CLASSIC: The Rise and Fall of the Comics Code

Nowadays comics are considered anything from light-hearted entertainment to a unique art form and genre of literature all their own. Yet for decades they were considered a gateway to sin. Join Ben and special guest Christian Sager as they explore the moral panic, censorship and collusion that led to the rise of the comics code.

Learn more about your ad-choices at https://www.iheartpodcastnetwork.com

They don't want you to read our book.: https://static.macmillan.com/static/fib/stuff-you-should-read/

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
So this week's classic episode dives into comic books, and
I don't know about you guys, but comic books did
something amazing for me and for a lot of other people.
I would imagine they taught me vocabulary and language that
I would ordinarily not have had access to. Words like excelsior, right,

(00:26):
or uncanny. People don't say uncanny unless they're talking about
the X Men when they're you know, six. I always
thought Excelsior is the same thing as Alka Selser. That's
not the case at all. Right, I like that idea,
Like I like the idea of Stanley just screaming for
some off brand Alka Seltzer. Well it could be his
own brand, that could be Excelsi or Selser. But yeah, Ben,

(00:49):
I didn't know anything about this episode, and I also
I don't think I'm on this episode. So I'm going
to re listen to this and learn again from here
and and your conversation. I believe this episode features somebody
that we worked with for a long time. Yes, Christian Sager,
who who wrote a lot of brain Stuff episodes for

(01:12):
Anybody remembers that YouTube show and also was a longtime
co host of Stuff to Blow your mind, Christian. A
lot of people may or may not know this. You'll
find out in this interview. Christian is well established comic
book writer and he's a horror writer in general. He's fantastic.
Do check out some of his work if you get

(01:34):
a chance. In this interview, Christian, I dive into concepts
of censorship, art and violence, how it translates to the
quote unquote real world. The conversation here occurs in twenty fifteen,
so this is just a few years after the very
first Avengers movie. And with that mind, you can see

(01:58):
how the early censorship of various comic book authorities in
a way molded the films and the fiction that we
encountered today. From UFOs, two ghosts and government cover ups.
History is riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back
now or learn the stuff they don't want you to now.

(02:26):
You gotta love paranoia. It's what made this country great.
Fear of the reds, fear of getting old, fear of failure,
fear of each other. Deep down, we all just want
to be the same. Homogeneity is luot. We must destroy
diversity and welcome to the show. As you know that

(02:48):
music means that you're in the right place, hopefully here
with me Ben, our producer Null the Invisible Brown, and
our co host Matt Frederick, who is here in Spirits
but right now he's working on a fantastic video episode
that we can't wait for you to see, Never Feared
the show soldiers on. We're here today with a very

(03:09):
special guest. Uh, ladies and gentlemen, it's Christian Sager, fellow
comic book lover co writer man about town of how
stuff works. Hey, Ben, I'm happy to be here, and
I wish Matt was here. But he's a busy gentleman.
He is he is, He is a busy guy. On
testament to how much quality goes into your series. Oh yeah,

(03:33):
it's it's it's all him. It's him. I I sometimes
I get as sandwiches. Uh. So we're here today to
talk about something that fascinates both of us. I think
Matt will probably really want to hear this episode two.
It's a little bum that he couldn't make it. We're
talking about a very strange episode in American history, right. Yeah,

(03:59):
we're gonna talk about the beginning of the comics Code
of America. That, or at least that was used in
American publishing, also known as the Comics Code Authority, started
after legislative hearings in nineteen fifty four. And of course
we opened up with a quote some of you may recognize, Well,
what do you think we should tell people or let

(04:20):
them guess? Well, that quote is actually from a favorite
comic book of ours, of Ben Matt and myself, which
is The Invisibles. Is what we kind of brought us
in common together on this topic. Uh. It's by Grant Morrison,
and it's a great series from Vertigo from the late nineties. Uh.
And it's about all kinds of things. I imagine a

(04:40):
lot of your audience are familiar with it or or
would be fans of it, because most of all it's
about conspiracies, conspiracy theories. Yeah, the idea of what if
every conspiracy you have ever heard is true and they
squeeze it into this one story arc in a way
that reminded me of the Illuminatous Trilogy, which is another

(05:02):
another fantastic book. Big influence I think on great Morrison
for that. Oh yeah, definitely. So what so that's one
of the comics we all have in common and listeners
I know it might sound strange at first to say, hey,
you were looking for conspiracies. You guys are talking about
comic books. But do we have a story for you. Uh.

(05:22):
The comics of today right that you would find in
your local local store. Uh, are radically different in many
ways to the comics of yesteryear. Yeah. Absolutely, especially from
the fifties. Basically if you go by decade fifties, sixties, seventies,
then in the eighties when the direct market really took

(05:44):
over up until today. But by and large, the reason
why they're mainly different is because none of the comics
publishers today use the comics code anymore. It's slowly, over
the last fifteen years was take and out of use
by Marvel, d C, dark Horse, Image, all of the
big name players. I think the last two were in

(06:07):
and I want to say it was Archie Comics and
d C Comics that finally just decided to use their
own in house systems. Do you remember do you remember
the gold Key comics and e C and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah,
I loved those as a kid because there there was
such graphic depravity, you know, Yeah, yeah, I mean that,

(06:28):
And those are not necessarily the gold Key ones maybe
some of them, but the EC stuff is really what
got the code started, uh, and how graphic it was.
There were depictions of graphic violence, monsters, sexuality, uh, criminal
activity and we'll get into this, but there was an

(06:49):
idea that by reading these comics, uh, young kids were
learning how to be juvenile delinquents. They were learning how
to become criminals, right, how to how to skip school
or lie to your teachers. And one thing, and you're
absolutely right, Christian gold Key, is if anything more, um,
there's scary. Stories were more suspenseful, I think than horrific.

(07:11):
But the thing that I loved about e C as
well is that, you know, these comics for people who
haven't read them yet, do check them out if you,
especially if you enjoy horror. For a lot of e
C stories, each comic was like an anthology which had
you know what, three to four shorter pieces in there,
and the only thing they had in common is that

(07:31):
everybody in the stories went from zero to a hundred
so quickly. They were like, Hey, I'm I'm tired of
you being a bully, so clearly the best thing to
do is to dissolve you in this line, or like, uh,
there's a classic one. I don't remember the exact details,
but we're like a baseball team like cuts a guy
up into pieces and uses his head as a baseball

(07:53):
to play like a game. And then like you, I think,
like other body parts are like bassis or something like that. Uh,
it's pretty morbid, and uh, you know, all in good fun,
ladies and gentlemen, all in good fun. But but the
idea which you mentioned there, that that this would be
teaching kids to be juvenile delinquents, or or teaching them
how to cut someone apart and use their head as

(08:15):
part of a game. Uh. Yeah, it was a little
deeper than that, but there were and we'll get into that,
but that, Yeah, generally, there's the idea that the moral
depravity of these books with somehow uh infect the agency
of America's youth and make them darker, may turn them
into murderers or criminals, or uh you know, even affects,

(08:38):
for instance, their sexuality. Okay, so what we're looking at
here is a full blown moral panic in some ways
similar in some way similar to the idea of uh,
you know, heavy metal music being a terrible influence or
Dungeons and Dragons being a terrible influenced. Yeah, or even
like uh, more recent the National baseball was a bad

(09:04):
influence because of the steroid use among the players and
that they weren't necessarily good role models. Very similar kinds
of things went on between the government and the baseball industry,
as went on between the government and the comics industry
in the nineteen fifties. So okay, yes, let's get right
to it. What what the heck is this comic code?

