodicals, as a respond to strong criticism against American strips started in late 1940s, was set up. It led directives similar to those of the American Code Authority. The Moral Code issued by Europress Junior places ever greater emphasis on protecting the young than the American Code.
Comic strips in Germany were published since 1948 in German translation, with Ehapa Verlag issuing Superman, the German publications of Kauka Verlag, and Bastei Verlag bringing out Felix the Cat in the 1960s. It should be noted that in the German Democratic Republic comic strips were banned as vehicles of imperialistic propaganda in 1968. In West Germany though, twelve million books were sold monthly in early 1970s:
Ehapa Verlag 3.5 million books monthly
Kauka Verlag 2.8 million books monthly
Bastei Verlag 2.6 million books monthly
Bildschriftenverlag barely one million
(Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:181)
The network of comic industry in Germany is supplied from United Press International (U.P.I.) contributions, by United Features Syndicate, and by Register and Tribune Syndicate. Bulls Pressedienst, still, represents King Features, English, Scandinavian and German syndicates.
In Italy, the American strip (accepted earlier in 1932) is banned by the fascist regime in 1938, and returns after the Second World War. Home products include Akim, El Carnera, Pecos Bill, Il Piccolo Sceriffo or Il Piccolo Ranger, but the main comic industry is concentrated in Milan, the headquarters of Arnoldo Mondatori Editore. Edizioni Araldo supplies in the field of Westerns. Il Commondante Mark, Zagor. Il Piccolo Ranger, Tex, Storia del West and Ranger Kendall, all of which have been imported in Greece during the past years.
Intermedia dependencies and multinational control over comic industries
Comic books, as a part of mass communication industries, provide accounts of the contemporary world and images of the ‘good life’. In this way they play an important role in shaping social consciousness. It is this ‘special relationship’ between economic and cultural power that has made the issue of their control a continuing focus of academic and political concern (Murdock, 1982). One of Marx's classical arguments has been that ‘the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production’ and hence regards ownership on the media (generally economic control) as the critical factor in determining control over media messages. The ‘managerialist’ thesis argues similarly, that in analyzing the structure of control in media organizations, a distinction should be made between control over long-term policies and control over day-to-day operation of the production of media products.
As it was argued earlier, there is a close interrelationship of all the media, creating a multinational network of information and social appeal which partly demonstrates the special relationship between economic and cultural control. Success of one of media forms is often translated into another medium. It was the film industry that turned to well-known strips on many occasions. Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Batman, Superman, spider Man and other heroes have become successful commercial films. Alongside, television turned to a series of animated cartoons, juxtaposing the dual media tradition.
Film and comic strip did influence each other. In 1952 C.B.S. introduced the first of sixty-five half-hour shows dedicated to the adventures of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. Western stories heroes first and super heroes later became film and radio stars, introduced in 1941 by Paramount Pictures. But the most direct relationship exists between comic and cartoon films. In 1930 Mickey Mouse began his career in comics and Donald Duck in 1938. With the publication of Disney's films, other series also developed such as: Paul Terry's Mighty Mouse; Walter Lanz's Woody Woodpecker cartoons; Loew's Tom and Jerry and Warner Bros' series Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Beep Beep the Roadrunner and Tweety and Sylvester; or even the most recent Hanna and Barber's cartoon. The puppet film is also associated with the animated cartoon; Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's series of fantastic adventures, Super Car, Stingray, Fireball X-15 and Thunderbirds, also appeared on children's strips.
The initial struggle of the mass media to develop into industries, created secondary industries, to supply the incredible paraphernalia that backs up the success of a film, a radio series or a comic strip or comic book. The location of control over these mass communication systems of the advanced western societies may partly demonstrate the reasons of this economic and cultural relationship of the mass media. Murdock (1982) argues that the increasing reach and power of the leading communications corporations is now greater than ever and due to two interlinked movements in the structure of communication industries: concentration and conglomeration. Murdock notes that, media markets have became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few large companies. In central sectors such as daily and Sunday newspapers, paperback books, records and commercial television programming two-thirds or more of the total audience are hearing, reading or looking at material produced by the top firms (Murdock, 1982:118).
These communications conglomerates operate mainly or solely within the media and leisure industries, using the profits for their original operating to buy into other sectors. The British International Publishing Corporation Ltd (I.P.C.), Warner Bros and National Periodical Publications, C.B.S. and Walt Disney Productions best illustrate Murdock's point and in relation to the comic industry.
The International Publishing Corporation Ltd (I.P.C.), dominating the British and some overseas markets, is a publishing group subsidiary of Reed Publishing Holdings Ltd. The latter group is engaged in printing, publishing newspaper, consumer and business magazines, book and business directories, and with a nominal capital of 50.000.000 pounds. But the holding company is Reed International Ltd with principal investments in U.K., North America and Europe, and principal activities in paper and packaging, publishing and printing, and building and home improvement products. Reed International Ltd holds an authorized capital of 150.000.000 pounds (Dun & Bradstreet, 1982). Among its subsidiaries are I.P.C., I.P.C. Business Press Ltd and I.P.C. Magazines, as well as 50% of Kauka Verlag in West Germany (Stopford, et al, 1980).
