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Parents, Media and
Panic through the Years
Kids Those Days

Karen Leick
Parents, Media and Panic through the Years
 Karen Leick

Parents, Media
and Panic through
the Years
Kids Those Days
Karen Leick
University of Illinois at Chicago
Chicago, IL, USA

ISBN 978-3-319-98318-9 ISBN 978-3-319-98319-6 (eBook)

https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98319-6

Library of Congress Control Number: 2018950516

© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2019

This work is subject to copyright. All rights are solely and exclusively licensed by the
Publisher, whether the whole or part of the material is concerned, specifically the rights
of translation, reprinting, reuse of illustrations, recitation, broadcasting, reproduction
on microfilms or in any other physical way, and transmission or information storage and
retrieval, electronic adaptation, computer software, or by similar or dissimilar methodology
now known or hereafter developed.
The use of general descriptive names, registered names, trademarks, service marks, etc. in this
publication does not imply, even in the absence of a specific statement, that such names are
exempt from the relevant protective laws and regulations and therefore free for general use.
The publisher, the authors and the editors are safe to assume that the advice and
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Neither the publisher nor the authors or the editors give a warranty, express or implied,
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 Acknowledgements

This project was inspired by a first-year writing course that I teach at the
University of Illinois at Chicago titled “Nostalgia, Media, and American
Culture.” I am grateful to my students for contributing so many use-
ful insights and observations about social media, video games, television
and film. These bright and dedicated young people give me hope about
the future. I continue to believe that this media-savvy generation will
be defined by their engagement with the world around them, not by a
device or a screen. “The young people will win!”
I would also like to thank the English Department at the University
of Illinois at Chicago for providing access to scholarly resources, and to
acknowledge the support of many colleagues who expressed interest and
encouragement during this process. I conducted research at libraries at
UIC, Northwestern University and at the Harold Washington Library
in Chicago, where the librarians were helpful and knowledgeable. I also
received terrific advice and suggestions from Keir Graff, who came up
with the title: Kids Those Days. Lastly, my husband, Scott, supported me
throughout this project, while my children, Henry and Paige, provided
a perfect examples of the ways media and technology affect the lives
of children today. Instead of fearing the new, I strive to celebrate the
opportunities that are now open to them.

v
 Contents

Introduction: Childhood and Nostalgia 1

Movies and Radio 13

Comics 29

Television 41

Video Games 67

The Internet, Social Media and Smartphones 95

Index 129

vii
 Introduction: Childhood and Nostalgia

Abstract The introduction describes the basic argument for the book:
in the past 100 years, adults and parents have become anxious and even
panicked about each new form of media that appeals to young peo-
ple (radio, movies, comic books, video games, the Internet and smart-
phones). Fears about the effects of media on youth are remarkably
constant and use the same tropes, revealing a strong nostalgia on the
part of adults for an imaginary, idealized, media-free youth and a simi-
larly inaccurate, hostile, exaggerated perception of the influence of the
new media. At any given moment in the last century, one can point to
the media that was central to a crisis affecting young people, who were
presented as victims of this pervasive and insidious influence.

Keywords Media · Moral panic · Nostalgia

What was your childhood like? Do you have strong memories of play-
ing outside, exploring, and making up creative games? When you look
at children today, are you concerned that they are missing out on the
positive experiences of your youth? It’s not hard to find discussions vir-
tually everywhere that emphasize this uneasiness. Popular articles, blogs,
and even conversations with other parents often focus on comparisons
between the childhoods of adults and the experiences of today’s chil-
dren who are, of course, consumed with technology and screens of var-
ious sorts. A typical example appeared in the Huffington Post several

© The Author(s) 2019 1

K. Leick, Parents, Media and Panic through the Years,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98319-6_1
2 K. LEICK

years ago with the ominous headline “The Impact of Technology on the
Developing Child”:

Reminiscing about the good old days when we were growing up is a mem-
ory trip well worth taking when trying to understand the issues facing the
children of today. A mere 20 years ago, children used to play outside all
day, riding bikes, playing sports and building forts. Masters of imaginary
games, children of the past created their own form of play that didn’t
require costly equipment or parental supervision. Children of the past
moved … a lot, and their sensory world was nature based and simple. In
the past, family time was often spent doing chores, and children had expec-
tations to meet on a daily basis. The dining room table was a central place
where families came together to eat and talk about their day, and after din-
ner became the center for baking, crafts, and homework.1

I read this article on social media, where several of my friends had shared
it. No doubt this description is familiar. Variations of this nostalgic vision
are repeated in articles, in the comments sections of these articles, blogs,
and really anywhere the subject of “kids these days” is discussed. Writers
describe childhoods in the 60s, 70s, and 80s as idyllic, creative paradises
where activities were almost exclusively outdoors and unsupervised. In
fact, the above quote suggests that even in the 90s—just 20 years ago—
this kind of play was the norm, and that there has been an enormous
shift in the ways young people spend their time.
If such a change had indeed occurred, we might expect the many
articles published in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s that also discuss childhood
development, imagination, and play would celebrate this healthy atmos-
phere, which must have benefited my generation so greatly (I was born
in 1971). Yet, a glance at popular periodicals of those decades reveals
something quite different. You find no mention of this delightful trend,
so strongly remembered by today’s adults. Actually, it turns out that par-
ents and childhood experts were more than a little uncomfortable with
the way kids were spending their free time in the 60s and 70s: in fact, if
popular media and scholarly studies are any indication, they were pan-
icked. According to parents, children were not spending healthy, unlim-
ited time creatively playing outside. They were spending almost all of
their free time, from 20 to 30 hours a week, watching television. In the
1970s, articles routinely remarked that by the time a child would grad-
uate from high school, he or she would have spent more time in front
of the television than in the classroom. In the 80s, video games were
 INTRODUCTION: CHILDHOOD AND NOSTALGIA 3

an added menace. In 1990, even after video games were popular, teens
watched an average of 22 hours a week (about 3 hours a day). Now, of
course, we have the Internet and touch screens to worry about. Given
the language frequently used to discuss “screen time,” you’d think that
kids born in the twenty-first century are now spending unprecedented
amounts of time engaged with computers and other screens, but that
may be an exaggeration. It turns out, kids have been doing their best to
spend most of their free time in front of screens for more than 50 years.
Of course, “screen time” has been a concern for the last twenty
years—it just wasn’t called that in the 90s. One article in 1998, “The
Keyboard Kids,” wryly observed:

Ah, summer. Those lazy afternoons with the hot sun streaming down, the
gentle winds, the honeyed song of birds and the sound of children playing
… indoors on computers. Yup, we’ve raised a generation of keyboard kids,
and they’re e-mailing more, chatting more, making more long-distance
friends and generally getting into more trouble online than ever before.2

So kids born in the 80s were already considered “keyboard kids”? The
Huffington Post article from 2013 suggested that in the 90s kids played
outside all the time. So when was this golden age? Did it ever exist?
In fact, adults have been concerned about the amount of time that
America’s youth has enjoyed not spending its free time out of doors for a
very long time. There was television, of course, starting in the 1950s. But
before that, in the 1930s and 40s, comic books, crime serials on the radio,
and movies were considered threats to youth: not just the time spent with
these mindless media, but the disturbing content. All depicted excessive
and graphic violence that alarmed parents, and all seemed to consume the
free time that young people should have been spending in healthy ways,
outside, using their imagination. As one writer fretted in 1956:

