4 ms·

Maybe comic books didn't lead to delinquency I find it more interesting to entertain the possibility that they did. It's probably wrong (even if there were/is

Maybe comic books didn't lead to delinquency I find it more interesting to entertain the possibility that they did. It's probably wrong (even if there were/is a correlation, the cause would likely be deeper — maybe the World Wars?) but it's fun to be contrarian and seriously entertain the theory.

apocalypstyx 5y ago
If any medium can be accused of destroying the "West", it would be the novel[1]. Terror of media has been an almost constant train of thought since at least the era of Plato. But most particularly it seems that Protestant Christianity is haunted by an existential terror of the imaginary.[2] At the very core of Christian teaching is the unease around Jesus' use of parables (constructs of fiction designed to reveal truth, a contradiction which has resulted in the use of much ink dedicated to the explication of how the former is not really involved at all). It could be argued to hearken back (conceptually) even to the "Tree of Knowledge", where original sin is no longer sex but knowledge itself (which would include knowledge of sex). [1] The Novel-Reading Panic in 18th Century in England: An Outline of an Early Moral Media Panic --- https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Novel-Reading-Panic-in-18-th-Century-in-England-Vogrin/ea07e5f58509e8b2bf9db1f9777b9ef614294825 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Novel-Reading-Pani... [2] ON DANGEROUS READING: A Warning Against The Reading of Novels, Fiction, and Other Poisonous Literature (1849) --- http://www.truecovenanter.com/against_the_world/dabney_on_dangerous_reading.html http://www.truecovenanter.com/against_the_world/dabney_on_da...
- et1337 5y ago
  Tolkien and CS Lewis would like a word with you… Edit: Tolkien was Catholic and CS Lewis was Anglican, but their works seem popular enough with Protestants.
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    I doubt hauntings are distributed uniformly or that their manifestations are identical, which for me recalls the quote from A River Runs Through It: "They were Methodists, a denomination my father referred to as Baptists who could read." And of course I have been in many Baptist churches that avow from their pulpits that Catholics are cultists and non-Christian. Catholicism has always been far more comfortable with the story and the image than its offshoots. So we can get persons like Chesterton who could posit Christianity as distinct in that it is the only religion in which God himself becomes at atheist. And Tolkien could place fiction and fact into oroborosian configurations: "Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true." Comparatively, between him and Lewis, it might be notable that in their major works only Lewis (the non-Catholic) needed to explicitly bring Christianity to the fore. Popularity I don't know about. As someone who grew up in a household where Tolkien and Lewis were okay but Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, I think for many it's more about what they assume the contents to be, rather than their actual properties. It's a spectrum. As one reviewer of a Christian horror series modeled after Goosebumps put it: "I am not sure how I feel about Christian horror books". Such things tends to occupy that interstitial world of alternative Christian culture that recreates rock music and movies and book series, as if to have no active acknowledgement of God (or perhaps such Christian culture in general) for even the briefest moment is indistinguishable from disbelief. It is the same mindset that compels the production of textbooks that are required to invoke a Bible verse to go along with every math problem and to warn children that doing yoga will allow you to be possessed by demons (my 5th grade health book). But, as I say, I doubt everything is haunted the same way. There are plenty of Protestants who have no problem playing D&D on a Saturday night. But, too, people aren't often consistent. There are many who would defend violent video games, but would then turn around and deploy exactly those arguments against other types of media, as if they too could somehow 'infect'.
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  There's no shortage of moral panics about all sorts of things, from rock and roll to dancing to drugs to games to political movements to demographic changes and social mobility, etc, etc, etc. Anything that is seen to potentially threaten the status quo is liable to upset the people who benefit from it (who also tend to hold the most power in society). Combine such concerns with overactive imaginations and a media which thrives on sensationalism and you get the perfect storm of a moral panic.
  - apocalypstyx 5y ago
    I don't doubt the commonplace nature of moral panic. I do, however, wonder to what degree it is culturally hidebound. It might, perhaps, be a general human characteristic, but the cultural leeway any desire or compulsion is granted is a determiner in to what it effects are (and the way in which it manifests). For instance, Japan experienced a similar type of moral panic (through a combination of government and media) around anime and manga at roughly the same time (or a little after) the crusades against comic books (and broader efforts against such works as Lady Chatterley's Lover) were ongoing in the U.S. and the U.K. However, in regards to Japan, the results broke in the opposite direction. Unlike in the U.S., a translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover was found to be obscene, but manga escaped, seemingly, relatively unscathed, and so it continued to develop as a medium in general and thus, now, in various incarnations, caters to a multiplicity of audiences, men and women, children to elderly, students to business professionals to housewives.

