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THE LAW IS A ASS for 04/25/2000
DOCKET ENTRY
"The Law is a Ass" Installment # 41
Originally written as installment # 31and published in Comics Buyer's Guide issue # 559, August 3, 1984 issue
The column was a little more than a year old now and it had, to this point, pretty much followed the same pattern. I'd find a mistake in a comic-book story and write about in it a fairly light-hearted manner; so as to both entertain and educate. With this column I broke the mold a bit. As you will see, instead of writing about comic-book stories, I wrote about comic books in general. About, specifically, two people who had expressed, for different reasons, their belief that comic books might be contributing to the growing crime problem in this country.
I understood the positions being put forth by each of these two and I believe them both, to a point; the problem is more complex than either person made it. But I also believe that there may be some truth to what they say; enough that I chose to write about them and set out their opinions for everyone to read and take from them what they wanted.
One more thing, the subject matter was a bit more serious than usual and I treated it in a more serious manner. To be sure, there were some jokes scattered about in the column, but by usual throw-offs, the quips and bon mots were not as prevalent.
Hopefully so will you.
******
"The Law is a Ass"
Installment # 41
by
Bob Ingersoll
Did you ever stop to think that comic books may actually contribute to crime?
Stop! Put down the tar and feathers! Don't take that rail from off the old fence! And, for Crom's sake check your calendars! This isn't the 1950's. I'm not the reincarnation of Fredrik Wertham. I have no sociology or psychology training, and I don't intend to offer any theories as proven fact. What I do intend to do is share with you the concerns of two readers, who have written me about some perceived failings in modern comics; failings which may contribute to the recent increase in crime.
Leonard Rifas of San Francisco, California sent me an article from the May 23 edition of the San Francisco Guardian entitled "Urban Crime: You Can Fight Back." The article is about one Michael Castleman and his recent book, Crime Free. Castleman's major premise is that the solutions customarily offered to the crime problem--you know: end poverty on the liberal point or get tougher with criminals on the conservative counter point--are both inadequate to deal with the problem. Castleman feels that these solutions are slow, expensive, and ineffective, because they deal with the impulse to commit crime not the opportunity to commit one. Castleman opines that if one is more aware of his surroundings, more aware of when one is placing himself into a into a situation which provides the opportunity for crime and then takes steps to negate the opportunity, potential crimes will be avoided. By eliminating the opportunity that criminals commonly have to commit crimes, then most criminals--who are not master thieves, so can't improvise, or crazed psychos, who don't care that we're not cooperating by opening their window of opportunity--won't know how to respond and will be rendered inert.
Castleman offers several common sense strategies that the average citizen can take to avoid or reduce the opportunity for crime. I won't go into them all. They are all very common sense--things like be aware of your surroundings and don't go down dark alleys--and if you think about them for a minute, you should be able to think of most of them yourself. Or you can buy the book. (I haven't read it, so I can neither recommend nor condemn it, but, either way I don't want to undercut it by detailing its content here.)
Actually, it is Castleman's other major premise which is of interest to the column and on which Mr. Rifas asked me to comment. Castleman blames part of the growing crime problem on the fact that most people feel they are powerless to do anything about crime, so they don't do the common-sense strategies which he advocates. Castleman blames this feeling of cultural impotence blames on the media. The media, both fact (news) and fiction (Nash Bridges, The Pretender, Secret Agent Man--oops strike that last one, sometimes the good guy doesn't succeed), continually portrays helpless citizens being preyed on by criminals and who need a hero to rescue him. The only time an ordinary citizen is able to fight back, it is in the most basic, innocent-victim-pushed-too-far-and-finally-strikes-back Charles Bronson revenge fantasy terms. Castleman feels these all-too-common clichés desensitize the average citizen, makes him accept crime as an unchangeable reality of larger proportions than it actually has, and causes feelings of impotence and dependence.
Mr. Rifas argues out that comic books accentuate Castleman's postulated trend. In comics the criminals are super fiends, against whom the average citizen has no recourse and no ability. The only thing citizens can do is rely on the largess of Superhero-Man to rescue them.
I don't pretend to profundity here, but reaction to crime is an attitudinal thing. If one reads from a very young age that he is helpless to stop crime himself, he could grow up believing it and do nothing to help stop it. Not everyone, mind you, but it could happen in some people.
There is, however, a solution. If the comic creators recognize the possibility that their treatment of crime contribute to a feeling of helplessness, then maybe they change the way they portray crime. I'm not saying that every issue has to show John Q. Public capturing The Vulture, although I think my two-year-old could hold her own against The Ringer. But if there were occasional portrayals of the citizens of Metropolis solving a problem without Superman, of their showing some self-reliance and initiative, of their demonstrating positively that they feel they can do something to help, instead of waiting for Big Daddy to solve all their problems, then the attitude Castleman was talking about might lessen or even disappear.
All it takes is some positive attitudes on the part of the citizenry, that they can make a difference, and they will make a difference. It would be nice if comics could show them that they can make that difference.
******
I got another letter. I'm not going to reveal the name of the writer. He didn't ask me to keep it a secret, but I have my reasons. You'll understand them soon.
The letter was not from the usual return address, it was from the Virginia State Penal Farm. The writer was serving a twenty-one year sentence for various drug distribution charges. It took great courage for the writer to reveal to me what he revealed, and I don't know if he revealed his history to me in confidence or not. But because of the potential for harm and embarrassment here, I am not going to reward that courage by fanning the potential into full conflagration.
Let's call him Mr. A. (And the A stands for anonymous, it is not even the writer's last initial.) Mr. A. is doing time. He knows the horror of every day life in a penal institution, because he lives it every day. He wrote me to ask me to pass on a message to comic book readers and writers. The message is simple. So simple, in fact, that it is regarded as platitudinous. Yet for all its simplicity, the message is no less true.
The message? Crime does not pay.
Mr. A. is presently finding that out the hard way doing hard time. And he feels that a change in comics is partially responsible for a dimunition of the message. Comics in the past ended with the villain being caught and sent to jail. Frequently he'd be shown regretting his crime or, at least, suffering the lot of a prisoner. The message in old comics was clear: Try it and you will get caught. Do the crime and do the time. The weed of crime bears bitter fruit. If you'll forgive a platitude: crime does not pay.
Today's comics dilute the message. The X-Men never catch anyone, they simply fight to stand-offs and the villains escape. Nova never caught anyone. The Teen Titans catch some, the smaller fish, but the biggies--the Baron Bloods, the Deathstrokes, the Brotherhood of Evil--usually escape to bedevil the heroes later. It is more and more common that a villain is not caught at the end of a story, perhaps because that way some future writer won't have to think of a contrived or phony way for the villain to be free, when he is used again.
But the problem is, the message gets diluted. The villains don't get caught, they plans are merely thwarted. They're inconvenienced but not incarcerated, put off but not punished. They learn no lesson except, well better luck next time.
Mr. A. has asked me to request that comic writers and artists put the message back in. Show the villains getting caught. Show them doing the time. Show their suffering. Perhaps on the rare occasion show some of the conditions of the prisons. A little Scared Straight tactics now and then wouldn't hurt.
You know what? I think, maybe Mr. A. is right.
BOB INGERSOLL
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