(09:25):
Where does it come from? How did it happen? Sure? Okay, so, uh,
the code came out of some legislative hearings that we're
in nineteen fifty four, and we'll talk about those more
in detail down the down the road in the podcast.
But basically, there were hearings that were placing comics on
trial for what we just suggested that they were a

(09:49):
bad influence on America's youth. Coming out of the hearings,
the major publishers that were involved in comics decided that
to preemptively st like against the government and to keep
the government from creating any kind of censorship program, they
would create their own in house program that was the

(10:10):
Comics Code Authority. Uh. And basically this was forty one
provisions that they wrote up that purged sex and violent
and all other kinds of critical standards that people were
up in arms about out of comics. UM. For instance,
respect for government and parental authority was stressed a lot.

(10:30):
And there was even like grammar police type stuff going
in there, and you weren't allowed to use certain kinds
of slang or colloquialisms, um. And you could only receive
this seal of approval on the front of your comic
if it passed this group this uh. Basically, what they
did is all of the companies paid into this Comics

(10:50):
Code Authority to keep it running as an operation, and
it had I don't know what the the manager of
the Comics Code Authority or we can call it the
sea A I guess for the rest of the Yeah, yeah, sorry,
the c c A. Uh, but he was sort of
a czar of comics basically, and he had an office
of of you know, mostly admins who read all the

(11:15):
comics that these publishers were going to put out a
month or two before they happened, decided whether or not
they were morally objectionable, objectionable or not, and then uh
subsequently signed off on them or sent them back to
the publisher and said, you need to take this out
or you need to fix this before we'll put the
seal on it. No smoking, no heroin. Well, although drug

(11:36):
use was probably a big red flag. I'm sure at
that point smoking cigarettes was fine. Uh, yes, I think
smoking cigarettes was fine, But you're right, narcotics was a
big deal. And uh, we'll talk about it again a
little bit later, but it was narcotics used in comic
books was actually the turning point in ninety one that

(12:00):
caused the c c A to change the code. Huh. So, okay,
I gotta tell you, Christian, right now, it sounds like
a dream job to work with this czar and just
read comics. I don't know necessarily that it would have
been because that the people who were reading them were

(12:21):
largely uh, middle aged women who the comics weren't designed
for and who were um, how do I put this like.
They had a very administrative role, and they treated it
very seriously, and there were struggles between them and the publishers,
but for the most part, um they had a sort
of matronly role. They took on a mother like role

(12:44):
looking at these comics and deciding whether or not. They
deemed that it would be appropriate for their children moral
authorities exactly. And so these these women and the czar
who they worked for. Uh, that guy's role changed over time,
and there were multiple people held the position. Uh. They
you know, by and large, we're making the decisions of

(13:05):
how comic books would enter the market. Uh. If they
didn't have the seal, they couldn't be carried by major distributors. Therefore,
you wouldn't be able to buy them, for instance, like
on a spinner rack and a grocery store or convenience store.
I don't know about you, but I first started buying
comics at my local Delhi when I was a little kid. Um,
and that was back when the code was being enforced.

(13:25):
Uh so yeah, yeah, they were They were the gatekeepers
who decided what we could and could not read. Which
is interesting because the there there's inherent misogyny in comics already,
and it's kind of strange that at that time the
people in charge of giving the final call were themselves
women and probably probably saw a lot of condescending portrayals

(13:47):
of women that weren't objectionable under the code. Yeah, and
what's really interesting about that is that It starts because
of their role and how women were portrayed in comics,
especially from the fifties until let's say, like the late eighties. Uh,
there were really two different images of women that you saw.

(14:09):
There were the femme fatales that were all familiar with that.
These were the women who were portrayed as being sexier
using their charms or or or were drawn in a
way that maybe wasn't anatomically correct, which is common in
comic books for sure. Uh. And as long as those
women were treated as ultimately villainous is then the Comics

(14:31):
Code authority was okay with that. But the rest of
the time, women were largely portrayed as being you know, naive,
nice girl friends, the kind of girl that you'd want
your son to bring home and marry, you know. Uh.
And so that's where we get like a lot of
the superhero girlfriends of the of the sixties, right like, uh,

(14:53):
Mary Jane Went, Stacy, Karen Page, We we've all been
watching Daredevil lately, Page h. Who else Lois Lane? Although
Lois had been around long before that, sure, but certainly
started to fit that role more and the during that
period of time. So we see what we're seeing here
in a lot of ways, is uh art as a

(15:15):
reflection of society and social efforts to idealize this reflection
um if we could, if I could be a bit
pretentious about it, Yeah, I mean I think that that's
definitely a valid point, ben uh And there are such
interesting things that were written into the original nineteen code
that were prevented from being published in comics that when

(15:39):
you think back on it and you realize how it
was influencing our culture, sort of influencing what the limits
were of what we could think, you know, or what
what we were what we considered to be sort of
a moral authority. I mean, like, for instance, here's just
one line policeman, judges, government officials, and respected institutions shall

(15:59):
never be presented in such a way as to create
disrespect for established authority. So that is like an immediate
moral line in the sand about following authority. No crooked cops,
no bad senators, nothing like that. Absolutely, And I think
in some ways that extends to ideology as well, right,

(16:21):
like no great communist. Oh yeah, that was a huge
no note, especially in the fifties when a lot of
superhero comics, especially we're using communists as their villains. You know,
in fact, like a um, those who are familiar with
Captain America and his villain the Red Skull with the
Red Skull started off as a Nazi. Actually the Red

(16:43):
Skull started off as a as a sleazy businessman. Then
he became a Nazi. Then the fifties he became a communist. Somehow,
his his ideology is just shifted to whatever it was
that we as a as a nation didn't like. There's
one thing an evil businessman will of. It's communism, right, yeah, exactly,
he had he if anything else, you know, he had