First radio and now television – parents ask: Are they a bane or blessing
to our children? One thing is certain: Their presence and influence cannot
be ignored. To deny a modern child access to them in the home is usually
merely to send him elsewhere for them, and to make him feel that his par-
ents don’t love him as much as other children’s parents love them.3

Indeed, every generation, every decade for the past century can eas-
ily be identified by the crisis that occupied parents, who have perpetu-
ally wrung their hands over the pastimes that threaten young people.
4 K. LEICK

One of the most striking repetitions in these complaints is that these

young people, unlike the previous generation, lack imagination, thanks
to the new, seductive and corrupting media that has overtaken their
lives. Yet, the adults who make these complaints were accused of similar
unhealthy habits when they were kids. Apparently, when you’re growing
up, you aren’t very aware of the concerns overwhelming your parents.
And, equally important, adults have a very poor memory of how they
actually spent their time as children. Every generation has an inaccurate,
nostalgic view of childhood and of the decades that preceded it. “Kids
these days!” It’s a perpetual complaint.
It’s tempting to look back at some of the panicked responses in the
past as if we are now much more sophisticated and mature. It’s true, for
example, that in 1954 there were Senate Hearings on the effect of comic
books on juvenile delinquency. We might laugh and think: How bad could
comic books and radio have been? Historians have a tendency to group
the Senate Hearings on Comic Books with the repressive policies of the
McCarthy Era, and dismiss these inquiries as unfamiliar, bizarre and prud-
ish. Actually, the violence and bloodshed depicted in the horror comics was
incredibly gruesome. These unregulated comics not only presented graphic
images of murder, torture, misogyny, and crime, but they also advertised
guns, whips, and knives by mail order companies in the back pages. I can
only imagine how outraged today’s parents would be by the content of EC
Comics if they were easily available to elementary-age children.
Today in our “on demand” world, parents can choose exactly which
media a young child encounters. DVRs and iPads allow us to selec-
tively choose what children view (older youth who may have access to
YouTube are more difficult to monitor, of course). It’s true that children
were not the target audience for the most violent movies and radio serials
in the 1940s, but all ages attended the movies and listened to these pro-
grams. Similarly, in the 1960s and 70s many children watched primetime
television with their parents no matter what the content, since there was
no way to record programs and watch them after the kids went to bed.
Comic books could be bought for a dime and then traded with friends,
often out of sight of parents. Young children encountered adult themes
and violence on a regular basis through the media, an everyday reality
that many of us have forgotten. This content was ubiquitous, and it did
not go unnoticed. Most remarkable about these concerns is how similar
the discussions were to today’s complaints about touch screens, phone,
and other media.
 INTRODUCTION: CHILDHOOD AND NOSTALGIA 5

Of course, this is not the first study to examine the negative pub-
lic reaction to media by adults who are motivated by a desire to pro-
tect children. In the UK, sociologists and historians have used the term
“moral panic” to describe this kind of cultural anxiety since Stanley
Cohen’s influential Folk Devils and Moral Panics was published in 1972.
Cohen’s definition of a moral panic, as Sian Nicolas and Tom O’Malley
explain, “is associated with a brief upsurge in concern; a mobilization
of opinion; and can, in some cases, have long-lasting repercussions. It is
firmly linked to the role of the media.”4
Cultural histories that detail the early resistance to radio, film, tele-
vision, popular music, video games, or the internet show that these
negative effects were feared: juvenile delinquency, anti-social or violent
behavior, increased sexual activity, depression, and addiction. As John
Springhall explains, this anxiety can often have real world consequences,
as censorship and regulation may follow the most extreme reactions.

Whenever the introduction of a new mass medium is defined as a threat to

the young, we can expect a campaign by adults to regulate, ban or sensor,
followed by a lessening of interest until the appearance of a new medium
reopens public debate. Each new panic develops as if it were the first time
such issues have been debated in public and yet the debates are strikingly
similar.5

In the US, analyses of media reception have used the term “moral panic”
less frequently, but have revealed strikingly similar patterns. For exam-
ple, Steven Starker’s 1989 Evil Influences: Crusades Against the Mass
Media shows that some of these trends can be traced all the way back to
the early panic about journalism in the seventeenth and eighteenth cen-
turies and the novel in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. When
his study was published in the late 1980s, television was the dominant
media in the lives of young people causing fear and anxiety, but Starker
clearly shows that TV panic was only the latest iteration of this response.
As he observes, “The story of the mass media in America reads much
like the case history of a public health menace.” Clearly, the consistent
responses to these media show that the media itself is almost inciden-
tal. As Starker explains, “The business of choosing a particular form or
application of the media upon which to blame a host of psychological or
social problems has become a recurrent theme in America and generally
contains elements of oversimplification and scapegoating.”6
6 K. LEICK

More recently, American sociologist Karen Sternheimer’s Pop

Culture Panics: How Moral Crusaders Construct Meaning of Deviance
and Delinquency (2015) looks at negative reactions to movies, comics,
pinball, and popular music to make a similar point, although she does
employ the term “moral panic” to describe these responses. She points
out that there are often specific individuals who spread these fears,
“moral crusaders” who “see themselves as battling against evil and often
use highly emotional arguments to win people over to their cause.”7
These righteous public figures often find great support and success in the
media marketplace. Outrage is a lucrative business.
These insightful analyses of moral panics tend to focus on the ways
each panic becomes a visible and important part of the national dis-
course, but then fades from view. Sternheimer, for example, argues that
“panics and crusades happen at particular places and times for a reason,
especially when structural and cultural shifts take place.”8 While there are
certainly cultural reasons for the specific focus of each panic, my related
point is that the shift from a panic over one media to another is contin-
uous. There has been no period in the last century in which the attitude
toward media among parents and adults can accurately be character-
ized as relaxed or panic-free (nor could we identify a decade in which
there were not significant cultural shifts). It is not just that parents in
every decade are concerned about their children, although this protec-
tive relationship is surely one contributing factor to the discourse. More
important, the anxiety about the effects of media on youth are remark-
ably constant and use the same tropes, revealing a strong nostalgia on
the part of adults for an imaginary, idealized, media-free youth and a
similarly inaccurate, hostile, exaggerated perception of the influence of
today’s media on young people. At any given moment in the last cen-
tury, one can point to the media that was central to a perceived crisis
affecting young people, who were presented as victims of this pervasive
and insidious influence.
In this book, I focus on the ways new media has been understood spe-
cifically as a threat to young people. Children and teenagers are often
attracted to new media and easily incorporate it into their everyday lives
in ways that are both unfamiliar and unsettling to parents, lawmakers,
and other authority figures. Adults forget that their own parents had
the same fears, and were similarly anxious about the media they con-
sumed as children and young adults. This pattern has repeated for at
least the last century. In the early twentieth century, when newspapers
 INTRODUCTION: CHILDHOOD AND NOSTALGIA 7