Walt Disney Productions is doubtlessly one of the most successful enterprises in the comic business. With $315 million in ready cash, Disney Productions is not only a grand nurture of fantasy, but is also one of the most fruitful money trees in Hollywood. Their sales in 1980 reached a total of $797 million with a profit of $114 million. Main contributors to this profit the Disney comic world, Disneyland in Anaheim, California, and Disney World in Orlando, Florida, which have become the symbol of America to non-Americans around the world. Another two Disneylands are going up, too, in Tokyo and France, from which Disney will receive a percentage cut for design and maintenance. The ideas originated in W.E.D. Enterprises (the company's creative center) and are materialized into entertainment parks, movies, comic strips, t>V. shows, books or music; the profitable aspect of Disney's giant enterprise is probably clearly illustrated by the official advertising pamphlet of Walt Disney World, a directory of hotel enterprises, package holidays makers, recreation sports centers and so on (Figures 2.4 & 2.5 and Table 2.1). Walt Disney Production own Disney's Orlando Holdings, Walt Disney World and the Experimental Prototype Community of Tomorrow (E.P.C.O.T.), Walt's $600 million dream; Disneyland in Anaheim; the Burbank Studio and offices; and a 708-acre ranch in the San Francisco Valley used for shooting their own movies and rented out to other motion picture producers. One more ‘funny business’ all about children's entertainment.
National Periodical Publications Inc. which publishes sixty-three regularly issued comic magazines such as Superman, Batman or Tarzan, and E.C. Publications Inc. publishers of Mad magazine, are subsidiaries of Warner Communications Incorporated. Warner Communications is a broadly based company in the entertainment field. Its main operations are in records, film production and distribution, and electronic games. Foreign operations mainly in Europe represented more than 30% of total sales in 1978. Some of the individual subsidiaries managed by W.C.I. include Warner Bros (one of the biggest film companies). Warner Bros Records, Atlantic Records, Warner Cable Corp., Warner Publishing, Atari Inc. and N.Y. Cosmos Soccer. Its sales in 1978 reached $1.309 million (11% in Europe) with a profitable $186 million (7% in Europe) (Stopford, at al, 1980:1135).
Finally, C.B.C. provides an illustrative example of the structure of this multinational network of entertainment and its intermedia dependencies. C.B.C.'s consumer bands include: five T.V. stations, four radio stations, five record companies, eight musical instruments manufacturers, two stereo companies, twelve toy companies, eight magazine publications and four book publishers. Their sales in 1978 reached $3.7 billion with a profitable of $201 million (Moscowitz, et al, 1980:366). It is clear than that the successful development of such multinational enterprises, whose main concern is control over production, do apply instruments available to implement their aims.
As Robertson (1971) argues, a multinational producing enterprise (M.P.E.) exercising control over overseas subsidiaries can have substantial effects on trade flows, as well as that, it may create certain socio-political implications on problems of development of nationalism. ‘Multinational operation’, he argues, ‘does involve international planning of production, of purchasing policies for materials and components and of marketing strategy in order that the enterprise operating as an entity is able to optimize its objective function’ (Robertson, 1971:327).
It has also been indicated by Johnson (1969) and others, that nationalistic goals can be included in an assessment of trade policy. For example, subsidiaries of multinational enterprises working overseas may effect local production and economy in favour of the multinational parent's production policies. Johnson (1969:351) argues, ‘some aspects of the activities of M.P.E.s are primarily political... and fall outside the field altogether. Problems of extra-territoriality, for example, are clearly a political issue. In this case, policy decisions made by one national government may be insidiously imposed on another country through the commercial links between a parent and its overseas subsidiaries’.
One of the most explicit cases of a multinational cultural enterprise's direct involvement in another country's cultural affairs, is that of Walt Disney's ‘tour’ in Latin America in early 1940s. Nelson Rockefeller, the State Department's Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, asked Disney to tour South America as a ‘good-will ambassador’. As Miller (1957:185) states, Walt Disney was told: ‘your pictures are quite popular down there... and there is a Nazi influence you can help offset if you would go down and meet people... the Government is willing to underwrite all expanses...’ So Disney went off to South America to shoot whatever he found and ‘he wanted it to be especially good because this one was for Uncle Sam’. Walt Disney came up with, Platis (1978) argues, were films of strong anti-communist or of military content, or comic books whose purpose was to celebrate the ‘friendly relations’ to be developed between the United States and Latin America countries.
Economic interests in comics advertising
The commercial character of comic magazines is also illustrated by the numerous advertisements which quite often occupy a large amount of a comic magazine's pages. Advertising brings the comic book industry an enormous revenue, which have been defined here as being either direct and explicit (Figure 2.6.) or indirect and implicit (through the content of comic stories).
