Ideology and Power in Pre-Code Comic Books
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Ideology and Power in Pre-Code Comic Books: Struggles for Cultural Space, Audience, and Meaning Dissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Philosophischen Fakultät der Christian-Albrechts-Universität zu Kiel vorgelegt von Jan Philipzig Kiel / Edmonton März, 2011 Erstgutachter: Prof. Dr. Hans Jürgen Wulff Zweitgutachter: Prof. Dr. Hans-Edwin Friedrich Tag der mündlichen Prüfung: 06.07.2011 Durch den Prodekan, Prof. Dr. Martin Krieger, zum Druck genehmigt: 09.07.2012 Table of Contents Introduction 1 Chapter 1: Evolution of the Comic Book: Codes, Ideology, Language, Format 19 1.1 The Codes of the Comic Book 19 1.2 From Comic Strip to Comic Book 29 Chapter 2: The Rise of the Comic-Book Market: Production and Consumption 45 Chapter 3: The Rise of the Superhero Genre, 1938 to 1941: Textuality and Ideology 65 3.1 Superman 65 3.2 The Batman 86 3.3 The Spirit 99 3.4 Other Notable Superheroes 108 Chapter 4: Adjusting the Superhero, 1941 to 1945: Textuality, Reflexivity, Ideology 127 4.1 Reflexivity and Marketing 127 4.2 Superman 133 4.3 The Justice Society of America 145 4.4 Plastic Man 153 4.5 Wonder Woman 159 4.6 Other Notable Superheroes 167 Chapter 5: The Post-War Market: Genre Diversity 183 5.1 The Superhero Genre 183 5.2 Genre Diversity for a Wider Audience 190 Chapter 6: EC Comics: A Different Approach 209 6.1 The “New Trend” Line 209 6.2 Mad and the History of Comic-Book Reflexivity 220 6.3 The Rise of Comic-Book Fandom 226 Chapter 7: The Comics Code: Implementation and Effects 247 List of References and Works Cited 283 Zusammenfassung 305 Introduction This research project started out as something quite different. I initially intended to write nothing less than a history of reflexivity in comic books, that is, I wanted to examine the various forms and functions of comic-book reflexivity from the medium’s beginnings until today. I eventually realized, however, that in order to appreciate the commercial and ideological functions of reflexive devices I first needed to gain a better understanding of the medium’s systems of production, consumption, and textuality;i and in order to comprehend the changes that the various forms of comic-book reflexivity have gone through, I first needed to examine how comic books have intersected with the economic, political, social, and cultural forces of their time. In other words, I needed to build my investigation of comic-book reflexivity on an analysis of the medium’s history from a cultural studies perspective. Since a thorough analysis of that kind did not exist, I decided to make such a study my new project. I broadened the scope of my research until the investigation of reflexive devices came to represent merely one aspect of a wider investigation of comic- book textuality’s ideological dimension and of the power discourses underlying the medium’s systems of production and consumption. To create space for such a broadened approach, I limited my investigation to the pre-Code era. In the tradition of recent academic works such as Bradford W. Wright’s groundbreaking Comic Book Nation, David Hajdu’s The Ten-Cent Plague, and Paul Lopes’ Demanding Respect, this project articulates pre-Code comic books within the historical discourses from which they emerge and in which they have their effects. However, while previous academic works tend to focus on comic-book production and reception/consumption, my study aims to situate comic books within a well-balanced system of not only production and consumption but also textuality. Bradford W. Wright characteristically argues that “there 1 are intellectual pitfalls in analyzing something like comic books too deeply” (xviii). By contrast, this study’s in-depth examination of pre-Code comic books and their meaning- making and pleasure-producing potential hopes to provide new insights into the industry’s persistent struggles for meanings, cultural space, and an audience, insights whose relevance transcends the field of comic-book research. My investigation of the pre-Code era’s comic-book market draws on a wide range of theories and concepts developed in the field of cultural studies. I will now outline those theories and concepts that are central to this project’s theoretical frame. Italian neo-Marxist Antonio Gramsci suggests that capitalist societies maintain their stability through a combination of force (e.g., police, prisons, military) and “hegemony.” The term “hegemony” is understood by Gramsci as the winning of consent to unequal class relations within capitalist societies, that is, as the process whereby the subordinate are persuaded to consent to the system that subordinates them. Hegemony’s ideological domination, however, is acknowledged by Gramsci to necessarily meet with resistance, as the subordinate constantly compete with the dominant for cultural, intellectual, and political leadership. The life of the capitalist state, Gramsci’s “civil society,” is thus marked by a variety of struggles