in the US began publishing a special colorful comics section on Sundays

(most major newspapers had introduced them by 1906) called “com-
ics supplements,” adults objected to the humor, which was thought to
be crude, used slang, and often depicted exaggerated violence, crime
and delinquency for comic effect. An extreme reaction against the new
Sunday comic supplements was reported in periodicals all over the coun-
try. Many parents and teachers found the content inappropriate and even
harmful, but the kids loved them.
The debates over the Sunday Comics progressed in ways that have
repeated throughout the next hundred years with other media. First,
there is a negative public outcry, suggesting that children must be pro-
tected from the destructive and corrupting new form of entertainment.
“Experts” discuss the effects of the media on the behavior of young peo-
ple. Groups (which may include parents or elected officials) discuss either
banning or regulating the new media to protect the children (often
with some success). Eventually the fears are forgotten as a new focus of
parental fear and anxiety is introduced into the cultural landscape. In the
end, the old media is not only considered mainstream and harmless, but
adults who remember enjoying this media as children are nostalgic about
the joys of the media that their parents denounced, apparently unaware
of the cultural anxiety that had been associated with that media.
“A Crusade Against Comic Supplements,” which appeared in the
Christian Observer in 1907, represents the early phase of the panic over
the Sunday comics. The media is shown to promote dangerous or unde-
sirable behavior and morals: “Respect for the aged, reverence for the law,
and recognition of parental authority are made a reproach, while racial
prejudice is cultivated an deceit and trickery are commended.”9 There
were soon debates in periodicals across the nation about whether cer-
tain newspapers should eliminate the Sunday “comic supplements,” if
there were ways to improve the humor, and so on. Newspapers reported
that women’s groups in cities across the country had meetings about
the comics, as in this example: “At Oak Park, IL, the members of the
Nineteenth Century Club have begun a campaign to remove the comic
supplement from the face of the earth.”10 Those with moral authority
were quoted on the issue, as in this article in the New York Times: “Dr.
Aked Raps the ‘Comic Supplement’: Clergyman Tells his Congregation
That They Imperil Sunday Purity.”11 The Ladies’ Home Journal argued
in 1909 that the comics were “A Crime Against American Children,”
and two years later, the New York Times published another extreme view:
8 K. LEICK

“Comic Supplements a Source of Evil.”12 One mother wrote an emo-

tional tirade to the New York Times against the Sunday comics, neatly
summing up the underlying anxiety fueling the entire debate: “Parents
do not sufficiently realize how impressionable a child’s mind is,” she
warned.13 On the contrary, as we look at similar arguments over the last
century, it may be possible that parents are overestimating how impres-
sionable children are.
Finally, there were reports that an actual crime was inspired by the
Sunday comics. The New York Times reported that a boy had ordered
a ton of coal and many other items (a turkey, for some reason) to be
delivered C.O.D. to a business as a prank. He admitted that he’d gotten
the idea from a comic strip.14 This story seemed to support the idea that
children do, in fact, imitate the fictions they see, another recurring trope
in critiques of popular media.
As in any debate, there were other views represented: some supported
the comics or thought the outrage was excessive. When the Boston
Herald announced that they would no longer include the comics in their
Sunday edition in 1908, the St. Louis Post Dispatch responded in an edi-
torial that “instead of abandoning the thing … why does not the Boston
Herald conduct it into something higher? … Our sympathies are with
the best that can be done, rather than with quitting in disgust.”15 And
there was a candid market-driven admission from some that, thanks to
their popularity, the comics were here to stay. To put it simply, Sunday
comics attracted too many readers, and were much too profitable to
discontinue. One newspaper editor, who acknowledged that “parents
have complained that the comic supplement is tawdry, inane and vulgar,
inculcating lawlessness and irreverence in the boys and girls who read it
abounding in slang, badly drawn and crudely colored,” explained: “the
only reason for printing the comic supplements is popular demand.”16
That the desire for advertising revenue often affected the quality of
media content has been extensively discussed in the context of radio and
television, but we can see that this idea was already part of the public
discourse. If the primary goal was to attract consumers, it was no wonder
that vulgarity, violence and low-brow humor would become the norm,
some critics argued. From H. L. Mencken to Dwight MacDonald, out-
spoken twentieth century cultural critics lamented the rush to the lowest
common denominator in American popular culture.17
Lively debates about the Sunday comics continued in the 1910s and
gradually subsided as these supplements became a normal, accepted part
 INTRODUCTION: CHILDHOOD AND NOSTALGIA 9

family life that also appealed to children. In the 1920s, the comics were so
mainstream that the Chicago Tribune sponsored a comics contest in 1923,
with winners announced every week for eight weeks. Contestant submit-
ted ideas for a comic (drawing was not required) and could win $250 for
first prize, $100 for second prize, and so on.18 In this decade, psycholo-
gists began to study the reasons for the popularity of the comics. Why was
the inappropriate behavior and exaggerated violence so satisfying to read-
ers, and children in particular? In the Journal of Applied Psychology, which
began appearing in 1917, Harvey Lehman and Paul Witty concluded that
“the popularity of the comic strip is due largely to the fact that it pre-
sents unhampered human activity through with the reader vicariously sat-
isfies his thwarted and restrained desires.”19 This basic idea, that violent
media can have a cathartic effect, has been repeated by many scholars who
defend the representation of violence in movies, television, and in video
games. Paul Witty would go to conduct multiple studies about the effect
of television violence on children in the 1950s.
This book includes analyses of representative articles from the 1920s
to the present. They demonstrate the consistent alarm shown by every
generation and the nostalgia that pervades these discussions. These arti-
cles give a sense of the cultural climate; the tone and urgency of these
writers clearly show the concerns that dominated each decade. These are
not anomalies; I have carefully chosen, from hundreds of articles, repre-
sentative examples that suggest what people feared, what they were talk-
ing about, how they expressed this real anxiety. This conversation is an
important part of the historical record that is not easily accessible to the
public. Although there is a general misconception that everything is now
digitized and available on the web, in fact libraries are full of unscanned
periodicals which are an invaluable window into past decades.
One reason I was motivated to look into articles published in the
1970s and 80s is that I distinctly remember my generation being roundly
criticized by the press, labeled the “MTV generation,” slackers, the “X
generation,” and so on. Yet today’s parenting blogs are full of nostalgia
for our imaginative youths, as if they were free from media or any kind
of “screen time.” And it’s not just my generation that was the subject of
concern. As I researched this book, I was delighted to come across neg-
ative assessments of my parents’ generation (born in 1940). I wonder if
you can guess how this generation was stereotyped? In 1979, one writer
explained that today’s kids (Generation X) aren’t “spoiled,” a great
improvement over my parents’ generation, who were insufferable:
10 K. LEICK

They were a product of the parenting practices of the 1940s and 50s, car-
ried to extremes: parents feared “repressing” their children, and left them
undisciplined and unconstrained by demands to grow up. Handed a power
over adults that they did not want, did not need, and could not handle,
such children were willful, domineering, given to temper tantrums, and,
on the whole, abominable.20

These spoiled children, not surprisingly, grew up to be irritating college

students. In 1961, adults were exasperated by these annoying young
people:

Much has been said of late about the cool detachment from social issues
that seems to characterize much of the college generation; the concern
with self, the emphasis on ‘security,’ the ‘what’s in it for me’ approach with
which many young people evaluate situations before making even a tenta-
tive commitment.21

