The overall cultural pattern identified in children's comic magazines is exemplified in this chapter through a thorough content analysis; moreover, it is suggested that this pattern is indicative of the Anglo-American imperialist and capitalist cultural elements. The first part of this chapter focuses on the characteristics of the model of society that children's comics offer to suggest that they reflect the structure and organization of the western capitalist societies. Secondly, explicit social and political issues in these comics are examined and the fact is pointed out that these themes reflect different eras of the Anglo-American socio-economic and historical development.
The media have created a picture of society. Through many decades now comics portrayed a distinctive idealized image of society whose characteristics are indicated here. Research findings arrived at through empirical investigations prove that comics give a distorted image of society (Manning White & Abel, 1963). This image has often defined what boyhood and girlhood are like, and Riesman's (1961) American storytellers, who have created this image, force children either to accept or aggressively to resist it, as they bombard them with radio, T.V. and comics from the moment they can listen, see and just barely read.
Most of the comic magazines of the analysis have originated in the Anglo-American cultural context, with a few European exceptions which reflect the same propagandist themes the original Anglo-American comics do. All comics portray certain socio-cultural prototypes which can be identified in accordance with traditional patterns of social organization and function of the free capitalist societal model. Vera and Leslie (1979:71) have stressed the fact that comic books are a thoroughly American literary style. Comics introduce their readers into broader ensemble of products and artifacts, into a life style, into expressive and ideological needs as well as into group structures of the society that produces them and for which they are produced.
The society as portrayed in children's comics
What kind of societal model do comic stories provide to their young readers then? From the result of the analysis it seems that each of the three categories of comic magazines, defined earlier, provides a different mode of values, a distinctive socialization pattern of ideas and attitudes, addressed to specific age or sex. Most of the humorous comic magazines, addressed to both sexes, provide early tastes of the kind of the society that children should look forward. They stress on a general stereotyping pattern of basic societal values, such as authority, social organization and mobility, and notions of morality. Comic magazines addressed to girls present a world full of the most dramatic and delicate situations. Girl's future is indicated in terms of pop music and fashion, gossip, housework, astrology, cosmetic hints and emetic love stories. Adventure comics are clearly addressed to boys. They offer many of the themes noted in other categories, often more developed and, with different emphasis. Political and national issues are more prevalent and stereotypes strongly emphasized. Certain racist, sexist and violent predispositions are indicative of all comic magazines of the analysis and will be the focus of the next chapter.
The attempt in this chapter is to examine certain societal models addressed to children and explicit political issues and ideas found in comics addressed to them. Such as examination provides the evidence that both the societal models offered and the political-historical ideas expressed in them are closely associated with the Anglo-American cultural context. It seems then reasonable and necessary to suggest that this comic culture clearly reflects the values and attitudes of the exploitative capitalist owners and controllers of world consciousness, and yet, that comic culture consists a case of cultural imperialism.
In general, society is portrayed in three basic patterns in all comic stories. The differential presentation of societal patterns reveals to quite different world to which girls are presented, through the comic world, in comparison to that of boys. Three distinctive models of society have been identified in the analysis. The first of them, (Figure 4.1.) deals with some basic stereotypes of traditional societal values of authoritarian and strongly disciplined societies. This model would account for all types of comics but it is indicative of the comics offered to younger children. The status of social institutions is, in this model, strongly reinforced, trough the authoritarian personalities of parents, policemen and teachers. The authors of these comic stories see real children, as Tucker (1978:292) has also noted, ‘to be amoral beings, living in a type of comic original sin in constant need of external discipline and basic education with a strong institutional framework, a sort of primitive feeling’. In this way, the idea of the nuclear family is strongly promoted and reinforced.