apocalypstyx 5y ago

If any medium can be accused of destroying the "West", it would be the novel[1]. Terror of media has been an almost constant train of thought since at least the era of Plato. But most particularly it seems that Protestant Christianity is haunted by an existential terror of the imaginary.[2] At the very core of Christian teaching is the unease around Jesus' use of parables (constructs of fiction designed to reveal truth, a contradiction which has resulted in the use of much ink dedicated to the explication of how the former is not really involved at all). It could be argued to hearken back (conceptually) even to the "Tree of Knowledge", where original sin is no longer sex but knowledge itself (which would include knowledge of sex). [1] The Novel-Reading Panic in 18th Century in England: An Outline of an Early Moral Media Panic --- https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Novel-Reading-Panic-in-18-th-Century-in-England-Vogrin/ea07e5f58509e8b2bf9db1f9777b9ef614294825 https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Novel-Reading-Pani... [2] ON DANGEROUS READING: A Warning Against The Reading of Novels, Fiction, and Other Poisonous Literature (1849) --- http://www.truecovenanter.com/against_the_world/dabney_on_dangerous_reading.html http://www.truecovenanter.com/against_the_world/dabney_on_da...

et1337 5y ago
Tolkien and CS Lewis would like a word with you… Edit: Tolkien was Catholic and CS Lewis was Anglican, but their works seem popular enough with Protestants.
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  I doubt hauntings are distributed uniformly or that their manifestations are identical, which for me recalls the quote from A River Runs Through It: "They were Methodists, a denomination my father referred to as Baptists who could read." And of course I have been in many Baptist churches that avow from their pulpits that Catholics are cultists and non-Christian. Catholicism has always been far more comfortable with the story and the image than its offshoots. So we can get persons like Chesterton who could posit Christianity as distinct in that it is the only religion in which God himself becomes at atheist. And Tolkien could place fiction and fact into oroborosian configurations: "Of course I do not mean that the Gospels tell what is only a fairy-story; but I do mean very strongly that they do tell a fairy-story: the greatest. Man the story-teller would have to be redeemed in a manner consonant with his nature: by a moving story. But since the author of it is the supreme Artist and the Author of Reality, this one was also made to Be, to be true." Comparatively, between him and Lewis, it might be notable that in their major works only Lewis (the non-Catholic) needed to explicitly bring Christianity to the fore. Popularity I don't know about. As someone who grew up in a household where Tolkien and Lewis were okay but Dungeons and Dragons was Satanic, I think for many it's more about what they assume the contents to be, rather than their actual properties. It's a spectrum. As one reviewer of a Christian horror series modeled after Goosebumps put it: "I am not sure how I feel about Christian horror books". Such things tends to occupy that interstitial world of alternative Christian culture that recreates rock music and movies and book series, as if to have no active acknowledgement of God (or perhaps such Christian culture in general) for even the briefest moment is indistinguishable from disbelief. It is the same mindset that compels the production of textbooks that are required to invoke a Bible verse to go along with every math problem and to warn children that doing yoga will allow you to be possessed by demons (my 5th grade health book). But, as I say, I doubt everything is haunted the same way. There are plenty of Protestants who have no problem playing D&D on a Saturday night. But, too, people aren't often consistent. There are many who would defend violent video games, but would then turn around and deploy exactly those arguments against other types of media, as if they too could somehow 'infect'.
pmoriarty 5y ago
There's no shortage of moral panics about all sorts of things, from rock and roll to dancing to drugs to games to political movements to demographic changes and social mobility, etc, etc, etc. Anything that is seen to potentially threaten the status quo is liable to upset the people who benefit from it (who also tend to hold the most power in society). Combine such concerns with overactive imaginations and a media which thrives on sensationalism and you get the perfect storm of a moral panic.
- apocalypstyx 5y ago
  I don't doubt the commonplace nature of moral panic. I do, however, wonder to what degree it is culturally hidebound. It might, perhaps, be a general human characteristic, but the cultural leeway any desire or compulsion is granted is a determiner in to what it effects are (and the way in which it manifests). For instance, Japan experienced a similar type of moral panic (through a combination of government and media) around anime and manga at roughly the same time (or a little after) the crusades against comic books (and broader efforts against such works as Lady Chatterley's Lover) were ongoing in the U.S. and the U.K. However, in regards to Japan, the results broke in the opposite direction. Unlike in the U.S., a translation of Lady Chatterley's Lover was found to be obscene, but manga escaped, seemingly, relatively unscathed, and so it continued to develop as a medium in general and thus, now, in various incarnations, caters to a multiplicity of audiences, men and women, children to elderly, students to business professionals to housewives.