Subversion in the Swamp: Pogo and the Folk in the McCarthy Era

Abstract

In early 1950s, during era of McCarthy purges, public concern over morality of comic books, which had been simmering since medium's birth, began to receive official scrutiny. In 1954, a group of comic book artists was even brought in to testify before Congressional Subcommittee to Investigate Juvenile Delinquency in United States, headed by Senator Estes Kefauver. The president of National Cartoonists Society at this time was Walt Kelly, creator of popular Pogo comic strip; his response is related by fellow-cartoonist Milton Caniff: Senator Kefauver and a well-meaning committee of Congressmen were holding hearings related to evils of comic books of day. This was not directed toward newspaper cartoons, but publicity was touching us and rubbing off.... Kelly organized a counter-move against negative press all cartoons were getting. In U.S. Court House on Foley Square in New York a group of cartoonists and illustrators came early and occupied front seats. As hearings went on, Congressmen became aware that we were drawing their portraits ....Before it ended, jury was hardly listening to unhappy book artists. After session, we went from one legislator to another delivering art. Each Congressman new home with a half dozen drawings of himself - and a dim recall of testimony, (qtd. in O'Sullivan 94) However seriously we want to take Caniff's claims for actual effect of cartoonists on hearing, this story demonstrates complex and contested relation of comics - and Pogo in particular - to social and political world. Kelly's use of newspaper cartoonist's tools-caricature, parody, attention to daily affairs of nation - to intervene in political process mirrors technique of his own comic strip. At very moment that government was striving to contain subversive and immoral strains in art, comics, and popular culture in general, Kelly was engaging in a series of relentless parodies of these efforts by playing them out - in a style to which word allegory does not really do justice - in community of animals inhabiting Pogo's Okeefenokee swamp. At a time when so many activities were construed as un-American, how did Pogo Pos- sum, Howland Owl, Albert Alligator, and Chur- chy LaFemme (the natural-born turtle) manage to stay afloat, navigating their odd little boats through murky political waters? This article tries to answer that question by examining place of Pogo, and of funny papers and funny books in general, in culture of fifties and beyond. The McCarthy era was a crucible, a moment when our concerns about art and politics in relation to popular culture were played out, publicly and dramatically, on national stage. Indeed, national stage, ongoing discussion of what it means to be American, is precisely site on which Kelly chose to create his comic strip. Specifically, I argue that Kelly's subversive activities were made possible through his invocation of peculiarly American mythologies about the folk, through a representation of leftist politics as good old American common sense. While comic strips have generally had reputation of being genial and harmless, comic books have long been subject of attacks from individuals and institutions concerned about corruption of American youth. The effort to regulate content of comics began in earnest with Fredric Wertham's 1954 book Seduction of Innocent, which laid blame for societal evils and juvenile delinquency on violence and sexual content of comic books. Wertham's book is a fascinating document in its own right; although designed as a study of comics' impact on adolescent psyche by an acclaimed clinical psychologist, its close readings of comic book texts and attention to social relations implied by those texts make it a sort of bizarro-world version of contemporary cultural studies. …