Charles Schultz, designer of the Peanuts strip, notes that, ‘the secret of a successful series is to develop the personality of comic book heroes, in such a way, that the readers feel these heroes exist in real, and they (the readers) just cannot wait meeting them...’ (Magazine, 1986:59). Comic book heroes, then, instill wishes and the advertisements promise to supply the means that will fulfill the wishes. The ‘cultural industry’ conditions readers in a consumer society, which the ‘consumer industry’ can then exploit. Mass media, advertising and publicity combined make sure that public demand is currently created and expanded and the wheels that drive the economy of capitalist system are kept running smoothly. As it is argued elsewhere in this thesis, an important aspect of the function of any form of commercial literature derives from ‘discourse theory’ which seeks to explain the organization of emotions in conjunction with the organization of social and political consciousness. It is a specialty of all fiction that it continually offers ways of combining social attitudes with feelings.
Direct advertising through the comic magazines is mainly concerned in advertising other related sectors of the comic industry, such as films (Figure 2.6.), video games, toys, music, and so on. It is an old relationship - that of comic figures associated with the promotion of goods: from Popeye and Little Lulu advertising spinach and Kleenex, to the more recent Peanuts and Blondie advertising Ford and Kodak products respectively. Even the Greek version of Lucky Luck has lent his title to a children's baby shampoo brand (Figure 2.7.).
Still, it may be the case that other, than those of the comic industry's economic interests may occur and develop as a result of the wide field of economic exploitation comic magazines offer. Girls' comics to portray heroines as having a super-figure, teaching this way their young readers that as they grow up they should have to be beautiful. It is through the advertisements of popular press, such as women's magazines, that girls find the ways to became beautiful. A large network of ‘beauty institute’ enterprises promises that it will make them look just as those heroines in the comic stories look like (Figure 2.8). Girls' emotional problems with husbands or boyfriends, or even ‘existential’ occupation worries about their future (themes often met in human interest/girls' comics) provide the ‘professional’ stamp to a number of ‘prestige’ offices of mediums, astrologists or police detectives, working in an ‘underground’ dimension of the economic system's structure (Figures 2.9 & 2.10). Women's magazines offer a great number of their advertising sections to occupational groups of this kind.
These are some of the numerous examples that could be seen as consistent cases of an unconscious and implicit advertising process, of the comic industry's interests. Moreover, these interests are expressive of the general interests of the network of capitalist enterprises. Quite often the core of comic stories involves different forms of entertainment based on the operation of different industries in the capitalist economic system. Human interest comics, for example, do stress more on fashion, dance and hobbies, pop music, expensive fast cars or luxurious houses. Magazines directed to boys are mainly preoccupied with any popular sports, stressing on soccer matches, car racing or fighting arts (Figures 2.12 & 2.13).
Finally, there is what Wertham (1954) has described as a scientific promotion of comic magazines. the direct effect of comic books on children through their pictures, text and advertisements is reinforced by an indirect influence: endorsements and writings of experts. In their actual effect the experts for the defense represent a team as their way of reasoning, their apologetic attitude for the industry and its products, their conclusions are much alike. Of course they contradict one another occasionally, or contradict themselves between one paper and another.
Morris, for example, the creator of Lucky Luck, believes that ‘someone can make good humor being politically neutral’ and that is why he dislikes the cartoonists of the Left (Zoc, 1986:95). Charles Schultz though, sees that this neutral style is a ‘very easy made humor’, and still, cartoonists following this strategy, ‘end up giving a simplified aspect of life, although the case is that they are implicitly making meaningful conclusions about life, politics or the social structure’ (Magazine, 1986:58).
The expert for the defense do not tell you what children get out of the stories, either, what they actually say, what is reflected from comic books in their minds. Moreover, in trying to deny the harm done by comic books the experts make it appear that the comic books have no influence at all and represent merely ‘casual contact with ideas’ on a printed page. Rene Goscinny, who declares to be a ‘super-chauvinist’ and ‘nationalist’ says about his Asterix the Gaul: ‘I have never looked at the color, the race or the religion of people, I never said that I do not like the blacks, the reds, or the yellows. I only see people... what I am interested is just a parody of every country's stereotypes...’ (Five To, 1985:51). Though, when they pronounce on the effects of ‘good’ comic books they suddenly forget anything and write that comic books ‘exert tremendous influence’.
So far, this chapter has tried to point out some of the facts that reveal the origins and location of power of the comic industries in a historical, socio-political and economic context:
(1) America and Britain are the progenitors of a flourishing juvenile comic industry;
(2) the development of comics as a form of popular press is clearly associated with the more general economic and cultural expansion of the free enterprise market of America. The traditional imperialist origins of this market, have been always aiming at the conquest of overseas, and especially European markets;
(3) comic magazines to be commercially viable are interrelated into a network of mass media entertainment;
(4) comic book characters are used as sales promoting figures of American products and are often used as symbols of patriotic faith;
(5) censorship on comics, whenever it involves, is directed by the comic industry itself, and takes the form of self-defense. It represents the various attempts of the industry to adapt to new public demands of the consuming market. The C.M.A.A. Code and its European version are dominant considerations in the decision making policies of comic production.
