La campagne catholique contre les bandes dessinées aux États-Unis et au Brésil dans les années 1940 et 1950

Since the early 1940s, Catholics have fought comic books. However, the charges against the comics became more serious after 1948, when Fredric Wertham, a New York-based psychiatrist, started a campaign against them. After some court defeats in 1950, Wertham took to comics again in 1954 with the publ...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: André Caruso
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Institut des Amériques 2022-03-01
Series:IdeAs
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Online Access:https://journals.openedition.org/ideas/12060
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Summary:Since the early 1940s, Catholics have fought comic books. However, the charges against the comics became more serious after 1948, when Fredric Wertham, a New York-based psychiatrist, started a campaign against them. After some court defeats in 1950, Wertham took to comics again in 1954 with the publication of his famous book Seduction of the Innocent. In Brazil, the campaign against comics was also launched by Catholics, led in particular by the priest Arlindo Vieira. In 1948, the Rio de Janeiro newspaper, Diário de Notícias, a symbol of the anti-comic book campaign, translated and published the article Wertham wrote for the Saturday Review of Literature. Henceforth, the New York psychiatrist became the main “scientific authority” in the Brazilian campaign against comics. Nevertheless, among Americans and Brazilians alike, the said campaign predates Wertham’s work. This article therefore intends to revisit the comic book debate that agitated the Catholic Church in the 1940s and 1950s, as well as to assess the impact that Wertham’s work had on the Catholic campaign against comics in the US and Brazil.
ISSN:1950-5701