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Notes on video lecture:
Comic Books in the McCarthy Era
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
burnings, sympathy, American, 1954, infiltrate, business, policing, Authority, forbidden, communism, Wertham, terror, sexuality, Cohn, imagined, Hollywood, Eastern, political, Innocent, delinquency, salacious, lurid
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after WWII there was a growing threat of                    and the impact the Soviet Union was having on the world
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it was beginning to have influence on other countries, e.g. in                Europe
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fears began to build
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America has a                    response to this fear
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House Un-                 Activities Committee
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investigation of communist sympathizers in America real and                 
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McCarthy was aided by Roy          and Richard Nixon
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involved in trying to find communists in American society
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focused attention on                   
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the Hollywood Ten
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it was believed that movies were being used to                      people's minds
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in the late 1940s, comic books were also a target of investigation
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a hotbed for finding information about lurid behavior and overt                   
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attributed it to the rise in juvenile                        in the United States
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being exposed to comic books was cited as a cause of this
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Dr. Fredric               
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1954 wrote book "Seduction of the                 "
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had a negative influence on the comic book industry
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parents and teachers read it
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led to comic book                 
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subcommittee to investigate juvenile delinquency
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examined the problem of comic books
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brought in comic book publishers, artists and writers
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the comic books companies of American created a self-                 force
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created the Comic Code                   
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crime shall never be presented in such a way as to create                  for the criminal
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no comic magazine shall use the word horror or              in its title
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all scenes of horror, excessive bloodshed,            unsavory gruesome illustrations shall be eliminated
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suggestive and                    illustrations or suggested posture is unacceptable
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sex perversion or inference thereof is strictly                   
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difficult times, many companies went out of                 
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only with the advent of the Comics Code Authority in          did the industry manage to get government authorities to let them self-regulate

Spelling Corrections:

deliquency ⇒ delinquency

Ideas and Concepts:

Comic book burning in the United States, via this evening's The Rise of Superheroes and Their Impact On Pop Culture class:

"After the second World War, comics increasingly featured horror, crime, and romance stories aimed at a more mature audience. They often contained graphic violence, which led to increasingly criticism.

When discussing juvenile delinquency, comics were increasing used as something concrete to point to. In 1954, psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham famously linked reading comics to crime in his book Seduction of the Innocent.

Students at St. Patrick's School in Binghamton, NY, watched as the school burned comic books as part of a purity crusade. The Bishop of the Catholic Diocese, as part of the crusade, urged parish members to boycott stores that sold magazines with indecent pictures and sensational details of crime. The comic books were burned in a courtyard behind the school.

After public court hearings, the government threatened to censor comics. Publishers eventually established the Comics Code to prevent this. The code contained rules on what could and could not be done in comics, such as:

1. No explicit details of a crime

2. Females shall be drawn realistically without exaggeration of any physical qualities.

3. In every instance good shall triumph over evil and the criminal punished for his misdeeds.

4. Nudity in any form is prohibited, as is indecent or undue exposure.

5. Policemen, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall never be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established authority."
1930s: The Origin of the American Comic Book
1938: The Birth of Superman
The People Behind the Golden Age of Comic Books
Patriotic Superheroes
Comic Books after World War II
Comic Books in the McCarthy Era
1954: Fredric Wertham's Impact on the Comic Book Industry
1960s: The Silver Age of Comics
The Bronze Age of Comics and the Genre of Relevancy