(6) European comic industry, though it develops at a later stage, its structure and organization, as well as the actual comic productions, are closely associated, and in a sense, under American multinational control through an extensive world wide entertainment network.
(7) this international multinational operation of ideological and economic manipulation of overseas markets, through the mass media, has certain economic and social-political implications, on the autonomous development of those markets, and on issues of development of national identity;
(8) inter-media dependencies between industries of mass entertainment illustrate at its best the interests of the controlling enterprises, which products are promoted in the most innocent and ‘funny’ way through comic magazines;
(9) advertisements, too, justify the commercial character of comics, being of direct and indirect form; and
(10) a number of economic interest groups are operating outside the multinational network of comic industries, though inside a free capitalist market, and their operation promotes and justifies to a certain extent operating principles of comic magazines. Scientific promotion of comics is also in operation through a group of experts, as an indirect influence.
Through the next chapters a descriptive and both qualitative and quantitative content analysis of fifty comic magazines published in Greece is presented. The prototypical forms of these magazines originated inside the gigantic comic industries that have just been outlined. The aim of the analysis is to point out the cultural forms expressed through the themes of these magazines and to provide the links which would suggest that, those themes, are congruent and recognizable elements of Anglo-American imperialist values and attitudes. As such, these comics constitute an ideological system of foreign cultural invasion, strongly influential when operating inside the boundaries of the general cultural context of any overseas country, such as Greece.
This chapter examines the development and function of the comic industry as ‘the advertising sector’ of a powerful complex of multinational enterprises, which originate in the western capitalist world. The discussion centres on the origin and location of power of the comic industry.
When in 1830 a steam driven printing machine was invented in America, it meant not only the beginning of a mass-produced press, but also a mass produced literature for the developing American nation. Early exchanges of ideas between the various entertainment media soon resulted in comic strips, which gradually overcoming the ‘danger to youth stigma’ (that is, creating criminal attitudes to young readers), set forward the conquest of new home and overseas markets. Comics together with other mass media developed, as a substitute for genuine folklore and culture, into a self-perpetuating institution, an integral part of the American way of life. Certain characteristics of American culture and history are being mirrored most faithfully in all mass media especially the distinctive form of comic magazine.
Comic magazines do not only reflect the American archetypes. The stereotyped figures of the American entertainment myth are there, not only to satisfy the expectations of readers of world over, but to advertise and promote certain economic interests through an ideological manipulation and exploitation of their reader's social attitudes. Comics create predispositions and desires whose satisfactions is to be found in an American oriented economic market. This part of the thesis attempts to exemplify the following observations about the comic industry:
(1) the comic industry is clearly a very profitable economic enterprise well covered behind the myth of entertainment;
(2) ideas prevalent in comics are associated with the development of the comic industry in the American cultural context, and they serve as sales promoting instruments of the American consumer society: and
(3) comic magazines, as a part of the socialization process, must be faced and analyzed as a contributory interrelated influence of the media entertainment network in general, whose origins are rooted in the imperialist desires of Anglo-American economic and cultural form.
These characteristics of the comic industry are investigated through a brief account of the emergence of comic industry in America and its subsequent transitory commercial expansion to Britain and continental Europe. Reasonable connections between the comic and other media industries, as different divisions of concrete and ‘healthy’ multinational enterprises, reveal that the comic industry's interests are anything but the entertainment and recreation of children. Finally a cultural/economic interrelationship is clearly portrayed in the advertising sections and the content of stories of comic magazines, whose forms and effects can be defined as direct and explicit and long-term, implicit and accumulative.
Emergence of the comic industry in America and Britain
America as well as Britain can be considered as the privileged progenitors of the modern comic strip, as they have developed a flourishing juvenile comic industry. The principal strategy has been that if it is to achieve mass readership, the strip must stay within defined limits of taste, so that it can de sold to wide non-specialized audience. Leo Boggart has defined the success of comics as a form of popular art as follows:
The appeal of the popular arts stems from the fact that they express the fantasies, longings and suppressed impulses of people living in a chaotic world. To lives burdened by frustration and monotony they bring a momentary release. Their heroes and heroines do all the things which the reading, listening, or viewing public would like to do (Boggart, 1963:244).
All mass media, however, have one great disadvantage: they cost money, and to make profits worthwhile, a public, as large as possible, has to be attached and given the opportunity to partake in the enjoyment of the mass media at the lowest possible price. Comics, as well, to be commercially viable must be addressed to the general public. Publishers therefore call themselves ‘the servants of public taste’. In the twentieth century a variety of ‘public taste services’, such as radio, television, pulps and comic books, are closely interrelated into a network of vast economic profits.