People who went to college in the early 1960s were the “what’s in it
for me” generation! And I thought Millennials were the “Me me me”
generation—at least that’s what the May 20, 2013, cover of Time mag-
azine declared! Perhaps the age is less important than the generation.
Perhaps 20-somethings are always different from 40- or 50-somethings,
no matter what the generation, and often in similar ways. As one article
in the Atlantic explained in response to that cover: “Every Every Every
Generation Has Been the Me Me Me Generation.”22
I have no doubt that adults have vivid memories of playing outside.
Yet, it is possible and even likely that these same adults also spent many,
many hours watching television (much of it age-inappropriate), playing
video games, and listening to the radio. Indeed, many adults enjoy remi-
niscing about television shows or video games that were popular in their
youth; it is remarkable how vivid these memories are. The examples in
this book suggest that the parental insecurity about the ways kids spend
their time has not changed very much in the past century. Perhaps panic
is the natural state of parents, who understandably want their children
to be productive, successful members of society. Each new technology
that enters our lives should not be seen as an impediment to this goal, as
every generation of young people will be engaged with a new, unfamiliar
form of technology.
 INTRODUCTION: CHILDHOOD AND NOSTALGIA 11

Notes
1. Cris Rowan, “The Impact of Technology on the Developing Child,”
Huffington Post, July 29, 2013.
2. Brad Stone and Bronwyn Fryer, “The Keyboard Kids,” Time, June 8,
1998, p. 72.
3. Josette Frank, “How Much Is Too Much TV?” McCall’s, November
1956, pp. 145+.
4. Siân Nicholas and Tom O’Malley, Moral Panics, Social Fears, and the
Media (London: Routledge, 2013), p. 2.
5. John Springhall, Youth, Popular Culture and Moral Panics: Penny Gaffs to
Gangsta-Rap, 1830–1996 (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1998), p. 7.
6. Steven Starker, Evil Influences: Crusades Against the Mass Media (New
Brunswick: Transaction Publishers, 1989), pp. 5–6.
7. Karen Sternheimer, Pop Culture Panics: How Moral Crusaders Construct
Meanings of Deviance and Delinquency (New York: Routledge, 2015), p. 8.
8. Sternheimer, p. 14.
9. “A Crusade Against Comic Supplements,” Christian Observer, August 28,
1907, p. 3
10. “The Public and the ‘Comics,’” New York Tribune, April 30, 1909, p. 6;
see also “‘Colored Comics’ Harmful: Women’s Club Protests Against the
‘Funny’ Sunday Supplements,” New York Tribune, January 30, 1912, p. 2;
and “The Comic Supplement,” Outlook, April 15, 1911, p. 802.
11. “Dr. Aked Raps the ‘Comic Supplement’: Clergyman Tells His
Congregation That They Imperil Sunday Purity,” New York Times,
October 5, 1908, p. 6.
12. “A Crime Against American Children,” Ladies’ Home Journal, January
1909, p. 5; “Comic Supplements a Source of Evil,” New York Times,
January 27, 1911, p. 5.
13. “Protest Against the Comic Supplement,” New York Times, April 15,
1911, p. 12.
14. “Imitated Comic Supplement: Plainfield Boy Arrested for Sending Fake
Telephone Messages,” New York Times, February 19, 1910, p. 1.
15. “Quitting Humor in Disgust,” St. Louis Post Dispatch, November 2,
1908, p. 10.
16. William Johnston, “Curing the Comic Supplement: Advice from a
‘Comic’ Editor,” Good Housekeeping, July 1910, pp. 81–83.
17. See H. L. Menken, Prejudices (1919–1927) (New York: Library of
America, 2010); Dwight MacDonald, Masscult and Midcult: Essays
Against the American Grain (New York Review of Books, 2011).
18. Nora Collins, “Fleeting Time Adds Zest to Comics Contest,” Chicago
Daily Tribune, October 21, 1923, p. 13.
12 K. LEICK

19. Harvey Lehman and Paul Witty, “The Compensatory Function of the

Sunday ‘Funny’ Paper,” Journal of Applied Psychology, June 1927, p. 210.
20. David Elkind, “Growing Up Faster,” Psychology Today, February 1979, p. 38.
21. Dorothy Barclay, “Children Who Grow Old Too Young,” New York Times
Magazine, July 16, 1961, p. SM26.
22. Elspeth Reeve, “Every Every Every Generation Has Been the Me Me Me
Generation,” Atlantic, May 9, 2013.
 Movies and Radio

Abstract This chapter looks at the public response to movies and radio
in the lives of young people from the 1920s to the 1940s. Both were
criticized for promoting violence and inappropriate content, and parents
were concerned about the time young people spent with both forms of
media, which were frequently discussed together in articles. Movies and
radio serials that depicted crime and violence, including westerns, horror,
and detective programs, were alarming to parents whose children loved
the shows, but then had nightmares. Articles suggested that juvenile
delinquency was on the rise due to these violent depictions, which were
seen as instruction manuals to crime.

Keywords Movie · Film · Radio · Juvenile delinquency

In the 1920s and 1930s, parents were forced to adjust to two influences
in the lives of their children: motion pictures and the radio. According to
surveys, listening to the radio and going to the movies were the favorite
activities of high school students, and they consumed the lives of kids
of all ages. Both were big changes in the free time of American youth,
and adults expressed anxiety and panic about the content found on radio
serials and in the movies. The genres that dominated film and radio
programs—crime, horror stories, and westerns—were all filled with vio-
lence and suspense, which not surprisingly made them even more excit-
ing for young people. Imagine children gathered around radios in the

© The Author(s) 2019 13

K. Leick, Parents, Media and Panic through the Years,
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-98319-6_2
14 K. LEICK

evenings for hours at a time, intently listening to the noise of gunshots,

screams, and police sirens. On the weekends, kids crowded into theat-
ers, watching gory double features while gorging on candy and popcorn.
The kids loved it! The parents … not so much.
Silent “moving pictures” were controversial even before major
movie theaters because the norm in cities and towns across the United
States in the 1920s, when Hollywood studios and film production
became a massive industry. Early “moving pictures” were usually a
single reel (about 15 minutes in length) and shown in nickelodeons
(usually converted store fronts) which would charge a nickel or a dime
for an hour of film. They were linked to crime and violent behavior in
headlines as early as 1906, as these short movies often portrayed crime,
gambling, not to mention romance and sexual innuendo. One 1906
article in the Chicago Tribune explained that there was nearly a dozen
of these store front theaters along Milwaukee Avenue between Ohio
and North Avenue, showing “train robberies, lynchings, safeblowing,
‘black hand’ conspiracies, and all manner of crime and bloodshed.”1
One Chicago Tribune article explicitly claimed that the movies taught
criminal behavior, as in this headline: “Crime Taught to Youths: Evil
Effect of Cheap Moving Picture Shows Described.” Other news reports
discussed anxiety, distress, and fear the movies caused in children: one
article in the Washington Post even claimed that “Films Scare Boy to
Death.”2
The idea that audiences would imitate the behavior on the screen
was reported as if it were a given, and the media emphasized this link:
a 1910 New York Times article, “Turned to Arson by Moving Picture,”
argued that a wealthy 12-year-old girl had been inspired by the movies
to set an apartment building on fire in the Bronx; similarly the Times
reported in 1911 that a robbery was inspired by the movies: “Picture
Suggested Crime: Three Men Hold Up Another After Seeing it Done
on a Moving Film.”3 According to a 1912 Chicago Tribune article,
there were “nine causes” of the decline and corruption of young peo-
ple: cheap boarding houses, loan sharks, and moving pictures.4 As
Steven Starker explains, the negative outcry resulted in the “National
Board of Censorship of Motion Pictures,” which reviewed and
rejected films that included obscenity, crime, and violence from 1909
to 1914.
The negative response to the film was not shared by all, of
course. Some citizens defended these early, short films in letters to
 MOVIES AND RADIO 15

