Newsgroups: bit.listserv.cinema-l
Date:         Tue, 21 Jul 1992 08:59:44 EDT
From:         Michael Hurt <ST101700@BROWNVM.BITNET>
Subject:      Censorship and comics

To explain generally the effect of censorship on comics, I was a
collector until I began to run out of money, and it has been a while, so
someone who knows the exact way the censorship happened, please explain,
as it has been such a long time, that I forgot. But anyway, here's the
effeect of this censorship on comics:      I was an avid collector, and
my searching had taken me further and furthewr back in time, until I was
getting into collecting stuff (a lot of DC Superman, Batman, that kinda
stuff) from the sixties, and even getting some from the fifties. But
what I'd notice, and it reallycaught me off guard, was that in the
middle of a story (I think those from the sixties were like this), whole
panels would be blacked over, and sometimes as much as a page would be
covered, and the words "Censored by Comics Code Authority" or some such
would be plastered over the black in big block letters. I though they
were kidding until I read further, and the parts of the story which were
blacked were left out and never explained. on comics covers for a long
time, I'm not sure when it ended, as comics can be extremley explicit
now, but for a long time, the words "Approved by Comics Code Authority"
would be the seal of approval for any comic.
I was really pissed as a relatively young kid when this happened as
I was reading, as Superman and batman were teamed up in I think "World's
Finest" and I think Batman or someone was operating on Supes for some
reason and was going to take out jhis body parts or something cool (this
was really cool to me, as a kid getting to see some neat gross stuff)
and right when they get to the good part, I turn the page, and BAM! it
was blacked out.
What struck me first was disappointement bcs it took me a while to
figure out what was going on. oh! HT egalling thing was (I just
remembered) was that they left in some some of the words, and you
couldn't relate them to the pictures, so taken out of the context of the
pictures, not only were they confusing, but were tasing as well, e.g.
"Omigod, Superman! That's really gross!" or somewthing enticing would
always make me mad. What I began to feel, however, was weird that I was
thought incapable of handling seeing whatever the Code Authority thought
they had to censor from my immature and impressionable eyes, and was an
insult to my young-but-sharp-enough intelligence. I didn't appreciate
anyone telling me what I should see, and I still don't. That was how I
first remember censorship, and i don't want my kids' intelligences to be
slammed when they go into the library and told that they can't read
certain books becasue they were not "mature" enough. If my library had
had a policy like not allowing me in the normal book section until 14
years of age, I would have had a cow, even then. Just a random question:
How many of ya'll learned a lot about sex as a kid from reading in the
library? That's where I got my sex edecation. I felt good to learn so
much about something that mystified me at the time, and it was very
reassuring. If those books, like Masters and johnson, and many others
had been off-limits...what kind of message do you think I would have
gotten about sex? It hink it would have mystified me even more, and I
would have continued to believe those weird things kids tell each other
on the school bus about what it REALLY is. Anyway,
that's pretty random, and I have to go, but yeah, anyone want to answer
that question? I'm really interested. Mike Hurt at Brown Univ.
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