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Selling Moral Panic: Social Scientific Criticism of Movies and Comic Books for Children, 1925-1955

Hull, Thomas William Allan
http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1263949945

Abstract Details

2010, Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, History.
In the twentieth century, social scientists criticized both the motion picture and comic book industries for their impact on the young. In Our Movie Made Children (1933) Henry Forman summarized studies by the Motion Picture Research Council and the Payne Fund that explored the sometimes harmful influence of popular films on children. Similarly, in Seduction of the Innocent (1954) psychiatrist Fredric Wertham drew on his own clinical work with troubled youth to link comic books to juvenile delinquency. The two books shared many similarities in tone, style, method, intent, and content, but received divergent responses from reviewers, academics, policymakers, and general readers. Those disparities resulted from various factors, including differences in age composition (and political power) of the audiences for movies and comic books, the varying effectiveness of each industry's own pre-existing self-censorship organization, and broad changes in American society and culture between the 1920s and 1950s.
Daniel Cohen, PhD (Advisor)
Renee Sentilles, PhD (Committee Member)
John Grabowski, PhD (Committee Member)
60 p.
American History; American Studies; History; Mass Media; Motion Pictures
Movies; Comic Books; Fredric Wertham; Henry Forman; Payne Fund Studies

Recommended Citations

Citations

  • Hull, T. W. A. (2010). Selling Moral Panic: Social Scientific Criticism of Movies and Comic Books for Children, 1925-1955 [Master's thesis, Case Western Reserve University]. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1263949945

    APA Style (7th edition)

  • Hull, Thomas. Selling Moral Panic: Social Scientific Criticism of Movies and Comic Books for Children, 1925-1955. 2010. Case Western Reserve University, Master's thesis. OhioLINK Electronic Theses and Dissertations Center, http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1263949945.

    MLA Style (8th edition)

  • Hull, Thomas. "Selling Moral Panic: Social Scientific Criticism of Movies and Comic Books for Children, 1925-1955." Master's thesis, Case Western Reserve University, 2010. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=case1263949945

    Chicago Manual of Style (17th edition)

case1263949945
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© 2010, all rights reserved.
This open access ETD is published by Case Western Reserve University School of Graduate Studies and OhioLINK.