newspapers; one mother explained that she likes to expose her

5-year-old daughter to the criminal activity in the movies because
“it has taught her the right and wrong of things. She hates and
fears crime, and I think that by showing such things they are better
impressed on her mind than by just telling them … There was mur-
der before moving pictures ever came, and there will be to the end of
the world,” she explains.5 The pervasive attitude of the press toward
moving pictures, however, continued to be overwhelmingly pessimis-
tic, and these dire assessments of the influence of film continued in the
teens and became even more pronounced the 1920s, as feature-length
films were shown in new theaters that were built nationwide; young
people could now spend Saturdays watching a double feature in these
new, comfortable venues instead of dirty, makeshift nickelodeons.
Crime was still linked to movies, in the most direct ways. As Carmen
Luke explains, “from the early 1920s to the 1930s, movie and radio
media were considered to have direct effects on audiences. That is, no
mediating variables were seen to significantly influence the medium’s
impact on viewers.”6
In 1921, Rowland Sheldon published an essay in the Bookman about
a visit he took to a reformatory to interview boys about their motivation
for committing a crime. He includes this exchange:

One said, “It was the movies that got me in here.”

I asked, “Do you mean that you stole in order to get money to go to the movies, or
that you saw pictures that made you want to steal?”
“I saw pictures that made me think of stealing.”
“But didn’t the pictures show that the thief always gets caught and punished?”
“Oh yes, but I thought I was wise and wouldn’t get caught. I thought I wouldn’t
make the mistake he did to get caught.”7

Like movies, radio serials attracted young listeners precisely because of

the horror and violence that they dramatized. Popular shows included
crime and detective programs such as The Shadow, Dragnet, Gang
Busters, The FBI in Peace and War, Dick Tracy, Mr. District Attorney,
Perry Mason; westerns like The Lone Ranger, Gunsmoke, The Red
Ryder, Death Valley Days; and mysteries including the popular I Love
a Mystery and Sherlock Holmes. One shock to parents was having
the sound effects that accompanied this violent content broadcast in
their homes. In the mid-30s, young people listened to the radio from
two to three hours a day and magazines like Better Homes and Gardens
16 K. LEICK

addressed the pervasive concerns of mothers, asking: “Movies and

Radio—Blessing or Bane?” (1937), while scholarly publications like the
Journal of Pediatrics published warnings such as “Children’s Reactions
to Movie Horrors and Radio Crime” by Mary Preston (1941) which
described radio listeners and “movie addicts” who attended from 2 to 5
movies a week.8 This article lamented that families no longer seemed to
spend quality time together playing games due to the massive influence
of radio and the movies; young people were spending all of their free
time consuming this disturbing content. One negative consequence was
that children had nightmares. Preston’s article was discussed and quoted
in various popular periodicals; an article in the New York Times Magazine
mentioned the study, and described “small fry whose waking and sleep-
ing thoughts were charged with the menace of man-eating crocodiles,
kidnappers and ‘bad guys.’” A twelve-year is old is quoted: “After I’ve
been to a bad movie I try to be brave, but I can’t do it very well. In the
dark, I feel a knife behind me like in the show. I keep dreaming that
the giants in the show take my mother and my father and my dog and
change the folks into fat toothpicks and put them through the grinder
with the dog.”9 Perhaps parents could prevent their kids from going to
the movie theater. But how could parents control the addictive power of
the radio, which could be turned on in the home at any time? As Paul
M. Dennis explains, “public concern regarding the radio thriller was to
become standard fare for years to come in newspaper stores and editori-
als, magazine articles, and the activities of women’s clubs.”10
Radio introduced the commercial model for programming that was
then replicated in television broadcasting. In the 1930s, familiar gen-
res were developed, including crime drama, westerns, mysteries, sit-
coms, soap operas, quiz shows, and variety shows. Radio schedules
were printed in the newspapers, and children eagerly planned their days
around listening to certain programs. If you missed your show, of course,
there would be no way to replay it. The hand-wringing over the content
of radio was accompanied by complaints about household arguments
over what program would be chosen, how to get kids to take breaks for
homework or dinner, and general concerns that other activities were
being neglected or forgotten. Even more serious, as in the case with early
movies, there was concern among some adults that these violent shows
inspired criminal behavior, and links to juvenile delinquency were sug-
gested in many articles.
 MOVIES AND RADIO 17

Women’s organizations discussed the negative influence of radio on

family life, complaining that these programs, full of murders, revenge,
and crime caused nightmares. They pushed for kid-friendly program-
ming, as News-week reported in 1933. “Bed-time stories will no longer
be punctuated by anguished yelps of fear from young radio listeners, no
longer followed by distressing nightmares, if the women of Scarsdale
and other well-to-do New York suburbs and towns have anything to
say about it.”11 One of the mothers in this article is quoted: “It is inter-
esting to note … that some of the programs we consider worst are the
ones the children like best.” The mainstream press published reports on
the efforts of these groups to change radio shows: “Wanted: Shows that
Won’t Upset Young Digestions,” News-week reported in 1935, observing
that radio is by far the most popular pastime for young people: “All the
year round radio for children stands head and shoulders above books,
puzzles, adventure stories and phonograph records.”12 These groups had
some success in influencing programming, but it was readily acknowl-
edged that the violent, suspenseful shows were (not surprisingly!) the
ones that children preferred. This 1937 description of children listen-
ing to the radio in the evening reveals the content that was regularly
presented:

Small fry … shudder delightedly while guns belch yellow flame and heads
are split and hearts are broken. They gasp as airplanes roar down through
imaginary skies to drop bombs on supposedly unworthy people who pop-
ulate certain imaginary sections of the radio earth. And their eyes widen
appreciatively when men die suddenly on city pavements or wield blunt
instruments with deplorable results.13

One Senator recommended “a reduction in the ‘daily radio diet of

crime and horror stories,’ telling the Senate that they keep children
from healthful outdoor play, from school lessons and from household
duties.”14 In 1937, the Commissioner of the FCC made a pamphlet
demonstrating a “wave of protest” from parents, which included many
complaints he had received about radio programming and its effects on
children, which was widely reported in magazines and newspapers. “The
common testimony of the mothers and fathers is that the children can-
not be dragged away from the entrancing, if nerve-racking ‘doings of
outlaws, gangsters, murderers, ghosts and phantom heroes.’” One letter
from a parent explained:
18 K. LEICK

There has been more discord in this house, caused by three small children,
eight, ten and twelve. They will do absolutely nothing while these night-
mares, as you call them, are on the air. They will not practice at the piano,
neither will they do their studies or set the table. They cannot be driven
out of doors to play in the open air. They will fight every one in the house
to listen to this trashy blood-curling stuff. The last one that I heard ran
like this: ‘Put a rope around his neck, string him up, shoot him, etc.’15