Several important ideological lines have been pointed by Dixon (1978) as indicative of comics for younger children: constant preoccupation with violence and menace for boys, and clothes and housework for girls; notions of royalty and aristocracy, together with civic officials powerfully reinforcing an authoritarian model of society; and beliefs in luck and superstition as important factors in the upward social mobility. In many stories that deal with wealth and possession of property, the compensation element is very strong. George Orwell (1944;196-197) has noted on this: Class feeling is not altogether absent. The rich is often shown as mean, and a cruel and crooked money-maker... the stories are conditioned to show that the meager life is not is not so bad really, as you are at least honest and happy, and that riches bring trouble and false friends. The poor are given moral values to aspire to as something within their reach... This particular element is relevant to all areas of popular mass media. The formula ‘good poor man defeats bad rich man’ is simply a sublimation of the class struggle (Orwell, 1944:197-198).
It has been noted in recent analyses of comics (Tucker, 1976; Dixon, 1978) that the basic social structure is never questioned and any possibility of conceiving alternatives is ruled out; this seems to be true, too, in the comics of analysis. ‘To speak of wealth’, notes Dixon (1978:14), ‘ and not to consider the economic system which determines its distribution is to miss that main point’. So, certain notions of capitalist ideology are fictionalized in comic strips, and in this way, argues Daniels (1973:53), ‘children learn about capitalism from Scrooge McDuck and about the degrading amoral effect of too easy money from Gladston Gander’.
Children as comic characters have constantly to copy with parents and teachers, whose authority is reinforced by the use of violence. The anarchic tendencies of pupils are brought into line as they are seen conforming under iron disciplines. Parental and the social system's authority follow children outside school and there is always a happy end which would be supportive of the roles that family and social institutions play. It is also interesting that there is an immense preoccupation with the safeguarding of property. It is remarkable, argues Dixon (1978:31-32) in a consideration of the social attitudes implicit and explicit in these comics, that ‘most people seem to grow up accepting a manifestly unjust society, unacceptable morally in its most basic assumptions... they are kept ignorant of any alternatives or even understanding of their own society’
Figure 4.2., shows a basic pattern of the ideal society presented in the comic magazines addressed to boys. Most of the themes already noted are found here, too, they are combined with status, sport, wealth, menace and political and national alignment. There is a constant conflict between ‘good’ and ‘evil’ in three distinctive forms: (1) menace, that takes the form of threatening the dominant capitalist world structure; (2) power, exercised against social and ethnic minorities in its most obvious form, violence; and (3) war, which is presented in a way that affords opportunities for Anglo-American glory and heroism.
A completely different world is revealed in girls' comics (Figure 4.3.). Girls need only be ‘good’ fun or have ‘exotic hobbies’, whereas boys are considered good looking when hair is long or face made-up, and ‘dreamy’ or ‘fab’ express the ultimate in desirability. As Laycock (1966:324) pointed out, the false reality provided by this make-believe world conveniently depends on being ‘with it’, part of the crowd where the problems of the real world are scorned or ignored. Girls are presented to be catty, spiteful and jealous on the one hand, and sentimental, pathetic and romantic on the other. The tendency is for them to have no autonomy, to act as adjuncts to their husbands and to live for and through husbands and children. This, in turn, argues Dixon (1978:25), may account for ‘the emptiness felt by many women and the possessiveness mothers exert over their children, of whatever age, and the havoc this causes’.
Through these general patterns of societal image offered, there are some distinctive characteristics of the comic culture as a whole. They lead to the suggestion that this very culture is indicative of a collective notion of middle class society, much as that of the United States, and its central value system. The ideal of equal opportunity institutionalizing the notion that success would be the goal of all, the beliefs in the group as the source of creativity and success, possession of property as the ultimate need of the individual, and the beliefs in the application of science to achieve the possession of property, all form a distinctive value pattern in most of the comics examined. Whyte (1956) described and characterized this system of beliefs as the new ‘social ethic’ of the modern value system of America, and which he believes has long replaced the traditional ‘protestant ethic’, that is, ‘ the pursuit of individual salvation through hard work, thrift, and competitive struggle.