Comics have their own tradition originating in the United States, Britain and Europe. In America (i.e. the United States), the King Features Syndicate involved in 1913-1914, and from then comics started distributing throughout the American continent and eventually throughout the world. In the early 1970s there were twelve large and roughly two hundred smaller syndicates abroad, as well as branches of the big American firms which guarantee a world-wide distribution. United Features Syndicate and King Comics (later King Features) appeared in 1935, and Action Comics in 1938, featuring Superman, Batman and a number of early American folk heroes; it is these publishing groups that will dominate the comic industry for many years, alongside with Walt Disney's industry vigorous development. From a point of view of historical development, the following stages of American comic industry can be identified:
1900 to 1930 Funnies
1930 to 1940 Adventures
1940 to 1954 Super heroes
Autumn 1954 Comic code
1955 to 1962 Recession
1962 to 1970 New boom in comics
Spring 1971 Change in Comics Code - new content in comics
(Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:27)
Some of these dates are associated with peculiar historical moments in American history, and as it will be later examined, a socio-economic or political crisis becomes the motive for the comic industry to respond, but this respond quite often involves elements of American cultural forms and exploitative economic interests.
Some of the early comic book heroes are closely connected with the promotion of a certain consuming product, and can be characterized as sales promoting strip figures. Popeye the Sailor in 1930s made spinach desirable, and since a statue of him stands in Crystal City, Texas, heart of spinach; even his friend J. Wellington Wimpy (mad about hamburgers) has become immortalized in a chain of European hamburger houses (Figure 2.1.). But most often and as early as 1930s comic book heroes become symbols of patriotic faith. Such was Superman who rapidly became one of the most popular characters of modern American mythology. His own magazine achieved a circulation of 1.400.000, also put on the radio or animated cartoon for the movies.
The vast comic book industry of the early forties was called by some people of the time the purveyor of opium to a nation of addicts. Fifteen million copies were sold each month, giving a total readership of over fifty million. Soon the first kind of female Superman, Wonder Woman appeared in 1942. The modern myth of superman originating in 1940s introduces a new series of hero to the comic book world - the man of steel, helper of all those in distress, defender of the weak and oppressed, strongest of all men, in short a man superior to any other human being. No matter this is the core of fascism, as it is argued elsewhere, this is clearly a traditional American ideal. Nevertheless, super heroes fighting crime undoubtedly provided a wide field for social criticism especially by Wertham (1954), which resulted to the introduction of the Comic Code in 1954.
... comic publishers created their own moral code to advert the danger threatening the industry and appease public opinion. In the United States self-censorship and control are always brought when pressure becomes too strong. In such cases self-censorship becomes self-defence in order to allow the affected medium to continue as a commercially viable part of the entertainments industry... it is a kind of barrier society erects to protect the status quo... (Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:137-8).
In Britain, the first attempts to establish a comic industry emerged in the years immediately before the Second World War when the Dundee firm D.C. Thompson launched three comics, Dandy, Beano and Magic. The new type of comic, powerful in gag humor and slapstick, that Thompson papers provided, offered a satisfying escapist dream to appeal children.
After the war, in 1950, Hulton Press and Amalgated Press (later Fleetway Press, a division of the giant I.P.C.) enter the comic market, and along with D.C. Thompson will dominate the British comic production. The exploitative economic interests behind children's comic magazines are once more clearly illustrated here in a great reprint case of British comics.
British comic publishers found a neat way around the Copyright Act. Freelance artists working for the firms mentioned, did not normally sign any kind of contract with comic publishers. As a result hundreds of already published material is being reprinted and published over and over again, adding vast profits to the publishers' money silos. But it also creates certain socio-political implications, since the repeating themes of comics reflect the political and ideological beliefs of past times, so in a sense, they become anachronistic images of undesirable authoritarian disciplines of social control. As Baxendale (1978), one of the most successful Britain cartoonists of Beano, states about his work: I reflected that we live in a society that screws people up and screws people down. One section of the populace are selected to be a competitive ambitions elite, screwed up to go careering through life demented clockwork toys. A large section are screwed down to the floor, demoralized into acceptance of lives and jobs below their potential and hopes... this screwing of people's lives must lead to frustration, resentments, anger and feeling of inadequacy boiling away inside... I reflected my own working life... I am by nature placid, liking a tranquil life... it is very funny... but then, the comic industry is a very funny business (Baxendale, 1978:136).
The European follow-up to the American comic production
Baxendale's ‘very funny business’ also emerged in other European countries namely France and Belgium. The fact that home-made cartoon series cost seven times more than imported ones, is part of explaining the delayed European development of comic industry, which at the same time, served the exportation of American comic strips in the form of European reprints. Not many new comic strips were produced in Europe because the Second World War produced a shortage of newsprint, resulting in less space being available for comic strips.
France enters the market competition in 1929 with Tin Tin by Herge while in 1946 the Belgian Leblaue publishes the youth magazine Tin Tin taken from Herge's comic figure and reaching a weekly circulation of 650.000 copies sold in various parts of the world. In 1947 the Belgian Morris invents in Spirou his western Lucky Luke and later starts his cooperation with Rene Goscinny, the creator of Asterix the Gaul. In 1960 a European Federation for Youth Periodicals, as a respond to strong criticism against American strips started in late 1940s, was set up. It led directives similar to those of the American Code Authority. The Moral Code issued by Europress Junior places ever greater emphasis on protecting the young than the American Code.