(17:06):
a variety of thoughts about how the world should operate, right, yeah,
he is a man of many opinions. So so what else?
Like this code, which which you showed me and which
is also available online for anyone interested. Uh this, at
least this first iteration of this code had a lot
of pretty specific stuff about what could be portrayed. Yeah,

(17:28):
it did, and it's long, so you know, I won't
go through all of it here, but I did highlight
some of my favorite bits, and um, if you do
want to read the code, all three instances of it
are replicated in full on the comic book Legal Defense
Funds site. Highly recommend checking that out, and there's also
a great summary piece on there by a woman named

(17:49):
Amy kissed Neiberg. I believe it's how you pronounce her name,
and she has actually written the definitive book on this,
on the history of the code. It's called Seal of Authority.
So if you really want to dive deep into this
topic and learn about all the you know, behind the
scenes secrets of the comics industry, that's a great place
to start. Fantastic, But so here's here's some of my favorites. Okay,

(18:12):
you weren't allowed to use the word crime or the
word horror on the cover of a comic book. Those
words were not allowed to be written no true, no true, horror, no,
nothing like that. Um and it wasn't allowed to especially
appear alone on the cover. Here's another one that's kind
of interesting, specifically dealing with horror comics scenes dealing with

(18:35):
or instruments associated with the Walking Dead. Ironic that that's
the terminology they used the Walking Dead. Torture, vampires and vampireism, ghouls, cannibalism,
and were wolf ism are prohibitive, not like antherpy. No,
they didn't really have their terminology down. Wear Wolf is

(18:56):
m right right away. I mean that's borderline racist against
like and throw ups. I think it's a very different time.
But yeah, so, I mean there's very clearly like a
line being drawn of like these kind of comics are acceptable,
these kinds aren't. And by and large the ones that
weren't were crime and horror comics, and those were the
ones that were published mainly by EC Comics but also

(19:18):
by you know a number of other smaller publishers at
the time, and the code pretty much got rid of them. Well, um,
here's some other interesting stuff. They weren't allowed to treat
divorce humorously or represented as being desirable. WHOA, Yeah, that's
an interesting one. Really kind of throws you back, you know,
it makes me, it makes me wonder if somebody was like,

(19:41):
had a bad relationship maybe at the time, maybe they did. Yeah,
And then there's this one respect for parents the Moral
Code and for honorable behavior shall be fostered. Respect for
parents Moral Code. So basically all child characters had to
be portrayed as having respect for their parents. If they didn't,

(20:02):
book didn't make it onto the stands. Yeah, and it's
strange to when we think about this moral backlash that occurs.
You were telling me that a lot of this originated,
a lot of the public outcry or uproar originated because
of a trial they got nationwide attention, um, and that
there were some uh fairly like, what's the best way

(20:25):
to say it, crucial moments where you know, there's a
guy holding up the magazine or holding up the comic.
Oh yeah, sorry, when you use the term trial, I
got confused for a second. Yes, that's the that that
was the committee. That was the subcommittee that led to
the code being created. Yeah, it was led by a
guy named St. S. Kief ofver Um. I've got notes

(20:46):
on it for later on. I can we review the
rest of the but there is um. Yeah, that is
basically what it led to, although there were some minor
hiccups before that too that caused uh, basically the public
to be concerned about comics in general, whether it was
for religious reasons or literary reasons or even um, you know,

(21:07):
psychiatric reasons, which Dr Frederick Wortham brought it to the table. Yes,
So okay, so well that's kind of a teaser, I
guess then for later on the show. But what what iterations.
Has the code gone through? Okay, so we just talked
about the nineteen fifty four version. Then there are two

(21:27):
others after that. There were basically revisions of the code.
The first of these came about in nineteen seventy one.
And here's how it came about. Have you ever heard
of a guy named stan Lee before? Uh? The name
rings a distant bell. So he wrote a little comic
called spider Man. And actually, uh, listeners, Ben already knows this,

(21:51):
but I I went through airport security with Stanley couple
of days ago, which was really interesting. I got to
watch t s A pat him down. Uh. But anyways,
so in nineteen seventy one, Stanley wanted to do a
comic book and spider Man about drug abuse. And it
was going to be about, you know, a character who
was having trouble with narcotics and Spider Man was going

(22:13):
to help them out. It was basically supposed to be
kind of a cautionary tale type thing. It wasn't glorifying
drug no, not at all. Uh. And Uh. The idea
was that Marvel asked permission of the comics authority people
to publish this special issue. They said, can we please
for this. You know, this one instance work around the code.
We know it says that we can't you know, portray

(22:35):
drug use, but we're trying to portray it badly as
a sort of you know, public service announcement. Yeah. Um.
And they did not get permission. The Comics Code Authority
said no, absolutely not, We're not going to do this.
So Marvel went ahead and published it without the permission
of the Comics Code Authority, got out on the news stands.

(22:57):
Actually had support from the US government to put it
out there that the the U. S Government wanted Spider
Man to be this sort of um, moral figure that
would help you know, children learn that drugs were bad. Right,
that makes sense. And uh. As a result, it was
hugely popular. It's a classic issue of Spider Man, and
a lot of people you know, look back on and

(23:19):
the this was this caused the publishers and the c
c A to say, Okay, maybe we need to relax
these restrictions a little bit, maybe we're being a little
too strict here, and maybe things have changed in the
last you know, almost twenty years. Um. So there were
a lot of shifts. Um. So, for instance, like they
still prohibited the use of horror or terror on the cover,

(23:40):
but they were a little bit more liberal in terms
of how sex was reflected in society. Um. Obviously drug
use based on the spider Man thing. Um, there's some
really interesting stuff that changes with regards to remember we
were talking about werewolf is um. Yes, okay, so this
is they changed that line, uh, so that that stuff

(24:03):
shall be permitted to be used when handled in the
classic tradition such as Frankenstein, Dracula, and other high caliber
literary works whose works are read in school or around
the world. So as long as you know, um, your
monster had some literary grounding in it, it could be

(24:27):
portrayed in comics. But werewolf is um. I don't know.
Was there a classic literature werewolf? I mean not from
that time. There's ancient literally, there are ancient texts which
depict the power different near human or near god, things
change in shape. It's if anything, it's it's an older

(24:47):
tradition than vampires, and they would probably see that as
being like pagan though yeah, it might be not be
Western enough. Well, we really need is just like the
closest thing is like maybe Dr Jackel and Mr Hyde
is sort of werewolf ee. Yeah, that similar. But what
we really need is something that's like a um a
general werewolf or a soldier, a soldier being a werewolf

(25:09):
fighting whomever the threat was at the time, the British,
the Communist. I think we got a pitch on her hand. Actually,
one of the show that I was at this weekend,
I saw Stanley at somebody was trying to sell a
comic book called uh nam Wolf, which was about werewolf
and I would read that. I would totally read that.
I think I would too. So so, I mean, we

