Amoozin' but confoozin': comic strips as a voice of dissent in the 1950s.

Amoozin' but confoozin': comic strips as a voice of dissent in the 1950s. We will all go together when we go, all suffused with anincandescent glow ... When the air becomes uranious, we will all gosimultaneous ... And we'll all go together when we go. --Tom Lehrer (1959) American children born in the 1960s grew up with Rocky &Bullwinkle, Get Smart, and Mad Magazine. They were able to laugh aboutSoviet infiltration and the atomic bomb by the time they took theirfirst history class. As teenagers, they may have even given new meaningto their crumbling backyard bunkers as they smoked grass in theirfathers' bomb shelters. Bombed, indeed! Raised with television androck, they were too young to have experienced the fear that grippedtheir nation for over a decade before they were born. Communists andmushroom clouds were ancient history. As Agent 86 Maxwell Smart wouldsay, as he held his finger about an inch away from his thumb, "Theymissed it by that much." Forms of expression, values and perceptions, symbolic patterns,beliefs and myths that enabled Americans to make sense of the worldaround them appeared contaminated following World War II by unseemlypolitical interests as American culture polarized. Crusaders began todouble their efforts not against outside enemies, but on their neighborsand associates in the hopes that somehow the brewing cold war could bewon with a home field advantage. This struggle against domestic evils,generically assuming the name of anti-Communism, encouraged a rhetoricalinspection of artifacts such as political criticism, films, and otherartworks. Censors endorsed boycotts and books were removed from shelves.The F.B.I, kept dossiers on novelists and secretly filmed patronsleaving left-wing bookstores (Whitfield 1996, 9-10). Comic strips offered hidden transcripts and built-in alibis for theexpression of dissent during the 1950s at a time when others could not.The value of their dissent was not that they fostered individualdevelopment or self-realization. They tended to parody injustices overthe desire to bring about change. Rhetoricians have paid relativelylittle attention to comic strips for the same reason they flew under theradar of the U.S. Senate Subcommittee Comic Book Hearings and the HouseUn-American Activities Committee--they were, after all, just comicstrips. They were meant to be funny. The unnoticed commitment to dissentthat the comic strips offered was of national and symbolic virtue.Princeton University law professor Steven Shiffrin writes that this formof dissent is the cultural glue that binds citizens to the politicalcommunity (1999, 18). Democracy needs dissent whenever authoritycontributes to the construction of knowledge, and the incentives toconform are great. Fun, like God, is declared dead every once in a while. According toWalt Kelly (1966, 8, 96), neither have ever really died--at times theyare only unemployed. Barry Sanders claims that every time someone likePlato advises against laughing to excess because it violates decorum ormorality, one needs to imagine scores of common citizens cracking up forjust those reasons: "No sooner than the law tightens its rope, somesmart alec will twist the noose into a loophole and make a cleangetaway, laughing all the way to the border" (1995, xi). This article argues that by using parody and Aesopian strategies oftextual resistance, 1950s comic strip writers such as Walt Kelly (c.1913-1973) and Al Capp (c. 1909-1979) were able to poke fun at societyand voice dissent when policy makers within the public forum could not.During a time when First Amendment rights were questioned, comic stripsallowed their writers political cover to make arguments against theestablishment, giving Americans a unique chance to examine their fearsby re-enforcing rather than tearing apart 1950s values, symbolicpatterns, and beliefs. The Taming of the Shmoo Al Capp became not only famous, but also rich producing the comicstrip Li'l Abner for United Features. His strip was alreadyquestioning the intelligence of the atomic bomb by 1948. Thethree-headed chauffeur, a creature that was transporting Abner fromEarth to El Passionato in a flying saucer, furnished Capp with astraight man for some fine Panglossian dialectic. After tiring from sometriple-headed needling, Li'l Abner cried out: LI'L ABNER: YO' claims us earth-folks is in th'Idiot Era. Wal--ef we is sech IDIOTS, HOW could we whomp up [fingerpointing earthward] a factory like THET?" TRIPLEDOME: "What does it make?" LI'L ABNER: "ATOMIC BOMBS, to blow each other UP,natcherly. Purty soon ALL o' us--east an' west--will have'nuff of 'em t' blow up th' WHOLE DAWGONEEARTH!" (Time 1948, 72) Nothing more was ever stated about Abner's proud boasting ofEarth's ingenuity, for Capp approached parody with a light touchduring this time. Capp left the interpretation of the strip up to thereader. Though convinced that man's inhumanity to man--whetherexpressed in a simple hotfoot or an atomic explosion--could be the basisfor humor, Capp's parody at first seemed subtle, as if he wantedyou to laugh before you realized what you were laughing at. Comic strips are a series of drawings that usually involvedialogue, in which the adventures of generally well-delineatedcharacters