There is an unquestioning acceptance of the social structure in all comic stories, and this can be seen again as being associated with the American emphasis on the notion of egalitarianism, as significant in determining competition, status uncertainty and conformity. De Tocqueville (1955:140) for example, argued that egalitarianism maximizes competition among members of society. Moreover, the emphasis on comic stories is placed on the individual ability or performance for achievement, as well as that, all people shall be treated according to the same social standard, and according to the specific positions they happen to occupy in the social structure. This distinctive value system found in comics, that emphasizes egalitarianism, universalism, achievement and specificity has been indicated to be the central value system of the United States character (Williams, 1951; Parsons, 1951). The emphasis on these four values, argues Lipset (1979), means that people can expect fair treatment according to the merits of the case or their ability. Implicit to this notion is that ‘lower class individuals and groups who desire to change their social position need not be revolutionary’. Nevertheless, it is another matter what is being emphasized in American ideology and its expressive comic form, and what the reality is. In fact, analyses of the American value system (Lipset, 1979; De Tocqueville, 1955; Rostow, 1958) have pointed out that American society does not display any of the values that its storytellers have constantly tried to portray in comics.
There are though, some other undeniable links between the societal image comics present and that of American society. The whole idea of comic books has been though by Riesman (1961) to be typical of an era of ‘inner-direction’ on American society and that they are the products of a corps of professional storytellers who are the ‘tutors’ to masses of children. Comic books, as it has also been noted by Bettelheim (1976), are carriers of knowledge to children, to which provide significant symbolic orders that, as he has shown, can be more ‘real’ than reference groups and persons in real life, and associated with the American way of life. Moreover, the masculinity bias of American society has been argued to be reflected in the social structure of the comic stories' families, which furthermore reflect the typical middle class character of capitalist societies (Vera & Leslie, 1979). It may be that not only American reality is being presented, but as it will be later examined, also versions of the ‘American Dream’.
Anti-intellectual attitude and the disabled
Through the analysis of children's comics some stereotyping patterns, have been identified, which are generic to the whole comic culture of the sample. There is, first, a negative attitude against the disabled: this reflects the comics ‘preference in portraying ideal masculine and feminine characters. Secondly, there is an anti-intellectual attitude, expressed in the form of avoiding hard tasks and problems, or ridiculing the educated. Hard work is never associated with possession of wealth. On the contrary the main tendency is towards unscientific beliefs playing with children's fears, such as monsters and demons, or beliefs that success is dependent on luck, superstition, magic formulae and so on. Riesman (1961:85) has accordingly noted that the American society has long stressed traditional stereotypes of this kind, and he sees the telling of myths and legends as one of American society's principal mechanisms of social organization.
It is a fact, argue Bogdan et al (1982), that people with disabilities are negatively valued in society. By linking ugliness and physical and mental differences with murder, terror and violence the media have contributed to social prejudices that result in the fear of the handicapped and ultimately, in their systematic intentional exclusion from society. Some of the most common stereotypes of tall or of people of excess weight as being ‘thick’ or ‘slow’, or of the disabled as being predisposed towards crime, have been found in the comics of the analysis (Figure 4.4.). Comics often use dramatic visual imagery to communicate personality and this reinforces the already questionable notion that physical dimensions are closely linked to particular personality characteristics. ‘This continued misrepresentation only makes it more difficult for the disabled to be accepted as ordinary persons who happen to be disabled, rather than as special persons who have a trait that overshadows and influences every aspect of their being’ (Weinberg & Santana, 1970:330).
The anti-intellectual attitude depicted in comics (Figure 4.5.) is just following a long tradition in western literature of portraying the educated being less knowing or capable than they actually appear, or being abysmally stupid, or even more worse being imposters who pretend to be something more than they are. It is probably just a part of the general tendency people have to avoid the risky individual strive for success and to follow the easy way of self-satisfaction through their participation in the mass. Dramatists like Moliere or Bernard Shaw, and American humorists such as Washington Irving or Herman Melville and others, have long been making fun of over-learned doctors (Blair, 1977).
