"The Child's Education to Violence" Mrs. Eleanor Gray and the Canadian Crusade to Ban Crime Comics
Abstract
Contemporary concerns over the prevalence of violence on the internet and in films and the impact on young people are not without precedent. In the 1940s and 1950s there was a campaign to eliminate the so-called crime comics, led in Canada by Mrs. Eleanor Gray of Victoria, British Columbia. Based primarily on her own correspondence and documents which she donated to the Provincial Archives of British Columbia in 1978, this paper traces her part in the campaign, which eventually succeeded in persuading parliament to change the Criminal Code of Canada. It also compares the campaign with other social reform movements of the period, and notes the change in public attitude which now views the same comics not as a menace to society but as innovative and important art forms.
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