1950s Anti-Comic Book Propaganda Film at David Hajdu Lecture
I attended David Hajdu’s excellent event at Town Hall last night, which featured (or so I gathered) a significantly different lecture from those given on the rest of his book tour. The lecture was to promote The 10 Cent Plague, Hajdu’s excellent history of the crackdown on horror and crime comics of the 1950s, which promoted the Kefauver Senate Subcommittee hearings on juvenile deliquency and led to the formation of the Comics Code Authority.
This event was put on by Nextbook, a non-profit organization that serves as a locus for Jewish literature, culture, and ideas; as such, Hajdu tailored his Town Hall event to how the creators of the era of The 10 Cent Plague employed comics to express their Jewish experience. For the evening’s talk, Hajdu culled exclusively from interviews he conducted for the book that discussed Jewish identity but didn’t make it into the final draft. So it was a night of bonus tracks, basically, which was great. He shared anecdotes from Will Eisner, Al Jaffee, Bob Oksner, Arnold Drake, Harry Lampert, Al Feldstein and many others.
But the highlight was a rare film short Hajdu was generous enough to share, a piece of propaganda he obtained from the Library of Congress and filmed in the 1950s to promote the idea that comic books cause juvenile deliquency. Specifically (but not limited to), torture. I wish I could have shot the whole clip, but my digital camera can only film for about two minutes before running out of space.
The film only gets better after these first two minutes, which are mostly introductory. It later becomes a dramatization of a group of suburban adolescents, all boys, happily hanging out in the woods, reading and trading comic books. The voice-over paints a more grim picture (I’m paraphrasing):
“Look at these children. When I was a boy, we too gathered in gangs like this, but it was to roast potatoes or learn skills and build things, like a raft to put in the river. Never did we just sit around READING. And what are they reading?”
Well, you can imagine. Tales of “sexual depravity, adultery, murder, etc.” The sheer trauma of reading such pernicious filth turns the boys into a raving mob of sadists who con a younger boy into the woods, tie him to a tree, gag him, hold lit matches centimeters from his head and hair while slapping him around and punching knives into the tree he’s bound to, and laughing in a way that makes me think Heath Ledger might have studied this film as research for the new Batman movie. It was like A Clockwork Orange starring the Little Rascals.
Which is to say it was fantastic. I almost bought into it, it was so good. I might have thought going in that knives and matches contributed more to juvenile delinquency than comics, but screw that notion.
Anyway, here’s the clip. Thanks much to Mr. Hajdu for sharing with us. Buy his book (even though we didn’t even publish it), it’s good. It even has a killer Charles Burns cover.
Duration : 0:2:7
Categories: Sexual Depravity Tags: 10, 1950s, books, cent, comic, David, Hajdu, Hall, lecture, Nextbook, Plague, propaganda, Seattle, Town
‘The Son’ by Desmond Ng – Featuring Zaid Ibrahim – 15Malaysia Trailer
Visit http://www.15malaysia.com to watch more videos like this. 15Malaysia consists of 15 short films about Malaysia featuring some of the best known faces in the country including entertainers and politicians.
Duration : 0:0:51
Categories: Racial Conflict Tags: 15, 15malaysia, 15MY, Conflict, desmond, malaysia, ng, pete, racial, teo
Godless Alternative: Atheist Summer Camp For Children
An atheist summer camp for children is taking place in Somerset, to offer a secular, “godless” alternative to religious camps.
• http://www.youtube.com/bbcworldnews
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Camp Quest – The Secular Summer Camp
Camp Quest is the first residential summer camp in the history of the United States for the children of Atheists, Freethinkers, Humanists, Brights, or whatever other terms might be applied to those who hold to a naturalistic, not supernatural world view.
The purpose of Camp Quest is to provide children of freethinking parents a residential summer camp dedicated to improving the human condition through rational inquiry, critical and creative thinking, scientific method, self-respect, ethics, competency, democracy, free speech, and the separation of religion and government guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States.
Camp Quest was first held in 1996 and until 2002 was operated by the Free Inquiry Group, Inc. (FIG) of Cincinnati and Northern Kentucky. The idea for the project originated with Edwin Kagin and he and his wife Helen served as Camp Directors for the first ten years of the original Camp Quest, retiring at the end of the 2005 camp session.
• http://www.camp-quest.org
Camp Quest UK is the first residential summer camp for the children of atheists, agnostics, humanists, freethinkers and all those who embrace a naturalistic rather than supernatural world view.
2009 will be our first year of camp, and we will be the first Camp Quest to operate outside of North America, where there are currently six successful branches.