(25:30):
have pretty predictable taste in that regard. But so they're
allowing now, um, they're they're learning that these broad brush
strokes that had originally been used are not going to
be going to be effective over time, right, yeah, exactly.
And but at the same time, a lot of the
things that we were talking about earlier, you know, that
I specifically cited, are still in there. The stuff about

(25:51):
government officials being respected and good always triumphing over evil,
and specifically the word crime being a bad thing. All
situations within the family unit should have as their ultimate
goal the protection of the child and the lifestyle of
the family. That was another one that the that was
the line they added in for the seventy one version,

(26:13):
which is, you know, similar to what we were talking
about earlier in terms of children having respect for authority,
but it's a very very strict idea of what family means. UM.
Divorce was still a problem. Uh. Drugs had a like
based because of the whole spider Man thing. Drugs had
this whole set of sub bullets basically like Okay, here's

(26:37):
what you can and can't do. Uh. You know that
would that would make it work or not? UM. There
were also restrictions for advertising matter like, for instance, UM,
you weren't allowed to have ads that had realistic gun
facts similes and so like, if you wanted to sell
a water gun, it had to look like a water gun.
It couldn't look like a real gun. UM or been

(27:00):
advertising for fireworks. They didn't allow that at the time,
which is strange because they led a lot of weird
advertisements into comics, especially around that around that time, like
just leading up to the seventies and during the seventies.
You know, listeners, if you re comics back then, you'll
probably remember that there would be these two page splash
ads with a bunch of tiny, tiny ads advertising just

(27:24):
ridiculous stuff. Build your own submarine. There were all kinds
of weird things, yeah, sea monkeys like um. The one
thing that was really popular in the sixties was like
physical exercise programs to like make you turn you into
a strong man, like a kind of Charles Atlas type
weightlifting body type guy. Um, there were like martial arts lessons. Yeah,

(27:48):
I was those. Did you ever order anything from uh?
I never did. I never did. I ordered comics. I
never fired like any of the that stuff. And at
our our age Wrench, we probably those those kind of
ads had their heyday before we came on the scene. Yeah,
they were starting to fade away. I'd say probably by

(28:10):
the end of the eighties. I started reading comics, I'd say,
like eighty three, eighty two, Um, so yeah, maybe by
the time I actually had pocket money to spend on
stuff like that, they were really around anymore. The slowly
became video games. Yeah right. There is one big aspect
so far that is missing from the comic code as

(28:33):
we know it, and that is depiction of race. Yeah.
So that's actually a really interesting factor in the nine
revision addresses that specifically. Essentially, they again they came to
a point in time in which d C Comics had
decided that they were going to eliminate the seal from
their book, and UH, they were arguing with the Comics

(28:55):
Code Authority about, you know, what should or should not
be reflected in the in the code around this period
of time, and as a result they drafted up a
document that basically revised the entire code. UH. And there
was a task force that was put together of you know,
different different publishers, people from various publishers at the time
eighty nine. Of course it would have included Marvel in

(29:17):
d C. Probably it's hard to say what other comics were,
including what other comics companies were included at the time, Archie,
because a lot of them were being absorbed into d
C throughout the eighties. You know, Charlton Fawcett. I think
Fawcett was even earlier than that. But anyway, what ended
up happening was they did have this new nine version

(29:42):
of the code was very specific about how you could
portray national, social, political, cultural, ethnic and racial groups, including
religious institutions. So there was a lot of um sensitivity
to how different groups would be being portrayed, to the
point that there is actually a line in the eighty

(30:05):
nine Code. If for dramatic purposes it is necessary to
portray such a group of individuals in a negative manner,
the name of the group and its individual members will
be fictitious, and its activities will be clearly identifiable within
the routine activities of any real group, or rather won't
be Okay, so they can't even have a coincidental commonality. Yeah. So,

(30:30):
like a really interesting example of this, uh was in
Captain America in the eighties. I've I've done a lot
of research in Captain America. Uh and uh in Captain
America in the eighties, he would often come up against
these examples of societal conflicts that were happening at the time. So,
uh So, the National Organization for Women was very you know,

(30:54):
it was growing at the time, and to address that,
Captain America came up against a group of super villain
feminists that were called the Femison's Kristen and Caroline over
at stuff I've never told you get to love the Yeah,
I really want to show them those issues because they're fascinating.
I think, like, if I remember correctly, the Femisons even

(31:14):
like try to start their own society on a cruise
ship they like, uh, like Commondeer cruise ship and take
it around the world as their own like floating country.
Do they have superpowers? Oh yeah, because some of them do.
But I think they were like, you know, there were
the femisons, and then they were like the women that
they were liberating from the various in the world. Um.

(31:35):
So you know, he couldn't address now, but he addressed
the femisons and it was, you know, obviously incredibly conservative
take on feminism in the eighties. And then you know,
when you had Tipper Gore and the Parent Music Resource Center,
you know, getting into the whole heavy metal thing you're
talking about earlier. To address that, he came up against

(31:57):
a group called the Watchdogs and it was like the
fictional group of terrorists who wanted to advocate for advocate
for censorship. Uh. And they were so into censorship that
they would like blow people up if they didn't have
their way. So yeah, And this it's interesting because while
Captain America is not the by far not the only

(32:19):
um story or fiction work of fiction to deal with
these real life stand ins, uh, it's one that a
lot of people see and some of it is so
on the nose, you know. Yeah. One of my favorite
Captain America stories, and this is actually from the early seventies,
is uh, Captain America becomes disillusioned with the American government

(32:40):
because this is under writer Steve Engelhardt, who wrote some
of the best Captain America stories of all time. Uh,
and he becomes disillusioned with the American government when he
learns that the President of the United States is actually
in charge of a conspiracy organization called like the Secret Empire.
And this Secret Empire is basically like Hydra from the
movie US right, or or like the Illuminati, like controlling

(33:03):
everything behind the scenes. And when Captain America finally confronts
him on the last page of this comic, Captain America
runs into the Oval Office, confronts the President, and the
President blows his brains out commits suicide after admitting that
he's the leader of this evil organization. Yeah. Yeah, it's
fascinating that they could get away with that. And they

(33:23):
didn't show Richard Nixon's face, but it was pretty obvious
it was supposed to be Richard Nixon did. Like the
draw of the over the shoulders shot they were using
like Silhouette or something. Yeah. Yeah, And it's it's funny
you bring up Secret Empire because I remember reading that,
and recently with the with the rise of Marvel Movies
Own Empire, I've been thinking a lot about the faceless

(33:47):
semi corporate conspiracy villains or antagonists, because there's so many.
There's Leviathan, Hydra, Secret Empire, um, and they're like five
more that I'm not even thinking about. There are a lot,
especially in Marvel uh. And and a big reason for
that actually is that, you know, the writers at the
time were critiquing their employers. Uh. It was the only

