It seems that whenever a new media-driven art-form emerges on the world stage, the pedants of our society will find some means of scrutinizing it, as was the case with film and television; now, with the popularity of video games, it seems that the decency watchdogs are on the prowl yet again. Comics, like video games, were once on the receiving end of the very same critical barbs employed by politicians seeking an easy target and platform for their political agendas, and as outlined by Dylan Horricks in his dissertation on the subject in 'The Perfect Planet: Comics, Games and World-building' (2004, University of Canterbury Press), campaigns of this sort have been leveled at many such forms of media in the past.
In the early 1950s, mounting concerns due to the degree of influence comics are said to have on developing adolescent minds galvanized parents within the general public, whose opinions were swayed by wild allegations that comics heightened violent tendencies in young people, or would bring about the decay of the delicate moral fibre of our society, and, laughably, that they could increase the risk of open warfare between nations (D, Horricks, 2004). As outlandish as some of these claims were, what is even more bewildering is the fact that many of the advocates for this anti-comic movement were those of the intellectual, socially liberal Left, as opposed to the customarily more outspoken and assertive Right (D, Horricks, 2004).
Perhaps elitism is to blame for the Leftists' negative reaction towards comics and their readers, perhaps they saw comics and their production as a kind of domestication of the English language, that the comic medium could hardly extrapolate - or do justice to - the underlying beauty and technicality of formal linguistics. Or perhaps they are merely fearful of change. As Horricks puts it, many within the academic community felt that comics were "unworthy of serious consideration", yet according to Mr Horricks again, this seems more an "unwillingness" to attempt to understand a medium that utilizes a different kind of narration tool-set, as it were, as a guide for storytelling (D, Horricks, 2004).
Going deeper still, and using Horricks' keen observational sense as our light in the dark, perhaps it is due to older minds adhering to an established template - or "paradigm", as Horricks phrases it - rigidly coiled intellectually about the staid and repetitive methods of crafting a functional story, disallowing any real innovation in the field of storytelling (D, Horricks, 2004). Consider how the education standards of our modern times demand that we, as students, repetitively mentally negotiate boring textbooks that we struggle to understand even when sober, and consider how much more we could absorb if lectures and readings were digitized and allowed for a greater degree of interaction. I daresay, we'd all be certified geniuses! Unfortunately, most of us will likely be pushing up daisies by the time education providers finally embrace new media as a viable teaching resource (apart from AUT, obviously), so we'll have to make do with our archaic comics and video games in the meanwhile.
Of course, comics are practically commonplace throughout our society today, and some are even adapted into Hollywood blockbusters, an achievement video games are yet to refine as the Mortal Kombat film remains a grim testament to. Yet I cannot help but find that comics are still very much an 'underground' kind of hobby, more forgotten or ignored as opposed to accepted or embraced; no one cares very much about comics anymore, they are a staple of any self-respecting nerd's diet of popular culture, but the general Average Joe has no real need nor care for comic books in this Age of the Internet.
However, Mr Horricks' thoughts on the moral panic of decades past helps clarify why this is so: those who had so vehemently contested the comic book industry hadn't simply vanished from the face of the earth as the popularity of comics began to wane, but rather popular opinion was simply diverted elsewhere, to scrutinize the new kids on the block: video games, films, and gangsta rap (D, Horricks, 2004). You see, the opinions and scrutiny of personality-free politicians regarding new media never changed at all, they only got older and angrier, and a little technophobic in the process, following wherever those aforementioned Average Joes happen to devote their time, eyeballing those idle votes . . .
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