Comic strips in Germany were published since 1948 in German translation, with Ehapa Verlag issuing Superman, the German publications of Kauka Verlag, and Bastei Verlag bringing out Felix the Cat in the 1960s. It should be noted that in the German Democratic Republic comic strips were banned as vehicles of imperialistic propaganda in 1968. In West Germany though, twelve million books were sold monthly in early 1970s:
Ehapa Verlag 3.5 million books monthly
Kauka Verlag 2.8 million books monthly
Bastei Verlag 2.6 million books monthly
Bildschriftenverlag barely one million
(Reitberger & Fuchs, 1972:181)
The network of comic industry in Germany is supplied from United Press International (U.P.I.) contributions, by United Features Syndicate, and by Register and Tribune Syndicate. Bulls Pressedienst, still, represents King Features, English, Scandinavian and German syndicates.
In Italy, the American strip (accepted earlier in 1932) is banned by the fascist regime in 1938, and returns after the Second World War. Home products include Akim, El Carnera, Pecos Bill, Il Piccolo Sceriffo or Il Piccolo Ranger, but the main comic industry is concentrated in Milan, the headquarters of Arnoldo Mondatori Editore. Edizioni Araldo supplies in the field of Westerns. Il Commondante Mark, Zagor. Il Piccolo Ranger, Tex, Storia del West and Ranger Kendall, all of which have been imported in Greece during the past years.
Intermedia dependencies and multinational control over comic industries
Comic books, as a part of mass communication industries, provide accounts of the contemporary world and images of the ‘good life’. In this way they play an important role in shaping social consciousness. It is this ‘special relationship’ between economic and cultural power that has made the issue of their control a continuing focus of academic and political concern (Murdock, 1982). One of Marx's classical arguments has been that ‘the class which has the means of material production at its disposal has control at the same time over the means of mental production’ and hence regards ownership on the media (generally economic control) as the critical factor in determining control over media messages. The ‘managerialist’ thesis argues similarly, that in analyzing the structure of control in media organizations, a distinction should be made between control over long-term policies and control over day-to-day operation of the production of media products.
As it was argued earlier, there is a close interrelationship of all the media, creating a multinational network of information and social appeal which partly demonstrates the special relationship between economic and cultural control. Success of one of media forms is often translated into another medium. It was the film industry that turned to well-known strips on many occasions. Tarzan, Flash Gordon, Batman, Superman, spider Man and other heroes have become successful commercial films. Alongside, television turned to a series of animated cartoons, juxtaposing the dual media tradition.
Film and comic strip did influence each other. In 1952 C.B.S. introduced the first of sixty-five half-hour shows dedicated to the adventures of Tarzan, Lord of the Jungle. Western stories heroes first and super heroes later became film and radio stars, introduced in 1941 by Paramount Pictures. But the most direct relationship exists between comic and cartoon films. In 1930 Mickey Mouse began his career in comics and Donald Duck in 1938. With the publication of Disney's films, other series also developed such as: Paul Terry's Mighty Mouse; Walter Lanz's Woody Woodpecker cartoons; Loew's Tom and Jerry and Warner Bros' series Bugs Bunny, Daffy Duck, Beep Beep the Roadrunner and Tweety and Sylvester; or even the most recent Hanna and Barber's cartoon. The puppet film is also associated with the animated cartoon; Gerry and Sylvia Anderson's series of fantastic adventures, Super Car, Stingray, Fireball X-15 and Thunderbirds, also appeared on children's strips.
The initial struggle of the mass media to develop into industries, created secondary industries, to supply the incredible paraphernalia that backs up the success of a film, a radio series or a comic strip or comic book. The location of control over these mass communication systems of the advanced western societies may partly demonstrate the reasons of this economic and cultural relationship of the mass media. Murdock (1982) argues that the increasing reach and power of the leading communications corporations is now greater than ever and due to two interlinked movements in the structure of communication industries: concentration and conglomeration. Murdock notes that, media markets have became increasingly concentrated in the hands of a few large companies. In central sectors such as daily and Sunday newspapers, paperback books, records and commercial television programming two-thirds or more of the total audience are hearing, reading or looking at material produced by the top firms (Murdock, 1982:118).
These communications conglomerates operate mainly or solely within the media and leisure industries, using the profits for their original operating to buy into other sectors. The British International Publishing Corporation Ltd (I.P.C.), Warner Bros and National Periodical Publications, C.B.S. and Walt Disney Productions best illustrate Murdock's point and in relation to the comic industry.
