The Day of the Moron

Parade of Pleasure: A Study of Popular Iconography in the U.S.A. By Geoffrey Wagner. (Verschoyle. 25s.)

THIS important book is a demonstration of how far modern American films, news-stands and television programmes have become means of disseminating undesirable matter. It is written without much care but with great vigour, its arguments are abundantly documented, and its illustrations are plentiful, well chosen and splendidly produced. Some parts of it can be supplemented by reference to Mr. E. S. Turner's The Shocking History of Advertising and to that under- valued work, Miss Doris Langley Moore's The Vulgar Heart.

Mr. Wagner's section on the cinema opens with statistics suggesting that, on the average, Hollywood films show 7.8 acts of 'crime and

violence' each—excluding mass killings as in warfare and homicides in self-defence; one film in two is centred on murder. This is followed by specific examples of bone-crushing, kicks to the head and fork, violence offered to women, killings by rifle-butt, meat-hook, etc., all these performed by characters presented as sympathetic. The Most striking case is that of One Minute to Zero, in which the hero, a colonel in Korea, orders the shelling of a body of civilian refugees,

including women and children, because he suspects that some are carrying arms. The Army shows its approval by promoting him to full general; his girl, who by a neat symbolism works for UNO, at first objects, but later visits a bombed chapel to say, 'Dear God, I have been so wrong.'

The chapter on comics says that 700 million of these were sold in the USA in 1948; all other book-sales totalled 100 million. According to one estimate, 98 per cent. of American children between

eight and twelve, and 41 per cent. of persons between eighteen and thirty, read comics. They are of four main kinds. The 'War' comics (Horrors of War, Atomic Warl, World War III) are full of subhuman Russians being fried in napalm or bayoneted to the cry of 'Hooray for the Brooklyn Dodgers'; the 'magic' (Superman, Carman, Plastic Man) and 'crime' (.grime Does Not Pay, All-True Crime) categories show their heroes and heroines engaged in un- punished and sadistic violence against Communists, scientists or long-hairs' (intellectuals); the 'horror' comics (Weird Science, Tales from the Crypt) deal in premature burials, torture chambers,

necrophily, necrophagy, and so on.

The rest of the book is concerned with 'pin-up' magazines (61

different titles listed) full of draped nudes and features showing Women wrestling in mud or taming animals; publications like Bizarre,

and special portfolios of photographs, which present girls in chains, etc.; television programmes exploiting sex and brutality; and crime books, which depend only on a text and sexy cover-illustration. The most eminent practitioner in this field is Mr. Mickey Spillane, Whose hero is a maniacal sadist and satyriast.

I should say here that when the reader has got over being merely horrified and terrified, when the idea of a personal letter to President Eisenhower (and perhaps one to Mr. Spillane) has ceased to obsess, certain sobering reflections present themselves. To begin with, the boo! contains a number of rash statements. It is doubtful whether many Western films importantly resemble violent crime- films; it is very doubtful whether the faces of nine out of ten film stars are quite inane and uninteresting; it is eccentric to suggest that the inflated bust of the starlet or pin-up girl is a mode of masculinising the female figure. Nor will many agree that Sherlock Holmes was a sadist. These are excusable quirks: after seeing as much nastiness as the author has, it must be hard to avoid seeing some that isn't there. There is another aspect of his book, however, which cannot be so easily glossed over. Mr. Wagner, who knows America well, is pro-American, which some members of the British intelligentsia will find a welcome change and, in this case, reassuring. The trouble starts wheri, he leans so far over backwards in his anxiety to be wholly pro-American that he sometimes slips and bangs his head. In his foreword he attacks British critics of the USA so violently as to destroy an arguable case. One need not be a fan of Mr. Geoffrey Gorer or Mr. V. S. Pritchett to doubt whether they belong to a class which 'adulates imbecility, holds idiocy as an article of faith (and creative ability as the work of a "bounder").' Mr. Wagner confesses to an 'infatuation with things American' which is hardly an ideal mood in which to discuss them. It leads him to make out that the huge mass of unpleasantness he describes is no more than an excrescence on the body of America, that it is somehow unrelated to other things done and said in America,

Somehow untypical. He still thinks this after telling us that, accord-

ing to one authority, Mr. Spillane is the best-selling Americanlwriter, With a sale of ten million copies for one book alone. Mr. Wagner

rePeatedly forecasts a time when 'John Q. Citizen will refuse . . . bz) be preyed on by a vampire culture'—note the inappropriate metaphor. How will that time come when, as the author says

himself, only one American in four reads a book a month—any kind of book? The America that Mr. Wagner knows and loves is there all right and is 'typical'; but the America he knows and hates is there too and is 'typical.' The first America claims the allegiance of every man of sense, but it will not be served by pretending that the other America is a temporary imposition by `small groups, certain individuals.'

Thinking is notoriously a difficult exercise and there are always inducements to giving it up as soon as convenient. If Mr. Wagner has succumbed here and there to one set of such inducements, there is another set which may afflict his readers. It may lead them into renewed anti-Americanism, which would be harmful. Or it may document their prejudices and reanimate their platitudes about mass- communication and popular culture, which would be useless and boring. The desirable next stage is an investigation of the connec- tions between ' iconography' and behaviour; just how, for example, was the comic-readiQg of the late Alan Poole related to his murder of a policeman? This was a British case, which is appropriate in view of' a valuable article in a recent Daily Mirror, claiming that sixty million comics are now bought every year in Britain, notably by troops. And down the road last week 'Mickey Spillane's The Long Wait' was being shown. Only seven violent deaths, admittedly, but a girl beaten up and innumerable lapel-grabbings. It makes you think, doesn't it? And see that you stick to it.

KINGSLEY AMIS