The time youth spent listening to the radio was seen as a waste—taking
away from healthy and educational activities. In short, in the 1930s, par-
ents believed that kids were distracted, even addicted, to media that was
unhealthy. Sound familiar?
The other new adjustment for families was the incredible amount of
advertising on the radio. Catchy jingles, dramatic scenes that mentioned
products, and endorsements from announcers or the hosts of variety and
quiz shows were constant—advertising was an essential part of the radio
experience. Some of the groups who objected to violent content also dis-
cussed the pernicious influence of these sponsors on the content of radio
programs. They saw that advertisers cared about the popularity of pro-
grams, not the quality, and it was obvious to parents that the desire for
profit was driving the proliferation of crime and horror serials. Radio sta-
tions and advertisers had no conscience, parents complained: they were
just out to make as much money as possible. As one mother explained in
the Ladies’ Home Journal,

We women can talk ourselves hoarse about the bad effects of children’s
programs and it won’t mean a thing, because the basis of judging the pop-
ularity of commercial programs is the amount of sales … The only way to
solve the problem of how to have decent, worthwhile programs on the air,
whether they are for children or for adults, is to let the advertisers know
what we want.16

The New York Times’ hilariously headlined article “Radio Denounced as

Peril to Young: ‘Moronic Programs’ Usurping Children’s Leisure Time,
Educator Asserts” was about a lecture that “urged parents to throw off
the ‘strangling’ influence of Tarzan, Buck Rogers and other ‘moronic’
children’s programs.”17 As a result of the pressure women’s organizations
put on networks, there were some changes made to the programming
aimed at children. In 1939, “Five children’s radio programs of the ‘blood
 MOVIES AND RADIO 19

and thunder’ variety have been withdrawn from national radio networks
and the remainder are doomed to disappear soon through the efforts of
a new women’s organization known as the Radio Council of Children’s
Programs … Dick Tracy, one of the most popular of the juvenile hair-rais-
ers, left the air some months ago.”18 Other programs like Superman
were considered more desirable, but as an article in the Washington Post
explained, Superman may be an attempt to promote moral lessons, but
“it is still a gun and gang show. Children care little whether the ‘bad
guys’ have broken the Sixth and Eighth Commandments or the Golden
Rule as long as there’s plenty of shooting.”19
Of course, it was widely acknowledged that adult crime and horror
serials were even more popular with young people than the children’s
shows. It was generally acknowledged that this content wasn’t appropri-
ate for kids, yet they all seemed to listen to these shows. One humor-
ous story in Time magazine explained that one of the most popular radio
villain actors, Ralph Bell, didn’t allow his own son to listen to his pro-
grams. His wife is quoted in the article, reprimanding their son: “Brian!
Naughty! … How many times must I tell you, you must never listen to
your father on the radio!”20
The complaints about radio were occasionally hilarious. One father
wrote a letter to the Saturday Evening Post capturing the atmosphere in
his home:

Ever since we got the radio fixed, my life has been filled with terror. I am
taking my usual nap – let us say – when a blood-curling scream pierces the
air and a voice from the children’s room cries, “Dabney! You – you’re to
going to – to kill me!” another voice says, “You will hand me the precious
ruby from the Huam Sing Buddha’s left ear or – ”

I dash to the children to find that they are merely listening to David
Ginsberg, Super Private Detective – sponsored by Mother Jones’
Homemade Bread, Factories Everywhere.

Later in the day, I am about to dip into a lukewarm tub and reverie
when three shots from a pistol ring out, and the dull thud of a human
body is heard. I dash to the living room to find my wife innocently
hooking a doily and lending an ear to Winnie Poohie, Child Detective –
sponsored by Old Mother Hubbards’ Homemade Dog Bones, Factories
Everywhere.
20 K. LEICK

Day and night the house is filled with screams, sirens, gunshots, wicked
shrill laughter, moans, creaking doors, moans of zombies and the everlast-
ing question, “Tell me, Detective Hindsight, how did you ever discover
the murderer was Elsie Blemish?”

It’s bad enough on the radio, but lately, the children have taken to tip-
toeing into my room and pressing a cap pistol into my back with a high
soprano shout of, “You made one little mistake, Killer McWheedle. You
left a footprint on the lawn of your ex-wife’s polo-pony stable.” Or,
“Drop that gun, Hans; the plans for the atomic bomb will never reach the
Fatherland.”

… So help me, if this sort of thing goes on, I am going to buy a Superman
suit and jump out the window. EE-E-E-E-EE!21

One of the most striking things to me about this description, besides

the humor, is that it suggests that children were exposed to graphic
violence in a way that most young children today are not. Recent cri-
tiques of young people and media often suggest that children used to
be more innocent, sheltered from adult themes, playing outside, away
from media. Yet, here were kids growing up during the Great Depression
or World War II, bombarded with scenes of crime, mystery, torture,
and revenge. This excitement on the radio seduced the whole family, tak-
ing the place of other activities.
In the 1940s, another concern became prominent: adults were wor-
ried about copy-cat crimes inspired by the illegal activities so frequently
depicted on the radio and in the movies. “Juvenile Delinquency” became
a hot topic in the press, and parents began to fear that kids were being
encouraged to participate in anything from vandalism to robberies to drug
use. One Senator explained that the “crime and horror stories” not only

keep children from healthful outdoor play, from school lessons, and from
household duties. They also, he declared, increase emotional tension and
irritability, cause sleeplessness, and bad dreams and “premature acquaint-
ance with the sordid and eloquent aspects of social life.”22

The Los Angeles Times reported in July 1947: “Radio Horror Programs
Protested,” because they “created a reaction of fear or immoral impulses
in the minds of juveniles.”23 As one mother explained in the Ladies’
Home Journal:
 MOVIES AND RADIO 21

Children come home from school, turn on the radio, and what do they
hear? They hear stories of disobedience to parents, disregard of law, indif-
ference to school, the condoning of illicit love affairs, the acceptance of
divorce, all told with a sensational background and by characters whose
ages range from twelve years to—well, to the dotage. I am not speaking
here of children’s programs, so-called, but of those trashy stories that are
supposed to entertain the likes of me, a housewife! It disgusts me!24

And radio was not the only pastime that concerned parents in the
1930s and 40s. Movies now had sound, were feature length, and could
be viewed in well-designed, comfortable theaters in cities and towns
throughout the country. In 1933, it was estimated that children spent
167 hours a year watching movies (about 1.6 movies a week). In the
early 1930s, movies that depicted detectives, gangsters, crime and “hor-
ror” were some of the most popular with youth in this Pre-Code era,
movies with amazing titles and sensational movie posters, including Born
Reckless (1930), The Doorway to Hell (1930), The Public Enemy (1931),
City Streets (1931), The Beast of the City (1932), Scarface (1932), The
Mayor of Hell (1933), Murders in the Zoo (1933). Many, such as Gang
Busters (1942), were based on radio serials.
It is easy to see how much concern there was about the effect of these
movies on youth, in popular magazines, the newspapers, and schol-
arly studies. Numerous book-length analyses were published on the
subject in 1933, such as: Getting Ideas from the Movies; Motion Pictures
and the Social Attitudes of Children; Movies, Delinquency and Crime;
The Emotional Responses of Children to the Motion Picture Situation.25 In
July 1934, after this high point in public anxiety which was fueled by
an aggressive campaign on the part of the Catholic Church, the Motion
Picture Association of American began enforcing a controversial set of
moral guidelines called the Motion Picture Production Code of America
in order to avoid government censorship of the Hollywood industry.
As Karen Sternheimer explains, motion pictures did not enjoy the pro-
tection of the First Amendment, as a result of a 1915 Supreme Court
decision which argued that the movies, like a circus, were “a business”
with the goal of “profit.” It was not until 1952 that this ruling was over-
turned.26 The graphic violence, sexuality, and profanity in films in the
second half of that decade were reduced, but there was still plenty of dis-
turbing content in the movies after that date to alarm parents. In 1937,
Better Homes and Gardens explained in an ominous caption clearly meant
22 K. LEICK

to increase anxiety: “Movies are powerful a formative force as is home

or school.” But what were the kids learning there? The only solution
offered by this article was for parents to not allow kids to go to the mov-
ies, which many did on school nights as well as the weekend.

