Wertham, Fredric (1895-1981)
Although Fredric Wertham is remembered primarily as the author of Seduction of the Innocent (1954), an incisive, blistering attack on the violence and horror purveyed by the comic book industry, his research took him through this era of crime comics to the culture that violent movies and television created. In 1966 Wertham wrote: "Television represents one of the greatest technological advances and is an entirely new, potent method of communication. Unfortunately as it is presently used, it does have something in common with crime comic books: the devotion to violence. In the School for Violence, television represents the classic course." The climate of violence developing since this observation has, if anything, increased with the emergence of new technologies, like the Internet and videos, and become more noxious in the late 1990s. Competition for audience share, demand for advertising revenue, and misguided applications of constitutional rights have all encouraged aggressive displays of violent behavior to be broadcast. Though originally derided, Wertham's observations that the grammar of violence and its impact on the culture constitutes a public health issue have been sustained by the research of Leonard Eron, George Gerbner, and Albert Bandura. Nevertheless, Wertham was not a Luddite, opposed to technological advances, but a physician of wide and deeply humane interests, an advocate of social reform, and a defender of civil liberties.
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