Luck and superstition, on the other hand, are shown to be the main successful ways that lead up to the social scale in life. Astrologists and card-tellers, evil witches, powerful magic filters, luck numbers and objects, extraterrestrial beings, monsters and demons, consist a basic ideological pattern of the comic world's beliefs and attitudes (Figure 4.6.). These beliefs, on one hand, play with children's existentialist anxieties, embodying a general belief in the existence of indefinite powers controlling social reality, and on the other hand, these powers provide the motives for, and are materialized into, an endless pursuit of easy money and success through the unstable promises of a social-economic system based on optimistic odds and probabilities.
Finally, political issues are implied by this pattern of anti-intellectual attitudes. The way they are presented echoes the broader attitude of American society when dealing with themes of socio-political and historical development: stressing on traditional attitudes and oppressing progressive alternatives. Two examples have been found in Popeye the Sailor, a distinctive hero of the American folklore. One of the stories dealt with a progressive professor of education who was presented to support an anti-authoritarian pedagogical method (figure 4.7.). When applied to Popeye's nephew Sweepy it resulted in failure, as Sweepy, with the assistance of the cartoonist drawing the story, revealed extremes of violence and menace, when set free from Popeye's strict ‘parental’ authority. The moral was that progressive pedagogues' stress on more freedom to children, is bound to fail, as opposed to strict authoritarian disciplines.
A second case noted in a Popeye's story, deals with a world problem and its possible solution - Third World starvation. As Figure 4.8. shows, possible co-operation between advanced capitalist economies as a solution to the starvation problem is left unmentioned. The solution offered is that world starvation will extinct only through the assistance of the western world towards the underdeveloped countries, and the progress of science and technology, two clear characteristics of the social thought and practice of American capitalism.
Up to this point the attempt of the analysis has been to make evident the societal values and attitudes presented in children's comic magazines. To a certain extent, they appear to be distinctive reflections of the value system and mode of thinking of the western capitalist social structure, especially the middle class character of American society and its inherent contradictory stereotypes. It should be obvious then that comics portray and offer socialization patterns in accordance with the anticipated roles the western societies depend on, and expect their children to follow. Social institutional structures are reinforced and social or ethnic minorities, as it is later examined, are oppressed, in favour of an economic system which supports masculine directives of power and feminine subordinate position of domination and exploitation. Implicit in this general cultural atmosphere are traditional and conformist social attitudes, unscientific beliefs of disorientation, negative attitude towards education, and misdirection of the issues of upward social mobility and social change.
Socio-historic and political issues
The social and political issues noted in children's comics are more clearly demonstrated and exemplified in the following analysis of comic themes dealing with different eras of the Anglo-American socio-economic and historical development. They best of all demonstrate the Anglo-American nature of the content of comic's culture and support the thesis of cultural propaganda and stereotyping. These central comic themes deal with: the conquest of the West, the Independence war, the ‘new’ American Dream, the Vietnam war, explicit glorification of the western capitalist world, Anglo-American nationalism, Third World intervention tendencies, and the longstanding attitudes of American expansionist interests and involvement in the national affairs of underdeveloped countries. What should probably make us critical of these explicit cases of nationalistic propaganda, in favor of the U.S. and its British ideological allies in Europe, is the essence of these comic themes when read in a foreign cultural context, out of which they were developed, i.e. the cultural context of Greece. No matter the intentions hidden for the moment, these themes do tell us something about and provide a definite exemplification of the association between Anglo-American foreign policy interests and the cultural context of comics. They reflect and impose these interests on children in the most innocent, uncritical and acceptable way.