Now, who is to blame when children attend movies too often, or attend
at night when they should be in bed? … On parents, and on them alone,
rests the responsibility for seeing that children don’t attend the movies too
often, don’t go at night, and keep away from horror and other objection-
able pictures.

This is reminiscent of the many article and blogs we see today, which
implore parents to take an active role in limiting screen time. It is not the
media itself that is the problem; it is the lack of parental involvement and
control.
In order to address the disturbing content that was consumed by vir-
tually every young person, some educators suggested that high schools
introduce classes that would “help them enjoy good art and drama more
deeply and criticize bad pictures more intelligently.”27 The theory was
that once young people took these “movie appreciation” courses, they
might prefer higher quality, more educational films, and they might
reject the sensational, graphic, trashy movies they watched so frequently.
While this idea certainly had good intentions, it’s easy to see how much
these teachers underestimated the power of horror and spectacle to
attract audiences. They didn’t understand the element of pleasure and
escape that was so important to young viewers, or that finding an enter-
tainment that alienated adults was part of the appeal.
The attraction of young people to media that parents did not enjoy
or found harmful or distasteful also applied to the music that young
people enjoyed on the radio in the 1920s and 1930s. Before the intro-
duction of the radio and the phonograph, live music was the only avail-
able option. This limited the music that Americans in any region of the
country might experience. Radio and the phonograph changed all that,
and caused a national panic as the music that teens wanted to listen to in
the home was new and strange to their parents. The new, controversial
form of music that was soon heard from coast to coast, in both rural and
urban America, was jazz.
Many studies have examined the prejudices and racism that inform
the early negative reactions to jazz and its apparent effects on young
 MOVIES AND RADIO 23

people. References to the African jungle, sensual dancing, and primitiv-

ism were common in descriptions and warnings about the new music
that were published by white cultural critics. A 1918 article in Current
Opinion, for example, explained that “One touch of jazz makes savages
of us all,” while Anne Shaw Faulkner warned in her 1921 “Does Jazz
Put the Sin in Syncopation?” in Ladies’ Home Journal that jazz “might
invoke savage instincts.”28 From John R. McMahon’s “Unspeakable Jazz
Must Go!” in the Ladies’ Home Journal (December 1921) to Edmund
Wilson’s “The Jazz Problem” in the New Republic (January 1926),
American readers regularly encountered a panic not unlike discussions of
the movies and radio dramas.29
There were some differences, however, in the ways music was dis-
cussed. Jazz was intimately associated with jazz clubs and dancing in the
minds of adults who feared and reviled the new music. Although there
were some mentions of the popularity of jazz on the radio, most of the
concern was directed toward dance halls that played the “sensuous”
music. As a New York Times story reported, women’s groups began a
“crusade for better dance halls” because they felt that “many of the 600
jazz places for young people [were] in need of regulation.” Some were
even “immoral”!30 As the St. Louis Post Dispatch explained later that year,
it was the “slow jazz” that was the worst influence at these dance halls:
“The report, based on careful study of all phases of the dance-hall prob-
lem, declares the tempo of ‘slow jazz’ is ‘in itself the cause of most of the
sensual and freakish dancing.’”31
In the early days of radio, there were lively debates about what should
be broadcast on the air, and what the purpose of radio should be. Was
its role to entertain, or educate listeners? As Michele Hilmes has argued,
there was also anxiety that radio would harm other media and entertain-
ment by making too much content free and available to any home with
a radio. Newspapers worried that if news was broadcast on the air, peo-
ple would not buy newspapers; sports teams worried that fans would not
attend live games if they could hear them on the radio; record companies
believed that people would not buy records if the same music could be
heard on any radio; musicians thought that live music would become less
popular. These last two concerns were addressed by Westinghouse, with
the introduction of a new class of radio broadcasters. The more desirable
Class B stations were more powerful, and could reach longer distances;
and they were required to broadcast “live talent” instead of recorded
music. One clear result was the reduction of jazz on the radio.32
Another random document with
no related content on Scribd:
mundo no harán conpasion las
lagrimas que vertemos, las
lastimas que dezimos, los
sospiros que damos? ¿Quál no
creerá las razones iuradas, quál
no creerá la fé certificada, á quál
no moveran las dadiuas grandes,
en quál coraçon no harán fruto las
alabanças devidas, en quál
voluntad no hará mudança la
firmeza cierta, quál se podra
defender del continuo seguir? Por
cierto segund las armas con que
son conbatidas, avnque las
menos se defendiesen, no era
cosa de marauillar y antes
deurian ser las que no pueden
defenderse alabadas por
piadosas que retraydas por
culpadas.

