Our discussions in the class this week focused on the negativity in which was found in comic books. America thought the violence of these comic books were turning their children into delinquents, but what the society in the 50's was not taking responsibility for was the fact that their children were being left without adult supervision especially in homes in which both parents were working. It seems that although show like Leave it to Beaver represented the ideal, they did not represent reality. Then such sources as Dr. Fredric Wertham who is comparable to Senator McCarthy and his witch hunt, finding anyone to blame for rising of crime by young people. He believed that children learned to "fight, torture victims, and conceal firearms" from comic books and also learned to take narcotics. This is a serious proclaim especially since the Comic Book industry wasn't as established then as it is now.
Ohhh my goodness... When I decided on trying to analyze the mythological origins and references in superhero comics, I had no idea the can of worms I was opening up... On the one hand, it was awesome to see just how many connections there were between superheroes and psychology/mythology/philosophy, but all the information also made it terribly difficult to distinguish what I should be using and how to tie it all together. When I was talking to one of my sorority sisters about it she said, "Oh yeah, well, research essays are kind of like putting together puzzles..." and I think that really sums up what writing this paper was like for me. Fortunately, I was really interested throughout the whole process and I very much enjoyed writing the paper. Being a psychology major, I was especially interested in reading about the Jungian archetypes that had a lot of parallels with major modern comic books superheroes. I was also able to incorporate Joseph Campbell's "hero cycle...
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