provide amusement and surprise for the reader (Berger 2006,33-34). There are two basic kinds of comics. Anecdotal or gag stripshave completed and simple plotlines each day. Blondie and Beetle Baileywould be examples of this form. Serial strip plotlines could last weeksor even months. The plots can vary widely from soap opera, such as MaryWorth, and adventure, such as The Phantom, to burlesque and parody suchas Li'l Abner. Li'l Abner was a uniquely American serial comic strip. By1948, only Chic Young's Blondie and Chester Gould's Dick Tracyenjoyed an international audience outside of the Northern Hemisphere.Attempts to bring Li'l Abner across the pond were countered byreaders of the London Sunday Pictorial. One reader wrote that thedrawings were "ridiculous" and the language was"unintelligible" (Time 1949, 63). By 1950, Li'l Abner wasamong the top five comic strips in the United States--a group that alsoincluded Little Orphan Annie, Blondie, Dick Tracy, and Joe Palooka. Twoof them, Blondie and Dick Tracy, claimed more readers (Time 1948, 72).Yet, comparing Li'l Abner to the average American comic strip wouldbe like comparing an American beer to a dipper of Kickapoo Joy Juice, aliquor of such stupefying potency that the hardest citizen of Dogpatchwould raise into the air stiff as a frozen fish stick after the firstburning sip. Li'l Abner had a satirical genealogy. Capp was favorablycompared to such classic cartoonists as Rube Goldberg, as well as otherwriters such as Mark Twain, Lewis Carroll, Charles Dickens, and Voltaire(Time 1948, 72). Descriptions of people like Abner, Daisy May, and MammyYokum, as well as places like Dogpatch, are found in early Americanliterature. The use of the same techniques, the same super humancharacter types, the same kind of language, and the same style can befound in the works of many early writers. Upon a strong Americanliterary base, Capp was able to add a good dose of Yiddish humor, anattendant moralizing outlook, and a sense of fantasy (Berger 2006, 51).No other Capp adventure may sum up this combination better than theShmoo, a story arch that paralleled the transforming parody of the 1950sfrom innocent to the full-out satirical. For a comic strip, the story of the Shmoo was quite complex.Millions of ham-shaped, toeless Shmoos poured out of the hidden Valleyof the Shmoon on September 3, 1948. A single Shmoo could produce anendless supply of the necessities of life at no cost to theShmoo-keeper. The Shmoo laid eggs by the dozen, Grade-A milk, andpre-packaged butter. If you looked at a Shmoo hungrily enough, it wouldkeel over dead from pure joy. Its meat, when fried, tasted just likechicken; when roasted, it tasted just like pork and sometimes likesteak. Its skin could produce the finest leather, but if you cut itthicker, the skin could be dried into planks stronger than wood. Theyasexually reproduced faster than bunnies. "Wif these around,"Li'l Abner exclaimed, "Nobody won't hafta work nomore--all hoomanity kin now live off th' fat o' th'land--namely Shmoos" (Capp 2003, 12). With no reason to work, theonce-starving citizens of Dogpatch became fat and lazy. Capp said the Shmoo represented the earth in all its richness. Thisvery well may have been true for Capp. Over $25 million worth ofmerchandising was sold within a year of the Shmoo debut, beating outsuch other contenders as Mickey Mouse (Newsweek 1949, 49), but the truemeaning of the word has been the subject of speculation by severallinguists. "Capp himself once indicated the term came to him on across-country trip as a symbol the lushness of our countryside, but twoother observations have been made concerning the more likely genealogyof the word: Shmu was used by German Jewish businessmen in the earlytwentieth century to mean somewhat illicit profits, and shmue is tabooYiddish for the female organ (Feinsilver 1980, 240). Certainly afeminist reading of the Shmoo is beyond the context of this essay, butthe ill-gotten gains of business after World War II are not. When J. Roaringham Fatback, the pork king, noticed his sales haddropped to nothing in Dogpatch, he met with Brewster McRewster, the czarof the egg industry, who confirmed a similar crisis in his industry. Notone egg had been sold in Dogpatch, Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe, norwere they selling in New York, New Haven, and Hartford. Fatback'ssecretary cried when she announced that their dairy counterpart, GradyA. Creamly, had shot himself due to the drop in milk buying. Withindays, a parade of tycoons were jumping out of a skyscraper and throwingthemselves in front of trains, each one agonizing over their lostprofits: "Farewell to my shattered dreams of a Trucking Empire!!" "Don't close the window!! I used to manufacture Sham, themeat substitute!" "What's the use of raising the prices of my cars higherand higher? Shmoos don't need gas or oil--and (sob!) they give ashmoother ride!!" (Capp 2003, 30-33) A hundred leading businessmen met in secret to figure out how tohandle the Shmoo crisis. Fatback proclaimed that he hated all thingsnew--new things were dangerous--so the Shmoo had to be eliminated. Ashmooicide squad was assembled led by ace exterminator Dan'lShmoone who roared off into the hills to destroy that great