(34:10):
way that they had to sort of creatively, right. They
were writing about political issues at the time. Of course,
there was a lot of distrust for the American government
during since presidency, but there was also issues that they
had with their corporate masters. Yeah, and so they would
depict them in these kind of you know overlord rock
Song Corporation that was rows. Whenever there was a problems

(34:35):
with corporations or corporate integrity or especially the oil industry, Yeah,
they would always bring in this corporation called Rock Song Corporation,
and they they they were responsible for everything, right, and
they make I think they make uh, they make appearance
in Daredevil. I feel like either in Daredevil or Captain America,

(34:57):
there was a little easter egg with rocks on, and yeah,
I wouldn't be surprised if they show up later on
in them in the Marble like Phase three movies or
whatever we're running up on now. Yeah, somewhere in Wakondah.
So yeah, and there's advanced idea mechanics Zodiac. Also, you know,
one of my favorites of course is the Serpent Society. Oh,

(35:18):
the Serpent Society is the best secret society of people
who dress up like different kinds of snakes and they
all like have code names based on the kind of
snake that they dressed like, Yeah, and they're that's loosely
related to that snake. Yeah, right, Like there's a like
a sidewinder, but he's just like, you know, a guy
with a kate that allows him to teleport or something

(35:40):
like that. I don't know. I don't think sidewinderings can
teleport in real life. No, and not all of them
had I know, such as tangent, but not all of
them actually had powers, which is so weird to me.
There was one guy I can't remember who his name was.
He just threw like these snake shaped silhouette There weren't
even boomerangs. I totally remember what you're talking just through.

(36:02):
But but anyway, so to to get back to that, UM,
I guess what we're saying is, although ostensibly a lot
of this would just be the same, um, bang up
the bad guy kind of comic book, there's a deeper
story that was being told, especially in Captain America. It's
a story about the society in which we live. Yeah,

(36:24):
I would argue that, and you know, I've argued that
in academic articles that I wrote when I was in school.
But but also that you know, just that the ideology
of the time was reflected in that medium, especially because
of this code. That the code restricted in such a
way what you could portray so that you could get
broader distribution. Uh. In a similar way, I guess to

(36:46):
the m p A A with movies. Um. But what's
interesting is as the distribution model changes, the code becomes
less relevant. So, UM, those of you who are familiar
with comic book stores, their rise was really the late
seventies early eighties, and they came out of a network
of head shops actually from the from the sixties, so

(37:09):
a lot of those store owners kind of converted over
to comic bookstores or like a mixture of the two.
Uh and this broad network across the United States of
direct distribution comic book stores or what people call their
local comic bookstore, even LCS if you're that you're that
into comics line, uh r LCS for instance, or my

(37:32):
LCS is Criminal Records here in Atlanta, you know, or
or I think there's also Oxford. You know, there's there's Tighten,
there are a few around, yeah, uh and uh So
the idea is that these direct distribution platforms didn't have
to have the seal on them. So you started seeing

(37:52):
a few comics here and their experiment with doing gritty,
more realistic issues that they didn't have the code on.
And then you had the rise of sort of like
what most people refer to as the black and white
independent comics of the eighties Teenage Mutan, Ninja Turtles or
um uh Concrete, Um Love and Rockets, books like that

(38:14):
that were very different from the superhero genre. Uh well,
I mean, Teenaging Ninja Turtles was a parody and a
sort of homage to superheroes. But but Ultimately it was
a lot more violent and gritty than what we see
now in the cartoons and movies of that property. Those
started to get distributed and they were just bypassing the
code entirely. Uh, they didn't even bother with it. So

(38:37):
by the time you get to eighty nine and they
make this final change to the code, it's really on.
It's it's a deathbed. It's last like because because there's
something not quite ethical about the formation of the code anyway,
which we're going to get too shortly. Yeah, I think
it's important that we just kind of cover what it is,
how it worked first, and then we can get back

(38:58):
to the sort of collusion assect right, Right, So this
the thing here is that this code, as as you're saying,
is becoming less and less relevant. The only reason it worked,
the only power it really had, uh, hinged upon relatively
monopolistic distribution practices. Absolutely. Yeah, And in fact, uh that's true.

(39:24):
But in comparison to the way that comic books are
distributed in print now, it was far less monopolistic. So
the direct market had some very interesting stuff go on
with it in the late nineties. I'm not gonna get
into it here. It's probably a whole different podcast, but
uh it has basically one major distributor for all of
the stores in the United States, and now they decide

(39:47):
whether your book makes it into a store or doesn't.
And it's not based on any kind of moral authority.
It's more on sort of, you know, will this sell
or not? Uh, do we think it will? Say? Exactly,
it's their opinion. Hunt So so that kind of that
practice still exist, but the comic code itself no longer exists,

(40:09):
right right, So in two thousand one, Marvel, uh had
been going through a huge corporate shake up, they had
a bankruptcy. They finally kind of we're starting to get
their business back in order, and they dropped the code
in two thousand and one. They said, we're going to
use our own in house rating system now. So like
if you look at the back of Marvel Comics on

(40:31):
the INDI SHA, there's like a little like M or
I don't know what they're They might use an A
I think for adult or something like that, or T
for teenager or something, I don't know what they all
these different companies have their own rating systems now, so
it's kind of oblique, but um, yeah, after fifty six
years of dominating comics, when Marvel backed out, that was

(40:51):
basically the end. A lot of the independent publishers stopped
using it. And then, yeah, like I said earlier in eleven,
it was January eleven when d C Comics was like, yeah,
we're done with it too, We're gonna use our own
in house rating system. Then Archie soon followed after, and
that was the last gas. Yeah, and without any of
those publishers around to pay for, you know, these gatekeepers

(41:12):
to keep reviewing comics anymore, the Comics Code Authority closed
its doors. And what was my question is, was at
the same hundred something ladies reading the comics for that.
I don't know. I think that would be a fascinating
story to kind of, you know, interview one of the
employees who had been there for a really long time,
or if there was a lot of turnover, I'm not sure. So.

