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“Them Damn Pictures”: Americanization and the Comic Strip in the Progressive Era

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Lisa Yaszek
Lisa Yaszek
Affiliation:
Lisa Yaszek is a doctoral student in the English Department, University of Wisconsin, Madison WI 53703, U.S.A.
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Extract

As William Tweed noted over a century ago, the cartoon, with its combination of graphic and text, can be a dangerous political weapon. Indeed, the Tammany Hall boss's career was destroyed when he was arrested for kidnapping in 1875 — an arrest made by a police officer who recognized Tweed from a newspaper cartoon. Likewise, when comic strips first appeared in the American sensation papers of the 1890s, they too were seen as having important, and potentially threatening, political and social ramifications. Journalists such as Oswald Villard condemned newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst for using the comic strip as a cheap ploy to boost circulation, claiming that it compromised journalistic integrity. Meanwhile, genteel reformers waged their own war against comic strips, worried that the slapstick action and irreverent content would erode middle-class American values and “foster a spirit of disrespect and insubordination… by their glorification of cheeky, iconoclastic urchins.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 28 , Issue 1 , April 1994 , pp. 23 - 38
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1994

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References

1 Horn, Maurice, Comics of the American West (New York: Winchester, 1977), 98Google Scholar.

2 See also Blackbeard, Bill and Williams, Martin, Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics (Washington DC: Smithsonian, 1977)Google Scholar, and Kunzel, David, History of the Comic Strip (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)Google Scholar. For studies exploring the potentially subversive nature of the comic strip, see Horn, Maurice, Comics of the American West (New York: Winchester, 1977)Google Scholar, and Nystrom, Elsa Ann, A Rejection of Order (Ann Arbor: UMI, 1988)Google Scholar. Unfortunately, Horn and Nystrom focus primarily on alternate readings for middle-class readers without addressing other historically positioned readings.

3 Horn, 10.

4 Voloshinov, V. N., Marxism and the Philosophy of Language, trans. Matejka, L. and Titunik, I. R. (New York: Seminar, 1973), 35Google Scholar.

5 Ibid., 35.

6 Asian immigration also rose in the same period, but since progressive reformers and American law dealt with this immigration in a manner different from that of eastern and southern European immigration, the scope of this project does not allow me to consider the issue in the depth that it deserves.

7 See Altschuler, Glenn C., Race, Ethnicity, and Class in American Social Thought 1986–1919 (Arlington Heights: Harlan Davidson, 1985)Google Scholar. While restrictionism no longer held center stage in the Progressive Era, restrictionist groups continued to agitate throughout this period and resurged in popularity with the onslaught of World War I.

8 George F. Hoar, “American Citizenship.” Commencement address, State University of Iowa, 17 Jun. 1903, 37.

9 In Altschuler, , Race, Ethnicity, and Class, 66Google Scholar.

10 Villard, Oswald Garrison, Some Newspapers and Newspaper-Men (New York: Knopf, 1923), 20Google Scholar. Villard expresses scepticism about Hearst's circulation statistics, pointing out that many households probably bought more than one Hearst paper. However, Villard neglects to mention that these same papers were often circulated privately amongst neighbors and cafe patrons. Even if the numbers were not quite right, the point remains the same: a lot of people read the Hearst papers.

11 William Randolph Hearst, “Divided Loyalties,” all Hearst papers, 31 Jan. 1919.

12 Altschuler, , Race, Ethnicity, and Class, 63Google Scholar.

13 Ibid., 61.

14 See Chiswick, Cafferty and Sullivan, Greeley, The Dilemma of American Immigration (New Brunswick: Transaction, 1984), 44Google Scholar. Despite middle-class attempts to discourage these voting blocs, they were quite successful, exerting enough pressure on Congress to forestall any major immigration restriction until the rise of xenophobia that accompanied World War I.

15 Kuzniewski, A. J., “The Polish-American Press,” The Ethnic Press in the United States, ed. Miller, Sally M. (New York: Greenwood, 1987), 275–90Google Scholar.

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19 Ibid., 44.

20 See Perry, George and Aldridge, Alan, Penguin Book of Comics (Britain: Jarrold & Sons Ltd., 1967), 1Google Scholar. The Yellow Kid originally appeared in Joseph Pulitzer's New York World in 1895, but Hearst, recognizing the lucrative potential of the strip, lured Outcault away from Pulitzer, only to have Pulitzer buy him back at a higher price. The bickering and outbidding went on for several months, but Outcault eventually wound up at Hearst's New York Journal.

21 Fiske, John, Television Culture (New York: Routledge, 1987), 316Google Scholar.

22 Parkhurst, Charles H., Hope for the Future (New York: National Security League, 1912), iGoogle Scholar.

23 Soltes, , Yiddish Press, 22Google Scholar.

24 See Berger, Arthur Asa, The Comic-Stripped American (New York: Walker & Co., 1973), 46Google Scholar. When America entered World War I, Germans lost their status as a favored immigrant group. Accordingly, the title of The Katzenjammer Kids was changed to The Shenanigan Kids, and everyone became Irish. Curiously, the Kids maintained their German accents. After the war, the original title was returned to the strip, which runs under the same name today.