First published June 8, 2005, in the Chicago Free
Press.
In the late 1940s and early 1950s critics of so-called "crime
comic books" mounted a campaign against the conspicuous violence
and brutality in many comics which the critics charged could and
did lead impressionable young people to engage in violent and
criminal behavior.
The most comprehensive attack was a widely discussed 1954 book
called Seduction of the Innocent by Dr. Fredric Wertham, a
senior psychiatrist for the New York City Department of Hospitals
and director of mental hygiene clinics at Bellevue Hospital.
I once read that Wertham also claimed that some comic books
promoted homosexuality so I wondered what Wertham said. Not a lot,
it turned out. His 400 page book devoted only six pages to
homosexuality, primarily in what he called "the Batman type of
story." But what he said was interesting.
Wertham does not claim that Batman and Robin are homosexual, but
that "the Batman type of story" - meaning an adult plus youth crime
fighting team - could stimulate "children" to have homosexual
fantasies without realizing it, and could reinforce homosexual
fantasies in adolescents who have already developed homosexual
feelings.
Wertham's discussion is not very clearly organized, but drawing
on popular stereotypes about homosexuals and then-prevalent
theories of sexual psychopathology, he points to four aspects of
the Batman comics to support his claim.
First, there is the paederastic structure, if not content, of
Batman and Robin's relationship. "The Batman type of story helps to
fixate homoerotic tendencies by suggesting the form of an
adolescent-with-adult or Ganymede-Zeus type of
love-relationship."
Second, Batman and Robin live in a suspiciously elegant,
dandified home. "At home they lead an idyllic life. They are Bruce
Wayne and 'Dick' Grayson. They live in sumptuous quarters, with
beautiful flowers in large vases, and have a butler, Alfred. Batman
is sometimes shown in a dressing gown. ... It is like a wish dream
of two homosexual living together." So Noel Coward!
It is worth noticing that Wertham has to reverse the usual
structure of his argument here. In crime comics, it is the
criminals who are fascinating and likely to be imitated. But in the
Batman comics it is the heroes who are attractive - far
too much so - and likely to be imitated.
Third, Wertham's sharp eye detects ostentatious genital display.
Batman is an example of "the muscular male supertype, whose primary
sex characteristics are usually well-emphasized." As for Robin, he
is "a handsome ephebic boy, . . . usually shown in his uniform with
bare legs. He often stands with his legs spread, the genital region
discreetly evident."
Fourth, just as homosexuals were thought to hate women, Wertham
views Batman as "anti-feminine." There are only "masculine, bad,
witchlike or violent women" he says, and "if the girl is good
looking she is undoubtedly the villainess. If she is after Bruce
Wayne, she will have no chance against Dick." Wertham seems to
intend the snickering joke.
Wertham had no trouble finding homosexuals - in therapy, of
course - who said they had read Batman comic books and
counted them among their favorite reading. And for Wertham that
seems to close the case. But Wertham's argument runs into two
crippling objections.
Most obviously, millions of children and adolescents read
Batman comic books without feeling or developing any
homosexual fantasies or desires, yet Wertham offers no theory about
why the homosexually "seductive" comics had absolutely no impact on
the vast majority of readers.
Then too, although Wertham lays stress on the idea that the
comics "seductively" can arouse unconscious homosexual fantasies,
the evidence he offers contradicts that. All of the young
homosexuals he discusses seem to have been aware at an early age
that they were in some way or other attracted to men.
So Wertham has the causation backwards. The simplest explanation
is that far from the "Batman type of story" being able to make some
young men homosexual, young homosexuals would be attracted to
Batman comics and project their early, perhaps inchoate
sexual feelings into the comics while young heterosexuals simply do
not. End of story.
There was no need to postulate mysterious psychiatric mechanisms
such as "unconscious" homosexual fantasies and "fixated" homosexual
"patterns" and no evidence that such things even existed.
In response to the widespread criticism and threats of
legislative action, the violence and horror comic books were
significantly toned down and criticism of those abated. But the
suggestion that Batman's household had a homoerotic character
continued to shadow the series.
Finally, in 1964, Batman editor Julius Schwartz decided
to try to scotch the rumors once and for all by getting rid of the
faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth.
According to Mark Cozza Vaz's history of Batman comics,
Tales of the Dark Knight, Schwartz recalled: "Many people
were questioning why three males were living together. So I said,
'Okay, I'll kill off one of the males and put a woman in there!'
And the woman turned out to be Aunt Harriet, the aunt of Dick
Grayson. . . . I guess that was pretty drastic, killing off
Alfred."
But happily within just a few years the Batman
television program decided that it wanted to include Alfred, so
Alfred was duly revived from the dead, once again to serve the
original ambiguously non-gay duo.