(41:36):
One thing that I noticed early on when we were
initially talking about this, the whole Comics Code, the rise
and fall of this strange moral authority, was that this group,
when it was formed in the fifties, did something that
so many other private industries did, which you can trace
back to Bernis and propaganda. Uh they picked a name

(42:00):
that sounded like it was a government thing. Oh yeah, yeah.
For I mean, I don't know about you, but when
I was a kid growing up, I always assumed the
Comics Code Authority was a governmental unit. Yeah. It wasn't
until I was an adult and started researching this stuff
that I realized that it had you know, the government
had nothing to do with it except for the legislative hearings. Yeah,

(42:22):
and it happened so often. This This is an interesting
thing because these sorts of name tricks were just very
widespread in the fifties. But lest we think that day
and age of disingenuous marketing is over all you have
to do is look up some various trade associations, all
of which have some very Uncle samish names, and none

(42:44):
of which our government related. Yeah. Yeah, that's true, And
that's an interesting I never thought about that aspect. I
think that's an interesting thing about coming on this podcast
because you and Matt have such expertise at looking all
these various kind of machinations over the years, your two
kind man. Uh, you know, honestly, we we do, we
do try, but we've got uh got a great team

(43:05):
of listeners who lets us know when we get stuff wrong. Yeah. Cool. Well,
I hope that the listeners respond to this episode two
because I'd love to hear if you know, there's always
little tidbit stories out there that add to this unique
kind of untold story of comics. So so, okay, this
came about like we we've got what it is, and
we know, uh, we know how it changed and how

(43:28):
it rose and it fell. But what made these people
so concerned? These teachers, these parents? Yeah? Sure, So it
started off as a thing in probably like the late
forties where there were groups of librarians and teachers and

(43:48):
conservative religious groups that were accusing comics of being inappropriate,
specifically for juveniles. Uh. And it wasn't because of their
effects on children. They didn't come to that argument until later.
What their problem was with it was that they thought
that comics had a low literary quality, that they were
too lowbrow for children, and that by reading these it

(44:09):
was basically the equivalent of like junk food. It was
like reading junk food, and they didn't want their kids
reading it, so they considered it to be immoral, especially
because of this, you know, scantily clad women that you
would find in jungle books or the glorification of villains
in in crime comics or horror comics. Um. And there

(44:29):
was this study in nineteen nine that concluded that children
who read superhero comics in particular did so to deal
with self esteem issues. Now, this study was by today's standards,
I think we would we would judge it as not
being very empirical. Uh, but that basically the idea was

(44:50):
that kids who read comics had self esteem problems because
they were looked up to these hero figures and looked
to them for a sense of security. Yeah. And uh,
you know it was interpreted as being, you know, an
unwanted behavior in your children. Uh. What ended up happening
after that was that the publishers adopted their own code.

(45:12):
This is before the code that we've been talking about
for the episode so far. They had this code. It
lasted like maybe a year, and it just failed completely.
The publishers didn't take it seriously. Uh and again ironically,
what was then Marvel Comics, Timely Comics just said, you
know what, we're going to just use our own in
house code. Thanks, but no thanks, we don't need to

(45:33):
pay into this thing. Uh. But what shifted the tide
was Dr Frederick Wortham. Ah, the psychologist you mentioned earlier, right,
So Dr Frederick Wortham, who was a New York City psychiatrist,
and his campaign was basically that comics shouldn't be sold
to children. His argument was that children imitated the actions

(45:53):
of comic book characters and that the content within them
desensitized these children to violence, and and he built up
a following over this idea. Um. He started off with
articles and presentations and conference hearings, and ultimately he wrote
a book that you can still get today. It's this
fascinating read called Seduction of the Innocent. Like the title, yeah,

(46:15):
it sounds very saucy. Uh, it's it's it's nowhere near
as interesting as Fifty Shades of Grey, but probably a
more apt title. Uh. Anyways, So Wortham's, you know, broad
argument was essentially that the kids that were reading these
comics were enamored with gangsters that were in them, or
monsters or murderers. It would subsequently use these comics as

(46:35):
a like how to manual to perform these actions themselves.
And he saw this as sort of leading up to
the crime problems that inner cities were facing all across America,
especially you know, in New York City where he lived.
So what he advocated for was legislation by the government
on comic books, regulating comic books. And what this led

(46:57):
to was the Senate Subcommittee on Juvenile Delinquency. This is
the big hearing you know, what you refer to as
a trial earlier, um that the Senate staged in New
York City, and it happened in April one and twenty
two and then again on June four in ninety four.
And what they did was they called up a bunch
of different witnesses to testify about comics. They had comic

(47:20):
book publishers, comic book creators, comic book readers, and Frederick Wortham.
They're kind of expert witness right. And just to be clear,
the reason I referred to it as the trials because
earlier we said that comics were on trial. Yeah, I mean,
that's that's essentially what was going on here. Yeah, definitely.
And what was really fascinating about the whole thing is

(47:42):
that it led to a really interesting conversation between the
committee and a guy named William Gaines, who was the
publisher of EAC Comics, who we've been talking about earlier. Yes,
now he in in in the mind of the committee
and in the mind of Wortham is sort of he's
the super villain. Yeah, yeah, he is, in fact, Uh

(48:03):
a little plug for myself here. I wrote a little
comic book a couple of years ago called Think of
the Children, in which it is about this period of
time and these The villain in the story is William Gaines,
and he's an evil like a sorcerer who's bewitching the
minds of children and turning them into little monsters that
attack the members of the subcommittee. Oh that's great, that's fun.

(48:26):
It's a fun story. Anyway, what actually happened was William Gaines,
uh when he came up to testify uh Senator St. S. Kifaber,
who was this like very publicity minded politician at the time.
He was from Tennessee. He really wanted to be president,
and he was kind of famous for going after organized

(48:47):
crime at this point, so he wanted to use this
as sort of his new platform for catapulting himself to
the next level in political stardom. Yeah, so he goes
after Gains in the middle of this hearing, and he
whole holds up a cover to one of the ECS books.
I don't I don't think it was the Tales from
the Crypt. It might have been a Crime Suspense Stories issue.
I'm not sure which one, but it's it's famous cover

(49:10):
now of a person holding a severed head of a
woman with a bloody axe next to it. And he
asked William Gaines, do you think this is in good taste?
And Gaines just kind of stammered and he said, well, uh,
I think it's in good taste for for a horror
comic um and then he just, you know, I just

(49:31):
had this stream of excuses and they were really, you know,
rhetorically lame, and it made him look really bad. It
made comics look really bad. It was on the front
page of all the papers the next day, and that
was essentially the killing blow to horror comics, which is
a shame because I don't know about any other horror

(49:52):
comic fan. But now, just for some context, now, people
go out of their way to collect and find these
uh well, you know, they're comic books, so they're kind
of fragile after a certain amount of time, right, So
people are going back in a way, this ruling ultimately
heightens the value these things, so especially because so many

(50:16):
of the other horror comics publishers at the time went
out of business, and you know, they didn't think that
those comics we're gonna be worth anything fifty years down
the road, so they, you know, we're pulping these books. Basically, Um, yeah,
it's it's a really fascinating, you know, economical model when
you think about, you know, what came out of this,
especially in terms of how it changed the comics industry too,

(50:38):
and what was being published afterward. So basically, this hearing
goes on, and I do want to say one thing
about Frederick worth And before we go too far. He's
often vilified by comics fans like myself as being this big,
bad guy who said all these terrible things about comics
that weren't true. However, I will say that I think

