WHAT WOULD TONY STARK DO?

[defrog]

ITEM [via popfiend ]: Superhero films are turning yr precious angels into macho, violent, sexist slacker pigs, says Frederic Wertham a psychologist.

Dr Sharon Lamb, speaking at the 118th Annual Convention of the American Psychological Association, breaks it down in this press release:

"There is a big difference in the movie superhero of today and the comic book superhero of yesterday," said psychologist Sharon Lamb, PhD, distinguished professor of mental health at University of Massachusetts-Boston. "Today’s superhero is too much like an action hero who participates in non-stop violence; he’s aggressive, sarcastic and rarely speaks to the virtue of doing good for humanity. When not in superhero costume, these men, like Ironman, exploit women, flaunt bling and convey their manhood with high-powered guns. "

"In today’s media, superheroes and slackers are the only two options boys have," said Lamb. "Boys are told, if you can’t be a superhero, you can always be a slacker. Slackers are funny, but slackers are not what boys should strive to be; slackers don’t like school and they shirk responsibility. We wonder if the messages boys get about saving face through glorified slacking could be affecting their performance in school."

Now, I haven’t read the full study – or the book Lamb is now pushing that presumably explains all this in detail – so I don’t know which superhero films she used as the basis for all this apart from Iron Man, or just what films she’s thinking of when she talks of “slacker” role models (I doubt it’s a Linklater reference, unless he’s enjoying a Renaissance with the preteen crowd these days).

But I’m not sure it matters. We’ve been hearing Experts dither over comic books, superheroes, violent films, TV shows, Looney Tunes, video games, heavy metal records, rap music, MTV videos (back when they showed music videos, I mean) and so on and etc, and how potentially harmful they are to Junior’s delicate psyche, for decades. And it all boils down to the same basic formula:

1. Choose a medium
2. Find examples of undesirable behavior in that medium
3. Find examples of kids who have watched said medium depicting undesirable behavior
4. Test them for possible negative influences
5. Make correlations to negative effects
6. Get published, get a book deal, contact the media, scare parents
7. Profit!

Those last two vary (Senate hearings are sometimes an option), but you get the idea. It’s the same old alarmist claptrap targeting the same old bugaboos with the same old flawed logic that sounds scary on paper and on the Today Show but doesn’t really hold up in real life. The Lamb premise in particular is just way too easy to pick apart by people who actually know something about superhero comics, starting with the claim that the “comic books of yesteryear” were better role models of male attitudes and behavior.

You’d think Adult Society would stop falling for this, considering how many of us grew up with pop culture that Experts warned our parents would turn us into deranged misogynistic serial rapers, and yet most of us turned out okay. But humans have always been bad at sensible risk evaluation, especially when it comes to kids. And The Fear is kind of our default mode these days.

So I guess not.

Mucho macho,

This is dF

Comments

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

This is a personal bugbear of mine...

Psychologists like Lamb have been trying to prove this garbage for sixty years now, and non of the evidence stands up statistically. This is a popular science book. There's no research in a properly vetted journal to back up any of these facile claims.

That said, someone like Lamb becoming offended by my new comic and kicking up a public stink is right now the best thing that could possibly happen to me. I wonder if I could send her one?

-- JF

[def-fr0g-42.livejournal.com]

Actually, on a minor nitpicking point, a number of similar "modern media is bad for kids" studies have been published in peer-reviewed journals. The difference is that such studies come with lots of qualifiers like confounding factors, the limited scope of the study, "needs further research", etc, in order to pass muster. Pop-sci books that take a definite position that "you should believe this" have no such qualifiers and are passed off as science.

Either way, yeah, this is a major pet peeve of mine as well for the reasons cited in the original post. And yr right, there's nothing like an attack on "harmful media" to boost sales, so it wouldn't hurt to send her a copy of McBlack. Send one to Fox News while yr at it.

[jasonfranks.livejournal.com]

Maybe I can get Sixsmiths into the second edition. :)