menace--theegg-giving, meat-providing, milk-producing, loyal, lovable, andabsolutely free, Shmoo population. The squad lined up the Shmoossix-by-six and shot them full of holes one row at a time (Capp 2003,36-41). The Shmoo had to die in order to protect the American way of life.To drive his point home, Capp made sure the entire Shmoo population wasassassinated except for two found by Li'l Abner--a boy Shmoo and agirl Shmoo. Even though the Shmoo reproduced asexually, Daisy Mayinsisted that because they were Dogpatch residents they had toparticipate in Sadie Hawkins Day, an annual celebration where the womenwould chase the men. If the men were caught they had to marry the womeneven if the men would rather die. The two Shmoo wondered off back to thehidden Valley of the Shmoon and real Shmoo were not seen again forseveral years. A few years later, red-tinged Shmoo-like characters withbandaged buttocks called Nogoodniks from Lower Slobbovia made a briefappearance and shocked the Dogpatch residents with their vileness andlack of productivity. They were quickly sent back to where they camefrom so the assumedly Communist nation could deal with the problem. TheEisenhower administration and Pentagon officials were immediatelycontacted when Abner's son, Honest Abe, drew a picture of a critterhe saw in the woods that resembled a Shmoo in 1959. This time, theShmoos spread all over the nation. Television stations broadcast apicture of an incredibly hungry Pappy Yokum in order to wipe out thepopulation. "No Shmoos left!!" Abner said, "Now everybodycan go back to working hard, paying taxes and being terrified of war--Inother words, HAPPY DAYS ARE HERE AGAIN!!" (Capp 2003, 93-141). Parody, Satire, and Caricature The story of the Shmoo originally ran over several months. Thecritters would then make repeated appearances until the end of thestrip. The story of the Shmoo poked fun at the American way of life.Less than ten years after the great depression, Capp had people laughingat business owners as they jumped out of windows after finding out abouttheir lost profits; this time it was the greedy war profiteers. With theShmoo, Dogpatch represented the chance Americans had after the war. Theywere in power and could become fat and lazy, but that was not theAmerican way of life. Big business was important to America.Furthermore, Abner would always be the underdog to those more successfulor more intelligent. He was a strong man, but even Mammy Yokum, as smallas she was, could give him a lickin' when he needed one. For yearshe outran Daisy May, but even she eventually caught up with him andforced his hand in marriage. Emulating real life while remaining dedicated to perpetuity was therecipe for success in the mainstream syndicated dailies. Other exampleswould be Peanuts and Beetle Bailey, both debuting in 1950. The characterof Beetle Bailey was an under-achieving college student who joined theArmy a year after his introduction. Over fifty years later, his rank hasnot changed from Private as he continues to battle his overweightnemesis Sgt. Snorkle. A reluctant draftee, Beetle resisted authority andsought easy ways out. The strip has remained virtually unchanged withoutits soldiers ever leaving Camp Swampy through the Korean War, VietnamWar, cold war, and Gulf Wars (Horn 1999, 122-123). Peanuts, on the other hand, remained in civilian life and featuredadultlike children who seemed to age in various degrees until specificpoints before puberty. The main character, Charlie Brown, only aged fromfive to eight in over 50 years of syndication. The World Encyclopedia ofComics describes the strip as "the most shining example of theAmerican success story in the comic strip field," ironically basedon the theme of "the great American un-success story," becausethe nervous, meek, and low-self-esteemed Charlie Brown could notsuccessfully fly a kite, win a baseball game, or even kick a football(Horn 1999, 601-602). With few exceptions, the comic page embraced theAmerican culture while still prodding and poking fun at it. Comic strips inherently question authority. Mr. Dithers always hadthe upper hand over Dagwood Bumstead. Dagwood would retaliate byslacking off at work or running late. Beetle Bailey's epicfistfights with Sgt. Snorkle always amounted to clouds of body parts anddust while Gen. Halftrack had to sneak past his wife to play golf. AndyCapp had to get past Flo when he came home drunk at night. Everyoneseemed to have the upper hand on Charlie Brown. Even today, Dilbertbecomes sarcastic and snide when he has to deal with his pointy-hairedboss and co-workers. Comic strips were, and are, by nature antifascistand anti-authority while poking fun at existing institutions and peopleof influence. Questioning authority was one way that comic stripsconnected with their audience. Northrup Frye and Harold Bloom define satire with two essentialingredients: wit or humor founded on fantasy of the grotesque or absurdand an object of attack: To attack anything, writer and audience must agree on its undesirability, which means that the content of a great deal of satire founded on national hatreds, snobbery, prejudice and personal pique goes out of date very quickly. (2000, 206) Arthur Berger (2006, 50) notes that, just as satire involves somekind of consensus and agreement between the audience and the satirist