Comic art scholars and aficionados long have recognized significance of Mad Magazine's cultural criticism and social satire.1 Begun as four-color comic in 1952, Mad converted to magazine format in 1955 and watched its sales steadily grow from 325,000 issues in 1955 (Reidelbach 40), to 1.3 million in 1958 (Maddiction 63), to just under 2 million in 1968-72 (Reeves 95). As Maria Reidelbach has noted in her landmark study Completely Mad (1991), by 1960s, Mad read by 58 percent of all college students and 43 percent of all high school students, perhaps only 'cult' magazine to be read by majority (188). Publisher William Gaines and his staff of madmen writers and artists reveled in postwar America's foibles, providing both social commentary and belly laughs as they spoofed advertising and consumer culture, parodied popular films and songs, and lampooned political figures and events. Gaines repeatedly attempted to deflate claims that either he or his magazine was political, educational, or even useful, claiming reject insinuation that anything we print is moral, theological, nutritious, or good for you in any way, shape, or form. We live in midst of corrupt society and intend to keep making best of it (Gaines & Feldstein 3); yet, he never could abandon completely his inner-educator who held almost straight A average while studying to be teacher at New York University (Jacobs 60). While avoiding overt didacticism, Mad's satire drew its readers' attention to America's sociopolitical problems, demanded they acknowledge them, and did so with big-toothed grin. A quick survey of Mad's issues of 1950s and 1960s reveals many articles on paperbacks, primers, book clubs, and reading programs, therein signaling magazine's engagement in highly charged debate over mass culture and literacy. On one hand, Mad echoed critique offered by academics, intellectuals, and social critics charging book clubs, mass marketed paperbacks, and how-to books with diluting America's literature and transforming readers into a single slushy compost (Rosenberg 5). On other hand, Mad mocked very critics and intellectuals who decried destruction of American culture at hand of mass culture for merely replacing one prescriptive reading system with another.2 Haunting these criticisms was fear that relinquishing one's interpretive authority to others would lead to depersonalization, alienation, and complacent acceptance of party line, and therein would pave way for totalitarian ideologies to take hold. Thus, contrary to Norbert Muhlen's infamous 1949 Commentary article that claimed comic books prime American youth for totalitarianism, Mad used comic magazine medium to challenge totalizing rhetoric within American cultural, intellectual, and political establishment, and to call for readerly autonomy. Reading Masses To best understand place and politics of Afad's musings on readership, one must revisit postwar America's literacy debates. The change in America's position from isolationist to global power following World War II necessitated shift in how America defined itself at home and abroad. Driven by assumption that, as Time editor Carl Solberg put it, a good citizen is good reader (125), educators and politicians alike examined postwar America's cultural and political literacy hoping to find and subsequently advertise an image of enlightened democracy to allies, foes, and those choosing between Democracy and Communism. What groups like American Library Association, American Book Publishers Council, National Book Committee, and Department of Education found was that Americans were not reading, reporting that 13.5% of Americans were functionally illiterate and there is no estimate as to how many are considered semiliterate (Books for Adult Beginners 4); that the United States has lowest proportion of book readers of any major democracy, judging by results of an international survey in six nations (Dutscher 126); and that only 25% of Americans read as much as one book per month (Grambs iv). …
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Jun 1, 2009
Clémentine Bry + 3
Open Access