The International Publishing Corporation Ltd (I.P.C.), dominating the British and some overseas markets, is a publishing group subsidiary of Reed Publishing Holdings Ltd. The latter group is engaged in printing, publishing newspaper, consumer and business magazines, book and business directories, and with a nominal capital of 50.000.000 pounds. But the holding company is Reed International Ltd with principal investments in U.K., North America and Europe, and principal activities in paper and packaging, publishing and printing, and building and home improvement products. Reed International Ltd holds an authorized capital of 150.000.000 pounds (Dun & Bradstreet, 1982). Among its subsidiaries are I.P.C., I.P.C. Business Press Ltd and I.P.C. Magazines, as well as 50% of Kauka Verlag in West Germany (Stopford, et al, 1980).
Finally, C.B.C. provides an illustrative example of the structure of this multinational network of entertainment and its intermedia dependencies. C.B.C.'s consumer bands include: five T.V. stations, four radio stations, five record companies, eight musical instruments manufacturers, two stereo companies, twelve toy companies, eight magazine publications and four book publishers. Their sales in 1978 reached $3.7 billion with a profitable of $201 million (Moscowitz, et al, 1980:366). It is clear than that the successful development of such multinational enterprises, whose main concern is control over production, do apply instruments available to implement their aims.
As Robertson (1971) argues, a multinational producing enterprise (M.P.E.) exercising control over overseas subsidiaries can have substantial effects on trade flows, as well as that, it may create certain socio-political implications on problems of development of nationalism. ‘Multinational operation’, he argues, ‘does involve international planning of production, of purchasing policies for materials and components and of marketing strategy in order that the enterprise operating as an entity is able to optimize its objective function’ (Robertson, 1971:327).
It has also been indicated by Johnson (1969) and others, that nationalistic goals can be included in an assessment of trade policy. For example, subsidiaries of multinational enterprises working overseas may effect local production and economy in favour of the multinational parent's production policies. Johnson (1969:351) argues, ‘some aspects of the activities of M.P.E.s are primarily political... and fall outside the field altogether. Problems of extra-territoriality, for example, are clearly a political issue. In this case, policy decisions made by one national government may be insidiously imposed on another country through the commercial links between a parent and its overseas subsidiaries’.
One of the most explicit cases of a multinational cultural enterprise's direct involvement in another country's cultural affairs, is that of Walt Disney's ‘tour’ in Latin America in early 1940s. Nelson Rockefeller, the State Department's Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, asked Disney to tour South America as a ‘good-will ambassador’. As Miller (1957:185) states, Walt Disney was told: ‘your pictures are quite popular down there... and there is a Nazi influence you can help offset if you would go down and meet people... the Government is willing to underwrite all expanses...’ So Disney went off to South America to shoot whatever he found and ‘he wanted it to be especially good because this one was for Uncle Sam’. Walt Disney came up with, Platis (1978) argues, were films of strong anti-communist or of military content, or comic books whose purpose was to celebrate the ‘friendly relations’ to be developed between the United States and Latin America countries.
Economic interests in comics advertising
The commercial character of comic magazines is also illustrated by the numerous advertisements which quite often occupy a large amount of a comic magazine's pages. Advertising brings the comic book industry an enormous revenue, which have been defined here as being either direct and explicit (Figure 2.6.) or indirect and implicit (through the content of comic stories).
Charles Schultz, designer of the Peanuts strip, notes that, ‘the secret of a successful series is to develop the personality of comic book heroes, in such a way, that the readers feel these heroes exist in real, and they (the readers) just cannot wait meeting them...’ (Magazine, 1986:59). Comic book heroes, then, instill wishes and the advertisements promise to supply the means that will fulfill the wishes. The ‘cultural industry’ conditions readers in a consumer society, which the ‘consumer industry’ can then exploit. Mass media, advertising and publicity combined make sure that public demand is currently created and expanded and the wheels that drive the economy of capitalist system are kept running smoothly. As it is argued elsewhere in this thesis, an important aspect of the function of any form of commercial literature derives from ‘discourse theory’ which seeks to explain the organization of emotions in conjunction with the organization of social and political consciousness. It is a specialty of all fiction that it continually offers ways of combining social attitudes with feelings.
Direct advertising through the comic magazines is mainly concerned in advertising other related sectors of the comic industry, such as films (Figure 2.6.), video games, toys, music, and so on. It is an old relationship - that of comic figures associated with the promotion of goods: from Popeye and Little Lulu advertising spinach and Kleenex, to the more recent Peanuts and Blondie advertising Ford and Kodak products respectively. Even the Greek version of Lucky Luck has lent his title to a children's baby shampoo brand (Figure 2.7.).
Still, it may be the case that other, than those of the comic industry's economic interests may occur and develop as a result of the wide field of economic exploitation comic magazines offer. Girls' comics to portray heroines as having a super-figure, teaching this way their young readers that as they grow up they should have to be beautiful. It is through the advertisements of popular press, such as women's magazines, that girls find the ways to became beautiful. A large network of ‘beauty institute’ enterprises promises that it will make them look just as those heroines in the comic stories look like (Figure 2.8). Girls' emotional problems with husbands or boyfriends, or even ‘existential’ occupation worries about their future (themes often met in human interest/girls' comics) provide the ‘professional’ stamp to a number of ‘prestige’ offices of mediums, astrologists or police detectives, working in an ‘underground’ dimension of the economic system's structure (Figures 2.9 & 2.10). Women's magazines offer a great number of their advertising sections to occupational groups of this kind.