(50:59):
there's a bit of a debate here. If you really
look closely at Wortham's work, he had good intentions. Um.
He was largely concerned. He had he had moved to
the United States from Germany after World War Two, he
had seen horrible atrocities, and he was concerned about inner
city kids in New York City and the violence that

(51:20):
was going on in his community, and by and large,
he blamed comics for this. And that's the problem here,
is that, you know, he had this very single minded
solution to to what he thought was society's greatest problem,
and he blamed violence and racism and even fascism on comics.
And he was homophobic, and he thought that comic books were,

(51:44):
in their own way, advocating for homosexuality. In fact, there's
kind of like infamous quote of him talking about Batman
and Robin as being a sort of you know, he
was one of the first people to insinuate that they
had a homosexual relationship. Certainly not the last, No, certainly
not the last. But it's interesting you say this. So
what we're seeing here is that his intentions are good

(52:09):
at base. Yeah, he was just wrong basically. Yeah. I
mean I think he meant well. I think he genuinely
just wanted society to be better and safer, but his
methodology was was really pretty awful. So this led to
the self regulation that began in October of nineteen fifty four,

(52:32):
a couple of months after these hearings, where publishers all
got together and adopted this regulatory code. And you know,
through their their fees in every month, so that the
the team over at the Comics Code Authority would you know,
uh censor their books. How did Gaines feel about it? Well,
this is the interesting part is that Gains was not
into it at all. In fact, he initially refused to

(52:54):
join the group at all. He wasn't going to submit
his comics for review UM. But because Wholesale refused to
take any comics that weren't didn't have that little stamp
of approval on them, he eventually had to join UM.
But this was short lived because basically Gains just kept
butting heads with them. Uh. There was a point where

(53:15):
there's a there's this infamous story I want to say,
Al Williamson was the illustrator of it in an EC
comic in which there was an African American astronaut who
was um sweating. Uh. He was he was like in
a spaceship and I think he was scared of something
he was seeing off panel, so he's sweating to condicate
that his fear. Uh. This was rejected by the Code

(53:38):
because they thought that it was ridiculing race. Uh. And
so there was some interesting issues there. Whim Gains would
argue back and forth with them. Eventually this story would
see publication. But ultimately, you know, Gains was the first
and kind of biggest casualty of the code. He folded

(53:59):
the ec comics rand, all those horror comics, you know,
we're taken off the shelves. And uh. He ultimately kind
of had the last laugh though, because he left comics
and started Mad Magazine, and Mad Magazine, because it was
a magazine and not a comic book, couldn't be regulated
by the code, and therefore he could get away with

(54:19):
whatever he wanted to in there. And it was a
huge hit. Yeah, and you gotta wonder what would have
happened if he went if he stayed with horror instead
of going to humor. Yeah, I think it would have
been really interesting, you know. I mean, it would have
changed the face of comics. Comics, like I was saying earlier,
the direction of comics changed because of this code. Horror
was one of the most popular genres at the time.

(54:41):
Crime was one of the most popular genres at the time.
Without those things, we see the rise of the superhero,
and the superhero ends up meeting a lot of the
regulatory needs of the code, you know, holding up American
ideals and moral standards and not glorifying cry him or violence.

(55:01):
Well that can be argued, right, right, A Hitler punch
is fine, yeah right, like well that's code but yeah yeah,
like well, you know, bring him back, Red Skull him exactly, Yeah,
punching the Red Skull over and over and over. Right.
I wonder who has the dubious title of most punched
super villain. That would be a fascinating it would be

(55:24):
a good thing to find out. Might be the Red Skull.
And you know, he gets punched a lot for someone
who's supposed to be so smart. That guy gets clocked
on a regular basis, and he's been around for over
seventy years, so the numbers might just be on his side.
So here's here's where we find a little bit of
a conspiracy of foot. This is not a conspiracy theory

(55:47):
because this actually happened. You know, the creators of the
comic code panicked by these hearings. Um could could easily
you know, smell the coffee on the wind, I guess
to butcher a phrase, and so they actually entered into
this as a sort of conspiracy or collusion, right, Yeah,
I mean I think that's fair to say, and I

(56:08):
think most you know, comics historians would agree that they
got together. They saw that this was an opportunity for
their interests to push out their strongest competitor so that
their companies could survive. And yeah, their book lines changed too.
I mean, like, let's go back to that Captain America
example for a second. Captain America was canceled between the
late forties and the um almost all of the fifties. Uh,

(56:32):
it wasn't until the early sixties. I think that Marvel
brought him back as a character with Stanley working on
it with Jack Kirby. Um, not that Stanley created it.
I'd like to qualify that Stanley did not create Captain America.
He was created by Joe Simon and Jack Kirby. If anything,
he uh revived Captain America. Sure, yeah, he was the

(56:53):
one who brought him out of the ice. Yeah, there
we go. That's fair. But this isn't the only comic
book related conspiracy. We we had talked and you had
a few others as well. Right, there's a couple of
interesting instances with comics over the years. A lot of
comics history. It's pretty shady and uh, a writer that

(57:14):
I admire who I won't name here, refers to comics
as being a pirate industry. Uh, and that there's you know,
there's a lot of uh high jinks and backstabbing going
on behind the scenes. So yeah, there's a couple instances
that let's let's talk about here. So, Um, in the sixties,
what was then what became DC Comics, then it was

(57:35):
called National Periodicals, was in charge of distribution for all
of comic books. Uh sorry, I said sixties. This is
the late fifties. And what that's meant was that they
could decide how many comics of a certain type other
publishers could distribute. So being that they were really popular
at the time with the silver age versions of our

(57:56):
superheroes we know now, like a Flash or Green Lantern,
stuff like that. Maybe Martian Man Hunter, I'm not sure. Uh.
They they decided, well, uh, you know, Marvel, you can
only publish six issues a month. You're allowed to put
out anything more than that. Uh And uh so Marvel's
answer to this was the Fantastic Four. Um, they came

(58:20):
up with their own superhero team. But they were like,
we're going to do it differently, you know, We're we're
gonna inject that. This was the Stanley inject that sense
of quote unquote realism in systemper and uh, and that
led to the Fantastic Four, which led to Spider Man
and the whole Marvel renaissance in the sixties. So, yeah,

(58:41):
there seems to be such a such a disturbing comparison
to the recording industry when we talk about these shady
or questionable business practices. Um. But it doesn't just stop
at the distribution. It goes deeper than that, right. Yeah.
So then there's a really interesting story from I believe