The conquest of the Wild West and the Independence War
One of the main themes in boy's comics has been the issue of the war between the early American frontiers of the West and the doomed tribes of the Red Indians, in favour of the formers' imperialistic and expansionist interests (Figure 4.9.). What is presented in comics is an endlessly repeated story of the numerous western frontiers. Their conquest is glorified and the systematic extermination of the Red Indian is glossed over, or even legitimized. Caravans bringing the conquesters to ‘easily available’ land, rangers taking care that the conquered land is safe, and the glorification of the horse, all have contributed to this false image of the Wild West legend. The mass media, including comics, gave the period of the Wild West conquest an aura of glory. The glorification of the cowboy legend and the stereotyping of the Red Indian as aggressive and uncivilized primitives, well covered the early imperialistic desires of the American consciousness. Rostow (1958:247) referred to these desires as reflecting a ‘classic American style’ of life at that time, which was also identified earlier by Nash Smith (1950), in the ways the rural frontier settlements were established in the West on the Great Plains.
This classic American style has been repeatedly stated in the words of the policy makers of the American Dream of a ‘rising empire’ through a constant ‘extension of the area of freedom’. Comic stories, therefore, give a simplified version of the real intentions behind the development of American interests and aspirations. The war for Independence, another prevalent theme in the comic analyzed (Figure 4.10.) is used to portray patriotic adventures against the British occupiers and the remaining Red Indians' resistance for survival. The values brought out of the American Revolution are left uncriticized, however, behind the killing of a British soldier or the murder of Indians, the ancient Roman conception of patriotism ‘wheresoever the Roman conquers, he inhabits’, was revived and strengthened (Van Alstyne, 1960; Pratt, 1950). That was the beginning of the American empire.
The glorification of American capitalism
All states that have through the years gained independence are faced with two interrelated problems: legitimising the use of political power and establishing national identity. Comic magazines have often contributed to this legitimation of power and promotion of national identity of the United States. Figure 4.11. exemplifies this point. The glorification of the western capitalist world and its contradictory expansionist and exploitative values are often found in comics in an exaggerated way. As the Secretary of State of the United States George Schultz (1986:15) recently stated on the U.S. capabilities, ‘the U.S. using their power in a sensible way, and interfering where provision of assistance is needed, then it can promote its ideals and interests’. It seems that the case of comic magazines best serves this goal.
The clearest example of American nationalistic propaganda in children's comics, is that of the Captain America superhero (Figure 4.12.). The passion for making over the world had long been expressed by Wilson and Roosevelt. They had constructed an idol of world domination for the U.S. masses to worship and symbolize the national legend. This idol is once more given birth here, following the anti-communist spirit of McCarthyism and the Cold war era. The words coming out of Captain America's mouth, just reflect J.F.Kennedy's words at that time: ‘The cause of all mankind is the cause of America... we are responsible for the maintenance of freedom all over the world’ (stated in Dixon, 1978:39). The war of Vietnam is one more political-historical issue found in comics. Mister No (figure 4.13.), a retired American pilot who fought in Vietnam and is now somewhere in South America, tries to forget the bitter Vietnam war memories. His case probably reflects the subsequent American escapist attempts to forget the nightmare of defeat. But surely, historical and human consciousness have recorded the real facts of the Vietnam war, no matter how distorted the picture will come out from the pages of a comic magazine.
One of the major preoccupations in the boy's comics is the Second World War theme, where national and racial stereotypes are carried through a mixture of power, violence and war (Figure 4.14.). International killings, nicknaming the enemy, Anglo-American and White Commonwealth alliances, individual American or British heroism, provide the usual background through which these stereotypes operate in favor of the development of Anglo-American nationalism. Dixon (1978:46) notes, on war comics, that there might be ‘a kind of national nostalgia... for past greatness’, and that ‘the line of militaristic aggression streches back through the whole imperial period, with its associated attitudes of contempt for the superiority toward other peoples’. This national stereotyping, this hatred for foreigners, this obsession of power, violence and war, which Johnson (1966) has also pointed out in war comics, should be considered important factors for the promotion of Anglo-American nationalism and friendship.
