If you think Doll Man would hesitate for a moment to resort to the Injury-To-The-Eye Motif...
you are wrong.
The injury to the eye motif is an outstanding example of the brutal attitude cultivated in comic books — the threat or actual infliction of injury to the eyes of a victim, male or female. This detail, occurring in uncounted instances, shows perhaps the true color of crime comics better than anything else. It has no counterpart in any other literature of the world, for children or for adults.
According to our case material the brutalizing effect of this injury-to-the-eye motif is twofold. In the first place, it causes a blunting of the general sensibility. Children feel in a vague subconscious way that if this kind of thing is permitted then other acts are so much less serious that it cannot be so wrong to indulge in them either.
An eight-year-old girl said to her mother, “Let’s play a game. Someone is coming to see us. I’ll stamp on him, knock his eyes out and cut him up.”
But it has also a direct effect. Children have done deliberate harm to the eyes of other children, an occurrence which before the advent of crime comics I had never encountered among the thousands of children I examined. On a number of occasions I have asked juveniles who used homemade zip guns what harm they could do with so little power. I received prompt reply: “You shoot in the eye. Then it works.”
The children of the early forties pointed out the injury-to-the-eye to us as something horrible. The children of 1954 take it for granted. A generation is being desensitized by these literal horror images. One comic shows a man slashing another man across the eye balls with a sword. The victim: “MY EYES! I cannot see!”
In a Western comic book the “Gouger” is threatening the hero’s eye with his thumb, which has a very long and pointed nail. This is called the “killer’s manicure.” He says: “YORE EYES ARE GONNA POP LIKE GRAPES WHEN OL’ GOUGER GETS HIS HANDS ON YOU!… HERE GO THE PEEPERS!”
In one comic book a gangster gains control over another man’s racket and tapes his eyes “with gauze that has been smeared with an infectious substance!” He says: “When I get through with ya, ya’ll never look at another case of beer again!”
When a policeman is blinded, the criminal says: “Well, he don’t have to worry about them eyes no more!”
Girls are frequent victims of the eye motif, as in the typical: “My eyes! My eyes! Don’t! PLEASE! I’ll tell you anything you want to know, only don’t blind me! PLEASE!’”
The Seduction of the Innocent (1954), Dr. Frederic Wertham.
"...in a Los Angeles suburb, a young boy puts out his brother's eyes with his fingers. He was, he explained, only trying to imitate the old Three Stooges two-fingered "boinnng"! "When they do it on TV," the weeping child explains, "no one gets hurt." -- Stephen King, "Danse Macabre"
ReplyDeleteSo I think we can safely assume Wertham would not have approved of Salvadore Dali's film Un Chien Andalou.
ReplyDelete" It has no counterpart in any other literature of the world"
ReplyDeleteWell, he admitted that comic books qualify as "literature," that's something. Of course, you could say that about anything.
Did I somehow kill this thread? Sorry about that. :-|
ReplyDelete@ Bryan L: I was a teenage Pixies fan who had no idea about Un Chien Andalou. When I learned of its existence, the lyrics to “Debaser” made more sense. I mean, they’re Pixies lyrics, so only a tiny bit more sense, but at least it was something.
ReplyDelete@ cybrid: the thread survived for at least one more post!
(Two more posts, then)
ReplyDeleteForgot to leave my name above.
- Mike Loughlin