(59:01):
it's the seventies in which UM comic book creators were
starting to talk to each other about what their page
rates were to you know, see whether or not they're
being screwed over by their parent corporations or not if
they could get better rates. Uh. And what happened was Stanley,
who was editor in chief of Marvel at the time,
and Carmine Infantino, who's the editor in chief at DC

(59:21):
at the time, got together and they drafted an agreement.
But they were going to share information on what their
freelancer rates were back and forth so they could keep
the freelancer rates as low as possible and keep those
creators from arguing for higher paid rates. And when Roy Thomas,
who was I'm sorry, Stanley was an editor in chief

(59:42):
at the time, he was probably like a president of
the company at the time. Roy Thomas was editor in chief.
When Roy Thomas found out about this this that was
the end for him. Uh. He actually referred to it.
He resigned for Marvel Comics, and he referred to it
as being unethical, immoral, and quite possibly illegal. Uh. You know,
it sounds like it very well could be. This is

(01:00:04):
something This kind of collusion is something that has been
reported with other companies too. I think Apple got in trouble.
It was either Apple or some other tech company got
in trouble in the past few years for doing the
same thing. That sounds about right. Yeah, And if you
want to learn more about stories like that, highly recommend
this book by Sean how called Marvel The Untold Story.

(01:00:25):
It has got so many great behind the scenes secrets
of how Marvel rose to power and fell and then
rose to power again. And there is there's one very
recent one that we should talk about. It just briefly mentioned. Yeah,
this is interesting. It's a rumor right now. I guess

(01:00:45):
a year from now, we're going to look at back
back on this and laugh, or we're gonna say, oh,
it was correct. But the rumor is, uh, Marvel doesn't
own the movie rights to some of their own characters
right now, so x Men, Spider Man, uh, Fantastic War
and a couple of others are owned by Sony and Fox.
And as we record this now in April, there's a

(01:01:08):
new Fantastic Four movie that's about to come out this summer. Uh,
and rumor has it that the guy in charge over
at Marvel does not want the Fantastic Four to do well.
He wants it to fail, and therefore they're going to
cancel the Fantastic Four comic book. Uh. They're going to
basically do everything they can to discourage promotion of this movie. Uh. Now,

(01:01:33):
this is completely a rumor. Yes, the Fantastic Four is
being canceled. I believe its last issue is this month
or next month or something like that. But who knows.
It's comics. You know they'll come back. They could come
back three months from now or something, who knows. Um.
But the the theory is that right now that yeah,
Marvel is doing this on purpose because they just want

(01:01:54):
to squeeze out their movie competition. And I have to
say again, we do know that there's a rumor, but
it makes sense, and the timing makes sense. The motivation,
if it was there, makes sense. That might be a
little inside baseball for anyone who for some reason doesn't
love comics. But uh, we have touched on some really

(01:02:16):
really huge ideas here, and I think the biggest one
is the concept of censorship which haunts, uh, which haunts
the United States even today. You know, since Ulysses all
the way up to the modern times, the and I
mean Ulysses, the the James Joyce book, not the uh
not Ulysses hero, not the mythical hero ever since he

(01:02:40):
came to Jersey. Um. But but we also see that
there's there's a reason for this, because we see that
powerful forces, authority figures are actively working um to shape
the minds of readers. Right definitely, whether in you know,
in this case, at the beginning of the of the

(01:03:01):
comic situation, it was religious groups or moral groups parents,
but that but it really got legs when the government
took a look at it, and then subsequently the companies
themselves said we can take advantage of this and we
can use it to increase our sales. So now this
is one of my favorite parts of the show Towards

(01:03:23):
the end is I want to just ask the big question,
and we don't have to have studies, it's just your opinion, uh,
and and mine as well, What if any influence do
you believe fiction has on people's behavior? This is a
very contentious question to ask, especially if you're going to

(01:03:44):
ask an academic setting, because there's a question of human
agency and how much we have agency beyond the media
that we consume. Right, so the idea that media can
make us do something is very deterministic. However, I uh,
you know, in my academic work really investigated this idea

(01:04:05):
that ideology and and uh national culture especially was informed
by or subsequently informed our popular culture. So yeah, I
think it's I think it's something that's worth looking at
um over the years. You see, you know, especially with
the Code as an example, it's perfect example of what

(01:04:26):
restrictions we are allowed to consume in our media, and
then when those restrictions are lifted or how they change.
You know, there's just interesting flux is like the whole
um is something that you'll often hear people from European
countries say that they don't get about television in the US.

(01:04:48):
Is this uh propensity for violence, this glorification of violence,
and this deeply, deeply troubled relationship with sexuality. If Frederick
Wortham were alive today and he saw tell and you
probably have a heart attack and die all over again. Yeah,
I mean the stuff that we consume now, which I love.

(01:05:08):
By the way, I'm a huge fan of violence and
graphic uh anything if it's used to tell a good story. Uh,
but you know, it's it's very different from what our
moral sort of code allowed fifty sixty years ago. And
I think that we're seeing this evolution still. So listeners,

(01:05:31):
we hope that you enjoy this episode, and we'd like
to hear your stories from your country, from your town
about the ways in which you think the media or
any media is being used to shape behavior or ideology.
And Christian has been a huge pleasure to have you
on the show today. So I have to ask, um,

(01:05:52):
is it okay if I plug that latest Stuff to
Blow Your Mind episode? Yeah? Sure, Okay, So you guys, Uh,
Christian worked with our friends over It's Stuff to Blow
Your Mind to do a fantastic episode on Grim Noise
and uh, when Matt and I heard it, we thought
this would be perfect for our audience too. What do
you guys talk about now? Yeah, Robert and I talked
about the history of magical texts going back to zero

(01:06:17):
BC DC. Uh. Yeah, just the basis for all these
old tomb tomes sorry of magical spells or rituals or
demon summoning or angel knowledge, all kinds of weird stuff
throughout history and how you know, it's kind of similar
to what we're talking about now. Actually, is that like

(01:06:39):
the written word that was in those books at that
time was strongly considered to be to have us an
effect on the people that read it and were subsequently burned.
And you can find that. You can find that episode. Uh,
let's see, we're we're all over the internet. You can
find that episode on iTunes, Stitcher, your streaming service of choice.

(01:07:00):
And while you are online, if you would like to
listen to more episodes of Stuff they Don't want you
to Know, you can find everyone we've ever done on
Stuff they Don't Want you to Know dot com. And
that's the end of this classic episode. If you have
any thoughts or questions, about this episode. You can get
into contact with us in a number of different ways.
One of the best is to give us a call.

(01:07:22):
Our number is one eight three three st d w
y t K. If you don't want to do that,
you can send us a good old fashioned email. We
are conspiracy at i heart radio dot com. Stuff they
don't want you to know is a production of I
heart Radio. For more podcasts from my heart Radio, visit
the i heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you

(01:07:43):
listen to your favorite shows.