between “incorporation” and “resistance.” This concept of the “civil society” as contested terrain set neo-Marxist theory free from the classical Marxist notion of the state as instrument of class domination, and correspondingly from the economic determinism that had restricted the relevance not only of classical Marxism, but also of the Frankfurt School.ii Instituted by Birmingham University’s Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) in 1964, British Cultural Studies – today widely known and hence in this paper referred to simply as “cultural studies” – adopted the theories of Gramsci for the field of media studies. Building on Gramsci’s concept of “civil society,” cultural studies argues that the central 2 political division in capitalist societies is the opposition between “the power bloc” and “the people.” The term “power bloc” is defined as a constantly shifting alliance of various forces of domination such as the government, the educational system, or the culture industries; the term “the people” refers to a shifting alliance consisting of elements whose unity is constituted by their relationship to a particular discourse of dominant ideology. As the power struggles of capitalist societies are acknowledged to take place not only in the economic arena between classes, but in various arenas between constantly shifting alliances, the class discourse is displaced from the privileged position classical Marxism reserved for it. While the Frankfurt School cast “mass culture” as a mere tool of class domination, cultural studies argues that “popular culture”iii mirrors the state’s ongoing process of negotiations between dominant and subordinate groups: The state’s political struggle is viewed to manifest itself in the sphere of popular textuality as a struggle for meanings, as a contradictory mix of competing values, of intentions and counter-intentions. John Fiske, whose work has been of particular influence on this paper, writes: “Popular culture always is part of power relations; it always bears traces of the constant struggle between domination and subordination, between power and various forms of resistance to it or evasions of it, between military strategy and guerilla tactics.”iv Cultural studies agrees with the Frankfurt School that popular culture is a central tool in hegemony’s ideological domination. It admits that popular culture has a strong tendency to naturalize the status quo, that is, to render the unequal capitalist system of property ownership, power, and material rewards into the form of common sense, making it appear to have no alternative. Contrary to the Frankfurt School, however, cultural studies insists that the culture industry’s control over its products can never be absolute. The culture industry, it claims, has to compromise with the interests of the consumer because 3 commodities serving only the economic and ideological interests of the dominant would fail to provide popular pleasurev and thus be rejected by the consumer. This ability of the consumer to reject products that don’t provide him or her with pleasure is argued to be a “crucial factor” in the cultural economy.vi Cultural studies argues that popular culture arises from the capitalist system’s mode of production, from its social division of labor between the capitalist owners of the means of production (the dominant, the backers) and the workers who only have their labor-power to sell (the subordinates, the performers). It claims that popular culture is created by subordinates who naturally resent their subordination, and are thus inclined to deliver a text that encourages subversive reading positions. At the same time, however, creators of popular culture must compromise with the dominant they depend on to provide the resources necessary for production. The dominant has an ideological interest in a text that encourages the reader to make sense of it in a way that serves the dominant’s interests. Still, producers of popular culture are just as conflicted as its creators, for their economic interests call for products that attract a popular audience. In order to be popular, a text needs to be “open” to a variety of different reading positions; it needs to employ devices that enable a variety of readers to attach personal meaning to it; it needs to have points of relevance and provide pleasure to a variety of readers in a variety of social contexts. The consumer of popular culture is argued by cultural studies to be engaged in ideological practice while consuming, for every act of consumption involves the production of meaning. Meaning is not understood as some kind of producer-controlled fixed and absolute entity inscribed in the text for the reader to decode and ultimately accept. Rather, it is cast as an ongoing process that can only ever be contingent and contextual, as it is always open to the reader’s ever-changing perspective and input. Textual agencies of cultural commodities may propose or promote certain reading positions and meanings, but are 4 ultimately unable to control them.