Third world intervention tendencies
The comic analyzed also brought out some powerful examples of American and British foreign policy in the Third World. The case of Tarzan of the Apes is, this thesis suggests, a case of Third World intervention propaganda (Figure 4.15.). A White Anglo-Saxon figure is placed and legitimized as the ‘Lord of the Jungle’ (i.e. Africa). His presence also legitimizes the arrival of further colonialist intruders whose usual excuses are the rescue of a lost father, or scientist, from the hands of some cannibalistic tribe of Africans. It should be noticed here though, that two years earlier than the appearance of Tarzan, the American Congress, in an attempt to open ways for the outflow of American goods to foreign markets, provided the money for sending hundreds of ‘special agents’ abroad to look for selling opportunities. This was seen as an aid to American business, by the Department of Commerce's division, the Foreign Commerce Service (Beard & Beard, 1937:833). Nevertheless, the contemporary pictures of social and political conflict in Africa suggest far more realistic reasons for the presence of the White there. The vast economic interests of multinational operation in Africa seem to provide much more convincing reasons than those that Tarzan and his American creator try to impose.
Indiana Jones seems to be a more recent version. He, in the name of archaeology, breaks into ancient and primitive territories, to promote the modern imperialist, capitalist and militaristic ideals. The same situation occurs in the science fiction stories of the analysis. The usual setting is some kind of primitive totalitarian society, which is being invaded by American astronauts, who bring the goods of civilization, and introduce new ways of social life and progress, usually through co-operation, assistance and technological development.
These are cases which reflects the American involvement in the competition of world powers over trade and territory, justifying the United States imperialistic program in operation, formed very early at the end of the 19th century. The United States had to become a great military and naval power and enter the rivalry over international markets, acquire new colonies, and if necessary use war in winning commercial advantages (Beard & Beard, 1937). The concept of expansion and the struggle for overseas markets and raw materials (i.e. imperialism) was mainly promoted because it was associated with freedom in a meansend relationship. Freedom was the end and expansion was believed to be the means by which freedom would be secured. So, expansion inevitably became a destiny (Weinberg, 1935).
The American expansionist ideal led to a contradictory international philanthropy policy. As Weinberg (1935:519) notes, the altruistic phase of democratic expansion had as one presupposition ‘an egoistic disparagement of the capacity of peoples to help themselves’. This is a case explicitly shown by certain American figures in the analysis (Figure 4.16.). It is the case of Blake, a North-American worrier of the independence war years. Most of the times there is a case of an unstable status of an Indian tribe, where a ‘bad’ Indian leader denies co-operation to the American Blake. In this case, then, Blake used force to convince his rival, and it is Blake who consequently decides and establishes the leader of the tribe, a ‘good’ Indian who would promote ‘co-operation’ and ‘friendship’ between the tribe and the Americans.
It should have become evident by now the close association of the content of children's comic magazines and the Anglo-American cultural elements that they propagandize. It is the same theme reoccuring in all these comics, just being repeated in different forms that of statements leave no doubt about the unchanged interests of the free capitalist world. Foreign policy decisions and aspirations, from the depths of American history, through the years of development and expansion, have reached a state of neo-colonialist attempts to affect and manipulate, first of all, human consciousness. Control and domination over peoples' thinking and cultural will lead inevitably to economic dependency. ‘One of the ways to protect and advance the interests of our people’, was stated by the Secretary of State of the United States in 1958, ‘is by strengthening the fabric of world power’ (U.S. Government printing Office, 1958:26). Comic magazines show that they play an important role in manipulating this goal. Moreover, they express and legitimize the basic philosophy underlying U.S. foreign policy: ‘the security of this nation can be maintained only by spiritual, economic and military of the free world, with this nation a powerful partner committed to this purpose’ (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1958:34).
This pattern of spiritual, economic and military strength of the free world, finds its expression at an ideological level in the manipulation and exploitation of certain social groups. As far as comic magazines are concerned, these forms of power are reflected in the sexist and racist attitudes, and the positive predispositions towards violence, of comic stories, and will be the focus of the analysis in the last chapter of the work.
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