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- Title
Social science versus jurisprudence in Wagner: the study of pornography, harm, and the law of obscenity in Canada.
- Authors
Brannigan, Augustine; Goldenberg, Sheldon
- Abstract
Parallels between the current anti-pornography climate and the situation in Canada in the late 1940s are remarkable. Today's criminal code section forbidding obscene publications makes it unlawful to sell or publish a crime comic. This was passed in parliament in 1949 following a moral panic among groups who claimed that comics were promoting juvenile delinquency. No doubt current law reformers will sweep this hysterical provision out of sight without any appreciation of its possible relevance in the current controversy. In the 1949 parliamentary debates murders, rapes, suicides, and robberies committed by young offenders were laid at the door of the crime and horror comics, and in the professional literature homosexuality and lesbian inclinations were blamed on Batman and Robin and Wonder Woman. Though the new comic books which appeared in the 1930s were a change from the previously innocuous children's literature, the claim which galvanized legislative opinion against the comic was that its subject matter constituted a threat to public order.
- Subjects
CANADA; CRIME; PORNOGRAPHY; COMIC books, strips, etc.; PARLIAMENTARY practice; CHILDREN'S literature
- Publication
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 1986, Vol 11, Issue 4, p419
- ISSN
0318-6431
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.2307/3341052