comic, anime and postcard censorship

This page looks at the censorship of comics, anime and postcards.

It covers -

• introduction
• codes and moral panics
• Tijuana bibles
• manga
• hentai and other anime
• postcards

     introduction

Comics have attracted the attention of the censorious because -

• they have been assumed to be aimed at children or (much the same the thing) the 'lower orders', ie those uniquely susceptible to corruption
• they have often been lurid, unsurprising in a genre that extends from the inanities of Daffy Duck to the more extreme Japanese manga
• they can be construed as promoting inappropriate behaviour such as violence, under-age sexual activity and disrespect for elders - highlighted in the 1954 New Zealand Inquiry into Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents ('Mazengarb Report')
• distribution has not involved venues such as bookshops and libraries
• they could often be easily characterised as foreign, imports into a culture 'under threat'
• they have disturbed perceptions of the child as an edenic creature unsullied by anger or irreverence
• and perhaps most importantly because they are an easy target

A 1956 Pennsylvania statute, in wording reminiscent of contemporary anxieties about the net, thus claimed that -

the destructive and adventurous potentialities of children and adolescents are often stimulated by collections of pictures and stories of criminal deeds of bloodshed or lust so massed as to incite to violent and depraved crimes ... we believe that such juveniles do, in fact, commit such crimes at least partly because incited to do so by such publications

     codes and moral panics?

A perspective on film (and internet) rating is provided by the US Comics Code Authority (CCA), established by the Comics Magazine Association of America (ie publishers and distributors) in 1954 as a mechanism for self-regulating the "portrayal of sex, violence, and antisocial activity" in comic books. Member-publishers agree to abide by the Comics Code, with each issue of their publications being submitted for approval prior to publication.

Establishment of that Code preempted a US Senate Committee report on Comic Books & Juvenile Delinquency. It followed a moral panic centred on 'The Show of Violence' (in a 1948 Readers Digest) and Seduction of the Innocent (New York: Rinehart 1954) by Fredric Wertham (1895-1981), analogous to the 1995 Marty Rimm online pornography brouhaha. Wertham warned that Batman comics promoted homosexuality and called for legislation to prevent sale or display of comics to anyone under 16.

His advocacy served to legitimate a moral panic evident in municipal bans on retailing, development of blacklists, creation of anti-comic units with police forces and ritual burning of comics by scouts and religious organisations (along with oaths to "neither read nor purchase objectionable publications and to stay away from retail establishments where such are sold").

A report for the New Orleans city council noted that comics "rank with jazz music as being one of the few truly American art forms" and concluded that

wholesale condemnation of all comics magazines is one of the worst mistakes of some of the critics. The fact is both sides are right. The books are not all bad, as the more extreme critics say; nor all good, as some of their publishers and defenders contend. Like all other creative products, they must be judged individually. And that is what most critics, parents, and public officials have failed to do.

The council however found a third of comics to be "offensive, objectionable, and undesirable", accordingly establishing a blacklist of titles and a board to monitor retailer compliance.

The panic is associated with a 50% drop in the number of titles published in the US over the period 1954 to 1956 and the demise of several publishing houses.

In Australia and New Zealand local comics publishers such as Horwitz adopted a similar Code of Publishing Ethics.

In the UK the 1955 Children & Young Persons (Harmful Publications) Act reinforced self-censorship by importers, publishers and newsagents through a ban on comics that were "likely to fall into the hands of young children" and that "portray acts of violence or cruelty, the commission of crimes or incidents of a repulsive or horrible nature". It has never got to court; lan Travis' Bound & Gagged (London: Profile 2000) notes that by 1962 only 12 complaints under the Act had been received, with no action being taken in five of those complaints.

The US Code has been moribund since the 1980s (reflecting changing community expectations and distribution arrangements) but embraced directives such as -

In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds. Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority. Scenes of excessive violence shall be prohibited. Scenes of brutal torture, excessive and unnecessary knife and gun play, physical agony, gory and gruesome crime shall be eliminated.

... All scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed, gory or gruesome crimes, depravity, lust, sadism, masochism shall not be permitted.

... All lurid, unsavory, gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated. Inclusion of stories dealing with evil shall be used or or shall be published only where the intent is to illustrate a moral issue and in no case shall evil be presented alluringly nor so as to injure the sensibilities of the reader. Scenes dealing with, or instruments associated with walking dead, torture vampires and vampirism, ghouls, cannibalism, and werewolfism are prohibited.

The US Comic Book Legal Defense Fund (CBLDF) has a useful bibliography of case law, media coverage, academic studies and other writings from the 1930s onwards regarding censorship of political cartoons and popular comics.