Animals, especially dogs, often accompany a comic strip figure. The favorite comic book character who owns an animal is probably to instill wishes to children to have little pets. As Figure 2.11 shows dogs are very popular (as well as other animals) and make a very profitable trade through the advertising pages of popular press. Quite often a famous and convenient media image, such as that of the T.V. dog, Lassie, occupies the role of the sales promotion figure.
These are some of the numerous examples that could be seen as consistent cases of an unconscious and implicit advertising process, of the comic industry's interests. Moreover, these interests are expressive of the general interests of the network of capitalist enterprises. Quite often the core of comic stories involves different forms of entertainment based on the operation of different industries in the capitalist economic system. Human interest comics, for example, do stress more on fashion, dance and hobbies, pop music, expensive fast cars or luxurious houses. Magazines directed to boys are mainly preoccupied with any popular sports, stressing on soccer matches, car racing or fighting arts (Figures 2.12 & 2.13).
Finally, there is what Wertham (1954) has described as a scientific promotion of comic magazines. the direct effect of comic books on children through their pictures, text and advertisements is reinforced by an indirect influence: endorsements and writings of experts. In their actual effect the experts for the defense represent a team as their way of reasoning, their apologetic attitude for the industry and its products, their conclusions are much alike. Of course they contradict one another occasionally, or contradict themselves between one paper and another.
Morris, for example, the creator of Lucky Luck, believes that ‘someone can make good humor being politically neutral’ and that is why he dislikes the cartoonists of the Left (Zoc, 1986:95). Charles Schultz though, sees that this neutral style is a ‘very easy made humor’, and still, cartoonists following this strategy, ‘end up giving a simplified aspect of life, although the case is that they are implicitly making meaningful conclusions about life, politics or the social structure’ (Magazine, 1986:58).
The expert for the defense do not tell you what children get out of the stories, either, what they actually say, what is reflected from comic books in their minds. Moreover, in trying to deny the harm done by comic books the experts make it appear that the comic books have no influence at all and represent merely ‘casual contact with ideas’ on a printed page. Rene Goscinny, who declares to be a ‘super-chauvinist’ and ‘nationalist’ says about his Asterix the Gaul: ‘I have never looked at the color, the race or the religion of people, I never said that I do not like the blacks, the reds, or the yellows. I only see people... what I am interested is just a parody of every country's stereotypes...’ (Five To, 1985:51). Though, when they pronounce on the effects of ‘good’ comic books they suddenly forget anything and write that comic books ‘exert tremendous influence’.
So far, this chapter has tried to point out some of the facts that reveal the origins and location of power of the comic industries in a historical, socio-political and economic context:
(1) America and Britain are the progenitors of a flourishing juvenile comic industry;
(2) the development of comics as a form of popular press is clearly associated with the more general economic and cultural expansion of the free enterprise market of America. The traditional imperialist origins of this market, have been always aiming at the conquest of overseas, and especially European markets;
(3) comic magazines to be commercially viable are interrelated into a network of mass media entertainment;
(4) comic book characters are used as sales promoting figures of American products and are often used as symbols of patriotic faith;
(5) censorship on comics, whenever it involves, is directed by the comic industry itself, and takes the form of self-defense. It represents the various attempts of the industry to adapt to new public demands of the consuming market. The C.M.A.A. Code and its European version are dominant considerations in the decision making policies of comic production.
(6) European comic industry, though it develops at a later stage, its structure and organization, as well as the actual comic productions, are closely associated, and in a sense, under American multinational control through an extensive world wide entertainment network.
(7) this international multinational operation of ideological and economic manipulation of overseas markets, through the mass media, has certain economic and social-political implications, on the autonomous development of those markets, and on issues of development of national identity;
(8) inter-media dependencies between industries of mass entertainment illustrate at its best the interests of the controlling enterprises, which products are promoted in the most innocent and ‘funny’ way through comic magazines;
(9) advertisements, too, justify the commercial character of comics, being of direct and indirect form; and
(10) a number of economic interest groups are operating outside the multinational network of comic industries, though inside a free capitalist market, and their operation promotes and justifies to a certain extent operating principles of comic magazines. Scientific promotion of comics is also in operation through a group of experts, as an indirect influence.
Through the next chapters a descriptive and both qualitative and quantitative content analysis of fifty comic magazines published in Greece is presented. The prototypical forms of these magazines originated inside the gigantic comic industries that have just been outlined. The aim of the analysis is to point out the cultural forms expressed through the themes of these magazines and to provide the links which would suggest that, those themes, are congruent and recognizable elements of Anglo-American imperialist values and attitudes. As such, these comics constitute an ideological system of foreign cultural invasion, strongly influential when operating inside the boundaries of the general cultural context of any overseas country, such as Greece.
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