onwhat is desirable, caricature, which he calls a type of pictorialsatire, makes the same demands. The result is what Werner Hoffman callsa paradox: While caricature breaks with the canon of beauty, displaces the "normal" recognized patterns, and deforms the world of proportion, performing a subjective artistic act of release, it simultaneously binds itself indissolubly to the model it is dethroning. Caricature, like every revolutionary, is sustained by the system it attacks. (Hoffman, as noted in Berger 2006, 50) In his germinal book on Lil' Abner, Berger (2006) claims thatthe satirist is intrinsically attached to her subject matter, creating avaluable treasure of information on its subject: society. Berger maytake this distinction too far. When he claims A1 Capp's satireleads the reader not away from strengths and truths of American societyand values, but instead leads us to them, he is treading precariously onthe line of what separates satire from parody. Linda Hutcheon notes that the difference between satire and parodyis that parody does not always criticize its targets negatively. Satire,however, possesses a marked ethos that is pejoratively or negativelycoded. An example of this would be the Daily Show when Jon Stewart,often savagely and brutally, points out the hypocrisy of politicians andsociety. Hutcheon calls this a "scornful or distasteful ethos, akind of encoded anger communicated to the decoder throughinvective" (Hutcheon 1985, 56). Modern parody differs from satirein that no such negative judgment is necessarily suggested in the ironiccontrasting of texts. It only rarely projects a negative attitude towardthe master discourse that it makes comic, instead reinforcing thediscourse that it parodies. In the end, a perpetual life returns tonormal. Furthermore, "Parodic art both deviates from an aestheticnorm and includes that norm within itself as background material"(44). Humor requires a context, an object to ridicule. The world cannotbe seen the same way during and after exposure of the humoroussituation. According to Frank Macke, laughter is perhaps a key sign ofpower and is often infectious because it is a signature of relations. Aspeople gather to grieve, they also share what they believe to be funny.Unity is forged, alliances created, and pathways to beliefs are exposed(Macke 1998, 53). The comic strips tended to reinforce dominant Westerncold war beliefs while simultaneously exposing flaws in the Americansystem (Hendershot 2002, 84), in turn, making these flaws humorous.David Hajdu writes that the syndicated strips offered their audience aparodic look at itself, rendered in the vernacular of caricature andnonsense language, whose mockery was familial, intimate, knowing,affectionate, and sometimes merciless (Hajdu 2008, 11). As an anecdotalstrip, the parody in Li'l Abner was an especially clever medium ofprotest because the essence of the story was not immediately apparent. Aesopian Tactics Capp had more control over his characters and strip than most othercartoonists, but claimed that he did not get it until 1947 when he suedUnited Features for $14 million and, with calculated magnanimity,settled out of court (Time 1948, 76). This was not without cost. Manycriticized his political opinions, observable or suspected, as being outof place in a comic strip. Capp claimed that neither Mark Twain nor WillRogers would have been allowed to say a word under similarcircumstances. Any man who risked joking about anything other than hisown idiosyncrasies risked being tarred, feathered, dissected by a bribedautopsy surgeon, and buried in quicklime. When the pro-RepublicanPittsburgh Press protested that his venal, pompous, and reactionarypolitico, Senator Jack S. Phogbound, was a calculated libel on thereputation of the U.S. Senate, Capp claimed that he knew nothing aboutpolitics except for what he read in the Pittsburg Press, that Phogboundhad been suggested by that newspaper's attacks on Democraticpoliticians, and that he was not only hurt but genuinely amazed to findthe Press damning instead of applauding his creation (Time 1948, 73). Walt Kelly, the creator of Pogo, also played with his critics. TheOkefenokee Swamp may be about as far removed as it could be from theurban jungle, yet Kelly managed to set within the environment some ofthe most telling parody of the day. Republicans complained as early as1948, when Kelly represented their candidate for President, New YorkGov. Thomas E. Dewey, as a mechanical doll (Reitberger & Fuchs 1971,49). After these initial complaints about the scripts, whenever Kellywould start a controversial storyline, he would usually offer alternatestrips that newspapers could run instead of the political strips. Kellyreferred to these strips as "The Bunny Strips," because theynormally were populated with the least offensive material he couldimagine, fluffy little bunnies telling stupid jokes. The Bunny Strips seem to symbolize the difficulty of censoringcomic strips as a form of protest. Either the meaning of the parody iscompletely lost on people who may or may not enjoy them, or the comicstrip is an inappropriate subject of protest because on face value itseems insignificant. It becomes difficult to separate the differentissues involved at the moment of laughter. Parody requires speaking