Comical comics
Comical comics |
|
Page 34 of 34  Captain Kirk (William Shatner) and Mr Spock (Leonard Nimoy) take a break from filming Star Trek to peruse the latest Had (1967). In this way, comics came to be seen as harmless fun: a way for children to let off steam, and to give vent to their 'natural' sense of adventure and mischief. There were limits, of course: it was important that the juvenile reader should not encounter any semblance of the adult world (any hint of sex, realistic violence or adult relationships would have shattered the illusion). Similarly, politics was out: as one comics critic has written, 'Inasmuch as the sweet, docile child can be sheltered effectively from the evils of existence, from the petty rancors, the hatreds, and the political or ideological contamination of his elders, any attempt to politicise the sacred domain of childhood threatens to introduce perversity where once there reigned happiness, innocence and fantasy." Instead, comics were coopted into a vision of childhood that included climbing trees, flicking catapults and playing tag." Confusingly, then, comics were sentimentalized one hand, and criticized on the other. Their stock in society could not be said to have risen since their genesis: they still were not 'respectable', and as a result teachers felt perfectly at liberty to confiscate them in schools, and parents to ban them from the home. Yet because they were now orientated towards a juvenile market, they were also 'winked at' and tolerated. It was an odd set of contradictions, and one which children's comics never quite escaped until the present. |