Three of the more valuable academic studies are Martin Barker's Haunt of Fears (London: Pluto 1984) and Comics: Ideology, Power & the Critics (Manchester: Manchester Uni Press 1989) and David Hajdu's The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scare and How It Changed America (New York: Farrar Straus Giroux 2008), which should be read in conjunction with Wertham's Seduction of the Innocent, Pulp Demons: International Dimensions of the Postwar Anti-Comics Campaign (Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson Uni Press 1999) edited by John Lent, Arguing Comics: Literary Masters on a Popular Medium (Jackson: Uni of Mississippi Press 2004) edited by Jeet Heer & Kent Worcester and Seal of Approval: The History of the Comics Code (Jackson: Uni Press of Mississippi 1998) by Amy Nyberg. Wertham is defended by Bart Beaty in Fredric Wertham and the Critique of Mass Culture (Oxford: Uni Press of Missippi 2005).

FBI concerns that MAD magazine was an agent of "communistic influence" feature here.

     Tijuana Bibles

The history of 'Tijuana Bibles', 'Two by Fours' or 'Eight Pagers' (ie adult content comic books popular from the turn of last century until the 1950s) is explored in Tijuana Bibles: Art & Wit in America's Forbidden Funnies, 1930S-1950s (New York: Simon & Schuster 1997) by Bob Adelman, Sex in Comics: A History of the Eight Pagers (San Diego: Greenleaf 1971) by Donald Gilmore, Sadomasochism in Comic Books: A History of Sex & Violence in Comics (San Diego: Greenleaf 1972) by Hans Siden and A History of Underground Comics (Berkeley: Ronin 1993) by Mark Estren.

     Manga

Cross-cultural perspectives are provided by attitudes in Japan and other countries to production, consumption and regulation of manga - the Japanese graphic genre that often features violence and sexual activity (including cross-generational nonconsensual relations) while respecting conventions such as no depiction of pubic hair, discussed in Anne Allison's 'Cutting the Fringes: Pubic Hair at the Margins of Japanese Censorship Laws' in Hair: Its Power and Meaning in Asian Cultures (New York: State Uni Press of New York 1998) edited by Alf Hiltebeitel, Barbara Miller & Gananath Obeyesekere.

Manga is of particular interest for its acceptance in the adult market. Insights are offered by Anne Allison's Permitted & Prohibited Desires: Mothers, Comics & Censorship in Japan (Berkeley: Uni of California Press 2000), Fredrick Schodt's Manga! Manga! The World of Japanese Comics (New York: Kodansha 1983) and Sharon Kinsella's Adult Manga: Culture & Power In Contemporary Japanese Society (London: Curzon Press 2000).

     hentai and other anime

Manga is a major influence on anime, ie the animation genre that has moved beyond Japan into North American, Australian and other markets through broadcast cartoons (some now of movie length and complexity) and electronic games with increasing acceptance in Western mass markets.

Adult anime essentially encompasses a range of erotic animations such as hentai (everything from schoolgirl sex through to particularly unlovely depictions of women being ravished by octopus-type aliens, reflecting a Japanese fascination with tentacles) and yaoi, gay male erotica associated with bishonen (pretty boy) anime and manga.

Cartoon-style animations and computer morphing of photographic images - in particular to blur lines between depictions of minors and adults - pose challenges for those dealing with the 'virtual porn' provisions of the wide-ranging US Child Pornography Prevention Act (CPPA) of 1996 and similar legislation that has been claimed to criminalise all sexually suggestive representations of children, a notion that in principle might encompass fashionable advertising by Calvin Klein and much home photography.

For adult anime see The Erotic Anime Movie Guide (New York: Overlook 1999) by Helen McCarthy and The Anime Encyclopedia: A Guide to Japanese Animation Since 1917 (New York: Stonebridge Press 2001) by McCarthy & Jonathan Clements. Insights are offered by James Alexander's Obscenity, Pornography and the Law in Japan: Reconsidering Oshima's 'In the Realm of the Senses' (PDF) and Jack Hunter's Eros in Hell: Sex, Blood & Madness in Japanese Cinema (London: Creation 1999).

     postcards

Humorous 'seaside' or 'saucy' postcards - typically coupling a simple illustration with a crude pun - sold in the millions from the 1860s onwards. As discussed in the following page, they posed concerns about manners and the moral policing of the lower orders who were assumed to be the primary market for (and most influenced by) a graphic equivalent of vaudeville or the music hall. Those concerns erupted periodically.

UK cartoonist Donald McGill (1874-1962) was for example fined £50 with costs by the Lincoln Quarter Sessions under the 1857 Obscene Publications Act in 1954 for cards that seemed no better or worse than items on sale over the past fifty years and rarely intercepted by the Post Office. A critic commented in 2005 that

thus did the English law, not a lifetime ago, deem that six seaside postcards of undisguised jolliness would deprave and corrupt the population so much that they warranted burning.

McGill's prolific output (over 10,000 cards featuring blousy barmaids, desperate spinsters and lascivious milkmen) had been praised by George Orwell as a potent form of folk art.

Background information about postcards features here and here.

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