inthe language of, and identifying with, the subject. It forces the censorinto a paradox of being and not being the subject of the strip. The samecan be seen today on Comedy Centrals' television program, TheColbert Report. Stephen Colbert's character seems to be foolishenough to generate laughs even though many in the audience may notunderstand that he offers a parodic and often satirical view of thepolitical right. The idea of playing games with those who would censor is important.It points to a potential creative space where boundaries could bestretched. W.T. Lhamon's basic premise in his book Deliberate Speed(2002) was that America in the 1950s was a nation in transition. Highand low culture penetrated each other so much that behind thedecade's vaunted illusions of Soviet fear and 18-hole tranquilitywas a coded and symbolic atmosphere of vernacular experimentation.Llamon notes the use of Aesopian strategies in the popular music of suchartists as "Little" Richard Penniman. Little Richard usedalternate words in the recorded versions of his songs to mask theoriginal meanings from certain participating audiences (Lhamon 2002,87-96). Comic strip writers often used the same form of Aesopianstrategies to mask meaning from those who would censor their work forpolitical purposes. "Censorship is highly conductive to progress inthe mastery of style and in the ability to restrain one'swords," Alexander Herzen concluded while writing about modernRussian literature, "In allegorical discourse there is perceptibleexcitement and struggle: this discourse is more impassioned than anystraight exposition" (Loseff 1984, 11; as quoted by Drewett 2004,205). Writing that has been checked has a greater meaning concentrationand a sharper edge because the implication increases the power of thelanguage. On the surface, the swamp critters in Pogo seem too naive forsatire, but on closer examination, these Disney-like animals could bite.In 1952, Kelly denounced the ultra-right wing John Birch Society with abevy of bat-thugs called the Audible Boy Bird Watchers Society. Theirleader was the Protestant hypocrite Deacon Mushrat who was oftenaccompanied by Molester Mole MacCarony who wanted to protect the swampfrom undesirable immigrants just like the real John Birch Society (Kelly& Crouch 1987, 35-39). Meanwhile, the Cowbirds, who represented thereal Communists, were able to take over Mother Stork's nest andreplace her eggs with their own: MIZ BEAVER: As Rookery-Mother to the Boy Bird Watchers I is busyhelpin' the Deacon protect the doves what been guardin' yournest ... MOTHER STORK: I'm ever so grateful to you girls DEACON MUSHRAT: Hmmp MIZ BEAVER: Pogo been spreadin' pure poison 'bout how youis harbourin' Cowbirds!! MOTHER STORK: My Lands! I never did. DEACON MUSHRAT: Scandalous! MIZ BEAVER: There they is, Mother Stork MOTHER STORK: (Surprised) YEEP! Them doves is cowbirds! COWBIRD 1: (About to heave an egg at the other animals) Aninformer! A queasy class ridden inhibitionist! COWBIRD 2: Pssst ... Don't throw that [egg] ... It's oneof ours. (Kelly & Crouch 1987, 39) Some would see that a cowbird was just a cowbird doing what it didnaturally: laying its eggs in other birds' nests. The realizationof the character representation adds additional meaning and depth to thenarration and moral of the strip. Censorship, even self-censorship, becomes productive if it givesrise to forms of resistance, which develops out of the censorshippractices. This is largely due to the pressure of the censor on theauthor to develop Aesopean coding in her work (Drewett 2004, 204). Inthe case of comic strips, the Aesopian approach helped to propel theaesthetic value and heightened the involvement of the reader in thepsychological scheme. Censorship thus becomes useful to such worksbecause it is unwittingly an impetus to metaphorical language. A year after the catbird strips, Kelly introduced a character thatrepresented Sen. Joe McCarthy as a mythical lynx. The wildcat'shead was a caricature of McCarthy with the permanent and devilish grinand presence reminiscent of the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland.Almost a year before Fred Friendly and Edward R. Murrow took McCarthy totask on their news program See It Now, Kelly was able to show how SimpleJ. Malarkey could usurp the leadership of the Audible Boy Bird WatchersSociety, whose members, having called the troublesome spirit, wanted toget rid of him but were stumped on how to do it (Reitberger & Fuchs1971, 49). By 1962, Kelly no longer had to worry about being censored byfearful newspaper editors. He told a television audience, "some mayconclude that cartoonists have been limited by edicts on subject matter,but the fact is that the world has grown up a little" (Kelly &Crouch 1987, 189). Conflicting Propaganda Peter Filene argues that the cold war was primarily fought at anelite level, pervading and shaping the experience of ordinary Americansfar less than historians would have us believe. Government leaders,social scientists, and the news media set the terms of public discourseand policy, but most citizens defined their world in more personalterms. The concerns of Washington were not the concerns on Main Street.Though Joe McCarthy may have been the leading actor on the war onCommunism in the early 1950s, at the height of his notoriety in 1953, 29percent of those polled said they had an unfavorable opinion of thesenator while 21 percent had no opinion at all (Gallup Poll 2:1201, asnoted in Filene 2001, 159). Fewer than one out of five thought Communismwas the country's most important problem (Gallup Poll 2:1225,1240-41, as noted in Stouffer 1955. 