We aim to provide summer camping holidays and trips that focus on our childrens needs – physical and mental activity, and a lot of fun! As well as the more traditional outdoor activities – canoeing, climbing, zip wire, high ropes – our enthusiastic and knowledgeable counsellors will lead the children on a variety of activities which could concern anything from critical thinking and logical fallacies, to the scientific method and pseudoscience, philosophy, ethics, famous freethinkers and world religions!
Children at Camp Quest aren’t required to be atheists. We want to encourage children to think for themselves and to evaluate the world critically and thus draw their own conclusions. However, parents should be aware that we adopt a critical, scientific approach as opposed to a faith-based approach. At Camp Quest, children arent taught that There is no god. Instead, they are taught to come to their own conclusions, but more importantly, that Its OK not to believe in a god.
We believe that the positive influence of Camp Quest UK will help to develop children into happy, healthy and respectful adults.
• http://www.camp-quest.org.uk
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Duration : 0:2:41
Categories: Alternative Religion Tags: Alternative, Atheism, Atheist, Atheists, BBC, Belief, Bible, Brights, Camp, camps, Catholic, Children, Christ, Christianity, Christians, church, Creation, Creationism, Creationists, Darwin, Dawkins, Delusion, Design, Earth, Evolution, Experience, Faith, for, Freethinker, Freethinkers, Freethinking, God, Godless, Harris, Hitchens, Humanists, ID, Intelligent, Islam, Jesus, news, Pope, Quest, Reason, Religion, Religious, Science, Secular, Summer, Young
Talk Wrestling 112: 2010 WWE Draft review (including supplemental), Extreme Rules, RVD
Jeff Meacham is back with the 112th edition of Talk Wrestling! Here are the topics of discussion
WWE RELEASES
Shelton Benjamin
Mickie James
Katie Lea
Funaki
Slam Master J
Jimmy Wang Yang
Mike Knox
WWE DRAFT
Kelly Kelly to SmackDown
Big Show to SmackDown
John Morrison to RAW
R-Truth to RAW
Edge to RAW
Kofi Kingston to SmackDown
Christian to SmackDown
Chris Jericho to RAW
SUPPLEMENTAL DRAFT
Great Khali and Ranjin Singh to RAW
Chavo Guerrero to SmackDown
Cody Rhodes to SmackDown
Natalya to RAW
Chris Masters to SmackDown
Ezekiel Jackson to RAW
Goldust to RAW
Hornswoggle to SmackDown
Rosa Mendes to SmackDown
Hart Dynasty to RAW
MVP to SmackDown
EXTREME RULES
John Cena defeated Batista to retain the WWE Title (Last Man Standing)
Jack Swagger defeated Randy Orton to retain the World Title
Edge defeated Chris Jericho in a cage match
Sheamus defeated Triple H in a street fight
CM Punk defeated Rey Mysterio to keep his hair
Beth Phoenix defeated Michelle McCool for the Womens Title
Hart Dynasty wins tag gauntlet and earns a title shot (won the titles on RAW)
JTG defeated Shad in a strap match
TNA NEWS
Team Hogan over Team Flair in Lethal Lockdown
AJ over Pope to retain at Lockdown, but then loses the title to RVD at iMPACT
Angle over Anderson, then Angle announced he was taking time off
Team 3D over the Outsiders; the feud continues
Kazarian is new X Division Champ, but the belt is still with Williams
Madison Rayne is Knockouts Champ, TBP have all the gold, Tara/Angelina feud
Matt Morgan reigns as Tag Champ by himself, constantly trying to find a partner
TNA allowing the fans to vote for the #1 Contender to the World Title; Desmond Wolfe with a slight lead over Jeff Hardy as of now
Duration : 0:14:7
Categories: Extreme Talk Tags: 2010, batista, cent, chris, Christian, cody, discussion, draft, duct, dynasty, edge, Extreme, hart, jericho, john, Morrison, rant, recap, review, rhodes, rules, supplemental, tape, wwe
‘The Son’ by Desmond Ng – English Subtitles – 15Malaysia
Visit http://www.15malaysia.com to watch more videos like this. 15Malaysia consists of 15 short films about Malaysia featuring some of the best known faces in the country including entertainers and politicians.
Duration : 0:4:50
Categories: Racial Conflict Tags: 15, 15malaysia, Conflict, desmond, Ibrahim, malaysia, ng, pete, racial, racism, Son, teo, The, Violence, Zaid
Duran Duran – New Religion (Night Version)
This is an early rare remix of this classic song from the Rio era
Duration : 0:5:16
Categories: Alternative Religion Tags: Alternative, classic, Dance, DuranDuran, electronic, New, Night, Religion, Rock, Version