59). Different problems faced thedifferent regions in the country. When asked, "What is the mainproblem facing your section of the country?" southerners namedrace; westerners named conservation; easterners and midwesterners namedprices (Gallup Poll 2:1166-67. as noted in Filene 2001, 159). Walt Kellyaptly sums up the situation in a 1952 Pogo strip when Bun Rabbit wantedthe Government to celebrate all holidays on the same day in order tosave time: BUN RABBIT: By the way, how far is it to Washington? POGO: Goin' right thru trees an' parked cars it'd be'bout six hunnerd miles. BUN RABBIT: Foosh! They sure built that Capital auful far up thecreek ... Figger them folks up there gits outen touch with us of mortalcritters here at the headwaters? (Kelly & Crouch 1987, 13) Kelly used his animal characters to show the frustration thatpeople may have felt during this time concerning their government andhow out of touch it was concerning their daily needs. Michael Leigh visualized pubic opinion in three concentric circles:a core of policy makers who numbered in the few thousands; a ring ofcollege-educated and well-to-do people who devoted close attention tointernational events and served as opinion leaders; and the rest of thepublic who paid little to no attention to the world beyond the shoreline(Leigh 1976, 4-5). What this 90 percent did was to pay attention totheir newspapers, but not in the way one might imagine. In the 1950s, 80percent of adults bought a daily newspaper, but the average metropolitanreader spent only four minutes reading the news on the front page andforty minutes reading the comics, sports, and other entertainmentfeatures (Key 1964, 352-353, 371; Solberg 1973, 43). Cartoonists likeKelly or Capp were able to stretch the boundaries of dissent where otheropinion leaders could not. They were able to do this when assertedefforts by others with as much if not more power were using the media toshape public opinion in a radically different way. In 1951, Hollywood's classic Red Menace film I was a Communistfor the F. B. I., based on the true story of Matt Cvetic who infiltratedthe Communist Party in Pittsburg, was nominated for the Best DocumentaryOscar. Advertising for the movie showed the hero pointing to his Redcomrades beating up his girlfriend. "I had to sell out my owngirl," the promotional tag line exclaimed, "So wouldyou." In the same year, Bowman Gum Company deviated from its normalbaseball cards in order to present a set titled "Children'sCrusade against Communism" with the slogan "Fight the RedMenace" (both examples are pictured in Barson 1992, 70-73). Theseexamples represent how opinion leaders were using media while makingmoney. Both were either an attempt to manipulate public opinion or anattempt to show that the creators were conforming to the norms of whatthey saw in society: fear of the Red Menace. At the same time, most media had a much more concrete monster toavoid, that of the House Un-American Activities Committee. Inretrospect, we may believe that Joe McCarthy was a creep and the HUACwas out of control, but they were right sometimes. There had to be somereason for the perceived degradation of American culture, rampagingatheism, the lack of reverence to the symbols of God, and the breakdownof the family. The public forum was walking on eggshells after theSoviets began to rattle their swords. Certainly Stalin's Gulag wasa more severe punishment for citizens who held opinions and tastes thatcountered those of the government's, but it could not have feltthat way for the Hollywood screenwriters and college professors whosecareers and livelihoods were deliberately disrupted because they mayhave held pink ideas (Walker 1995, 70). Comic books were an easy target for the House Un-AmericanActivities Committee and others who were on the warpath against anythinganti-American. Because of the excesses of some comics, all comics wereattacked and denounced. Graphic horror and crime comic books of the1950s were branded as symptoms of Communist infiltration and the loss ofAmerican morality. The government forced their creators to cleanse theirproducts of anything that could be viewed as anti-American (O'Brien1998, 90). The parody in syndicated newspaper strips in the 1950s,however, operated for the most part under the radar of those seeking outLeftists texts. Comic book critics made no distinction between newspaperstrips and comic books, but the newspaper comics escaped the worst ofthe comics debacle because newspaper comic strips had long sinceobserved their own codes (Reitberger & Fuchs 1971, 19). MiltonCaniff, officer of the National Cartoonists Society and creator of thestrip Steve Canyon, told the Senate during its Comic Book hearings in1954 that comic strip writers never had any doubt concerning theirstatus as mainstream. Pointing out that a newspaper strip is not onlycensored by the editor who buys it, but also the syndicates' ownmany highly critical editors, and eventually censored by the readers whoare in a position to take the editor to task for printing that strip,"There is never any question after the fact." Caniff said,"You almost know by the time it hits the street whether or not yourmaterial is acceptable to the reader" (Horn 1999, 893). Syndicated columnists and journalists eventually challenged thevicious anti-Communist rhetoric, but this occurred after the comics hadalready started doing so. Self-publishing columnist I. F. Stoneproclaimed in 1956 that the U.S. government began using the sametechniques in the country that claimed to be the antithesis of theSoviet Union: Though so far only Communists have gone to jail, thousands of others have been reduced to second-class citizenship, defamed, "exiled" internally (as in Russia), deprived of reputation and livelihood, held up to public contumely. This was Stalin's way with the opposition, and it is now ours. When the Russians come to the point of evicting Stalin's mummy from the Kremlin, perhaps they will send it here to the more congenial atmosphere of Brownell era Washington. We might in turn send them the Jefferson memorial; it may inspire them, at the moment it only embarrasses us. (Stone 1956, 1) It is interesting to note that Stone uses Aesopian language andparody to amplify his point. It is reasonable to assume that mostAmericans would read the comment as a joke and not want to swapStalin's mummy for the Jefferson Memorial. Stone is coding hiswords so that his reader can fill in the missing tier of his syllogism.He is pointing out that the man who had inspired so much fear inAmericans was finally dead at the same time American anti-Communismfever had risen to the point where we were ignoring the words of ourfounding fathers. Stone poked fun at a symbol that not only memorializedthe writer of the Declaration of Independence but is also a well-knownand significant symbol of Americana. Pogo or Li'l Abner could nothave said it any better. A Brief Caveat The alibi that comics provide for dissent hinges on the sufficiencyof cover for the political agenda in question. One exception sheds lighton this point. The American Communist Party suffered what could easilybe described as an identity crisis as World War II was ending. Partynewspapers of the day were intensely debating the value and usefulnessof the "Popular Front," a ten-year-old policy initiated by NewYork Daily Worker editor Earl Browder. This broad coalition of politicalgroups had united in opposition of fascism and far right propaganda. Attimes this movement also attempted to bring in centralists and unionmembers (Brunner 2007, 185). A July 28, 1945, article buried on page 11of the Daily Worker added yet another aspect to the debate. "AQuick Look At American Comic Strips" provided a predictableoverview of syndicated strips, favoring middle-class mishaps such asDagwood Bumstead's eternal problems with his boss J. C. Dithersover super heroes, but the focus quickly narrowed toward one of theirown. Pinkie Rankin had to die: We have found that the usual daily strip in America suffers from the basic contradiction of trying to emulate real life on one hand, while dedicated to perpetuity on the other hand. At this very date, a once popular daily strip in the Daily Worker is ill with that very disease. I mean "Pinkie Rankin," the endlessness of whose adventures is beginning to bore some readers so that protests are coming to the editor. (Fiske 1945, 11) To eliminate the "disease," the patient, like the Shmoo,had to die. The following week not only saw the end of the once popularstrip, but also signaled an end to an experiment in shaping a massculture form to serve serious-minded and socially conscious ends. The"popular" was quarantined from the "political"(Brunner 2007, 185), at least in the American Communist newspapers. Theexperiments of shaping a mass cultural form to intentionally manipulatethe opinions of the public forum actually had the opposite effect. The reason why parody worked for the mainstream comics and not forthe Daily Worker was because the mainstream comics attempted to reflectrather than manipulate common ideas and culture. The attempts at humoroperated on a totally different level for different purposes. PinkieRankin was a Communist. Everything she did, including her complaintsthat her friend was having a romance that would keep her from coming tomeetings, reflected this. Nobody would be willing to accuse Li'lAbner of being a Communist because he thought by killing the Shmoopeople could go back to working hard, paying taxes, and being terrifiedof war; nor would they fault Dagwood Bumstead for hating his boss.Pinkie did not have the alibi that she was just a character in a comicstrip looking for a laugh. Conclusion Using the softer voice of parody over overt satire, mainstreamcomic strips were able to teach lessons while operating under the coverof the form in which they were produced. The beauty of mainstream comicstrips was that they allowed dissent to be voiced. Comic strips were notonly profitable, but also popular. Those who criticized a comic stripset themselves up as targets to be mocked. The art form itself allowedpractitioners political cover to make arguments against theestablishment, which was especially significant at the time when FirstAmendments rights were in crisis. There are fewer repercussions for acartoon opossum than there are for political dissidents such asHollywood writers or college professors. A comic strip is laughed offand thrown away or at worst pulled out of distribution. Yet, laughter isa sign of power and an instant bellwether. Something that is funnygalvanizes a moment and be-comes infectious. The parody of comic stripsopened the doors for others such as I. F. Stone to use humor to questiongovernment actions. At a historical moment when the public forum wasrightfully afraid to air arguments, comic strip artists and writersoperated in a subterranean area of the public sphere resilient againstthe apparatus of the state. Rhetorical studies are especially interested in communicativepractices that have ethical substance. The First Amendment serves toencourage and protect those who speak out against institutions andauthority, but truth has a hard time emerging when authority contributesto the construction of knowledge and the incentives to conform aregreat. The political bias of a dissentcentered conception of the FirstAmendment is for those who wish to challenge the status quo when it isnot open to challenge (Shiffrin 1999, 128-129). In the 1950s, comicstrips offered a particular modality of communication that accomplisheddissent in ways other media and individuals could not. Unlike editorialcartoons and those strips found in Communist publications, mainstreamcomic strips were created primarily as escapism and, for the most, parthumor. This essay represents a preliminary work on political comics andcartoons. As different genre of comics arise, scholars should payattention to the political coverage offered by each. References Barson, Michael. 1992. Better Dead Than Red: A Nostalgic Look atthe Golden Years of Russiaphobia, Red-Baiting, and Other Commie Madness.New York: Hyperion Books. Berger, Arthur Asa. 2006. Li'l Abner: A Study in AmericanSatire (Studies in Popular Culture). New York: University Press ofMississippi. Brunner, Edward. 2007. "Red Funnies: The New York DailyWorker's 'Popular Front' Comics, 1936-1945."American Periodicals 17: 184-207. Capp, Al. 2003. The Short Life and Happy Times of the Schmoo. NewYork: Overlook Press. Drewett, Michael. 2004. "Aesopian Strategies of TextualResistance in the Struggle to Overcome the Censorship of Popular Musicin Apartheid South Africa." In Beate Muller, ed., Censorship andCultural Regulation in the Modern Age. Amsterdam: Rodopi, pp. 189-207. Feinsilver, Lilian Mermin. 1980. "The Yiddish IsShowing." In Joey L. Dillard, ed., Perspectives on AmericanEnglish. New York: Mouton de Gruyter, pp. 205-256. Filene, Peter. 2001. '"Cold War Culture'Doesn't Say It All." In Peter J. Kuznick and James B. Gilbert,eds., Rethinking Cold War Culture. Washington, DC: SmithsonianInstitution Press, pp. 156-174. Fisk, Mary. 1945. "A Quick Look at the American ComicStrip." New York Daily Worker, July 28, p. 11. Frye, Northrop, and Harold Bloom. 2000. Anatomy of Criticism: FourEssays. New York: Princeton. Hajdu, David. 2008. The Ten-Cent Plague: The Great Comic-Book Scareand How It Changed America. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux. Hendershot, Cyndy. 2002. Anti-Communism and Popular Culture inMid-Century America. Boston: McFarland. Horn, Maurice, ed. 1999. The World Encyclopedia of Comics (rev.ed.) Philadelphia: Chelsea House, s.vv. "Beetle Bailey(U.S.)," "Peanuts (U.S.)," "U.S. Senate Hearings:Official Facsimile Excerpts from the Record U.S. Senate Subcommittee ofthe Committee on the Judiciary to Investigate JuvenileDelinquency." Hutcheon, Linda. 1985. A Theory of Parody: The Teachings ofTwentieth Century Art Forms. New York: Methuen. Kelly, Selby, and Bill Crouch, eds. 1987. Pluperfect Pogo. NewYork: Fireside. Kelly, Walt. 1966. The Pogo Poop Book. New York: Simon andSchuster. Key, V. O. 1964. Public Opinion and American Democracy. New York:Alfred A. Knopf. Kuznick, Peter I, and James B. Gilbert. 2001. "U.S. Cultureand the Cold War." In Peter J. Kuznick and James B. Gilbert, eds.,Rethinking Cold War Culture. Washington, DC: Smithsonian InstitutionPress, pp. 1-13. Leigh, Michael. 1976. Mobilizing Consent: Public Opinion andAmerican Foreign Policy, 1937-1947. New York: Greenwood. Lhamon, W. T. 2002. Deliberate Speed: The Origins of a CulturalStyle in the American 1950s. New York: Harvard. Loseff, Lev. 1984. On the Beneficence of Censorship: AesopianLanguage in Modern Russian Literature. Munich: Sagner. Macke, Frank J. 1998. "The Event of Laughter and theRevelation of Culture." Reach Out 8[Special Issue: Sharing Culturethrough Drama]: 43-66. Newsweek. 1949. "Taming of the Shmoo." September 5, pp.49-50. O'Brien, Chris. 1998. "It's a Bird. It's aPlane. It's a ... Bomb? Commies, Crime and Comics, 1945-1962."Mid-Atlantic Almanak 7: 89-100. Reitberger, Reinhold, and Wolfgang Fuchs. 1971. Comics: Anatomy ofa Mass Medium. Trans. Nadia Fowler. Boston: Little, Brown. Sanders, Barry. 1995. Sudden Glory: Laughter as Subversive History.Boston: Beacon Press. Shiffrin, Steven H. 1999. Dissent, Injustice, and the Meanings ofAmerica. New York: Princeton University Press. Solberg, Carl. 1973. Riding High: America in the Cold War. NewYork: Mason and Lipscomb. Stone, I. F. 1956. 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