PRUEUA POR ENXENPLOS LA

BONDAD
DE LAS MUGERES
Para que las loadas virtudes
desta nacion fueran tratadas
segund merecen avisé de poner
mi deseo en otra plática porque
no turbase mi lengua ruda su
bondad clara, como quiera que ni
loor pueda crecella ni malicia
apocalla segund su propiedad. Si
vuiese de hazer memoria de las
castas y virgines pasadas y
presentes, convenia que fuese
por diurna reuelacion, porque son
y an sido tantas que no se puede
con el seso humano
conprehender, pero dire de
algunas que he leydo assi
cristianas como gentiles y indias
por enxenplar con las pocas la
virtud de las muchas. En las
autorizadas por santas por tres
razones no quiero hablar. La
primera porque lo que a todos es
manifiesto parece simpleza
repetillo. La segunda porque la
yglesia les da devida y uniuersal
alabança. La tercera por no poner
en tan malas palabras tan
ecelente bondad, en especial la
de Nuestra Señora que quantos
dotores y deuotos y
contenplatiuos en ella hablaron no
pudieron llegar al estado que
merecia la menor de sus
ecelencias, assi que me baxo a lo
llano donde mas libremente me
puedo mouer. De las castas
gentiles començaré en Lucrecia,
corona de la nacion romana, la
qual fue muger de Colatyno y
siendo forçada de Tarquino hizo
llamar a su marido y venido
donde ella estaua dixole: sabras,
Colatyno, que pisadas de onbre
ageno ensuziaron tu lecho donde
avnque el cuerpo fue forçado
quedó el coraçon inocente,
porque soy libre de la culpa, mas
no me asueluo de la pena porque
ninguna dueña por enxenplo mio
pueda ser vista errada. Y
acabando estas palabras acabó
con vn cuchillo su vida. Porcia fue
hija del noble Caton y muger de
Bruto varon virtuoso, la qual
sabiendo la muerte dél, aquexada
de graue dolor acabó sus dias
comiendo brasas por hazer
sacrificio de si misma. Penelope
fue muger de Ulixes, e ydo él a la
guerra troyana, siendo los
mancebos de Ytalia aquexados
de su hermosura pidieronla
muchos dellos en casamiento, y
deseosa de guardar castidad a su
marido, por defenderse dellos
dixo que le dexassen conplir vna
tela como acostunbrauan las
señoras de aquel tienpo
esperando a sus maridos, y que
luego haria lo que le pedian, y
como le fuese otorgado, con
astucia sotyl, lo que texia de dia
deshazia de noche, en cuya lauor
pasaron veynte años, despues de
los quales venido Ulixes vieio,
solo, destruydo, asi lo recibio la
casta dueña como si viniera en
fortuna de prosperidad. Julia hija
del Cesar primero enperador en el
mundo, siendo muger de Ponpeo
en tanta manera lo amaua que
trayendo vn dia sus vestiduras
sangrientas, creyendo ser muerto,
cayda en tierra supitamente
murio. Artemisa entre los mortales
tan alabada, como fuese casada
con Mauzol rey de Ycaria, con
tanta firmeça lo amó que despues
de muerto le dió sepultura en sus
pechos, quemando sus huesos en
ellos, la ceniza de los quales poco
a poco se beuio y despues de
acabados los oficios que en el
auto se requerian creyendo que
se yua para el matóse con sus
manos. Argia fue hija del rey
Adrastro y caso con Pollinices hijo
de Edipo rey de Tebas, y como
Pollinices en vna batalla a manos
de su hermano muriese, sabido
della salio de Tebas, sin temer la
inpiedad de sus enemigos, ni la
braueza de las fieras bestias, ni la
ley del enperador, la qual vedaua
que ningun cuerpo muerto se
leuantase del canpo, fue por su
marido en las tinieblas de la
noche y hallandolo ya entre otros
muchos cuerpos leuolo a la
ciudad y haziendole quemar
segund su costunbre, con
amargosas lagrimas hizo poner
sus cenizas en una arca de oro,
prometiendo su vida a perpetua
castidad. Ipola greciana,
nauegando por la mar quiso su
mala fortuna que tomasen su
nauio los enemigos, los quales
queriendo tomar della mas parte
que les daua, conseruando su
castidad hizose a la vna parte del
nauío y dexada caer en las ondas
pudieron ahogar a ella mas no la
fama de su hazaña loable. No
menos dina de loor fue su muger
de Amed rey de Tesalia, que
sabiendo que era profetizado por
el dios Apolo que su marido
recebiria muerte sino vuiese quien
voluntariamente la tomase por él,
con alegre voluntad porque el rey
biuiese dispuso de se matar. De
las iudias Sarra, muger del padre
Abraham, como fuese presa en
poder del rey Faraon,
defendiendo su castidad con las
armas de la oracion rogó a
nuestro Señor la librase de sus
manos, el qual como quisiese
acometer con ella toda maldad,
oyda en el cielo su peticion
enfermó el rey y conocido que por
su mal pensamiento adolecia, sin
ninguna manzilla la mandó librar.
Delbora dotada de tantas virtudes
mereció aver espiritu de profecia
y no solamente mostró su bondad
en las artes mugeriles mas en las
feroces batalles, peleando contra
los enemigos con virtuoso animo;
y tanta fue su excelencia que
juzgó quarenta años el pueblo
iudayco. Ester siendo leuada a la
catiuidad de Babilonia, por su
virtuosa hermosura, fue tomada
para muger de Asuero, rey que
señoreaua a la sazon ciento y
veynte y siete prouincias, la qual
por sus meritos y oracion libró los
iudios de la catiuidad que tenian.
Su madre de Sanson deseando
aver hijo merecio por su virtud
que el angel le reuelase su
nacimiento de Sanson. Elisabel
muger de Zacarias, como fuese
verdadera sierua de Dios, por su
merecimiento uvo hijo santificado
antes que naciese, el qual fue san
Iuan. De las antiguas cristianas
mas podría traer que escreuir
pero por la breuedad alegaré
algunas modernas de la
castellana nacion.
Doña María Cornel en quien se
començo el linage de los
Corneles, porque su castidad
fuese loada y su bondad no
escurecida quiso matarse con
fuego, auiendo menos miedo a la
muerte que a la culpa.
Doña Isabel, madre que fue del
maestre de Calatraua don
Rodrigo Tellez Giron y de los dos
condes de Hurueña don Alonso y
don Iuan, siendo biuda enfermó
de una graue dolencia, y como los
medicos procurasen su salud,
conocida su enfermedad hallaron
que no podia biuir sino casase, lo
qual como de sus hijos fuese
sabido, deseosos de su vida
dixeronle que en todo caso
recibiese marido, a lo qual ella
respondio: nunca plega a Dios
que tal cosa yo haga, que meior
me es a mi muriendo ser dicha
madre de tales hijos que biuiendo
muger de otro marido; y con esta
casta consideracion assí se dió al
ayuno y disciplina que quando
murio fueron vistos misterios de
su saluacion.
Doña Mari Garcia la beata, siendo
nacida en Toledo del mayor linage
de toda la cibdad, no quiso en su
vida casar, guardando en ochenta
años que biuio la virginal virtud,
en cuya muerte fueron conocidos
y aueriguados grandes miraglos
de los quales en Toledo ay agora
y aurá para sienpre perpetua
recordança.
¡O! pues de las virgenes gentiles:
que podria dezir? Atrisilia, Seuila,
nacida en Babilonya, por su
merito profetizó por reuelacion
diuina muchas cosas aduenideras
conseruando linpia virginidad
hasta que murio. Palas o Minerua
vista primeramente cerca de la
laguna de Tritonio, nueua
inuentora de muchos oficios de
los mugeriles y avn de algunos
delos onbres, virgen biuio y
acabó. Atalante la que primero
hirio el puerco de Calidon, en la
virginidad y nobleza le parecio.
Camila, hija de Macabeo rey de
los bolesques, no menos que las
dichas sostuuo entera virginidad.
Claudia vestal, Clodia romana,
aquella misma ley hasta la muerte
guardaron. Por cierto si el alargar
no fuese enoioso no me
fallecerian daqui a mill años
virtuosos enxenplos que pudiese
dezir. En verdad, Tefeo, segund lo
que as oydo, tú y los que
blasfemays de todo linage de
mugeres soys dinos de castigo
iusto, el qual no esperando que
nadie os lo dé, vosotros mismos
lo tomays pues usando la malicia
condenays la verguença.

BUELUE EL AUCTOR Á LA
ESTORIA
Mucho fueron marauillados los
que se hallaron presentes oyendo
el concierto que Leriano tuvo en
su habla por estar tan cercano a
la muerte, en cuya sazon las
menos vezes se halla sentido; el
qual quando acabó de hablar
tenia ya turbada la lengua y la
vista casi perdida. Ya los suyos no
podiendose contener dauan
bozes, ya sus amigos
comenzauan a llorar, ya sus
vasallos y vasallas gritauan por
las calles, ya todas las cosas
alegres eran bueltas en dolor. Y
como su madre siendo absente,
sienpre le fuese el mal de Leriano
negado, dando mas credito a lo
que tenia que a lo que le dezian,
con ansia de amor maternal
partyda de donde estaua llegó a
Susa en esta triste coiuntura, y
entrada por la puerta todos
quantos la veyan le dauan nueuas
de su dolor mas con bozes
lastimeras que con razones
ordenadas, la qual oyendo que
Leriano estaua en ell agonia
mortal, falleciendole la fuerça, sin
ningun sentido cayó en el suelo y
tanto estuvo sin acuerdo que
todos pensauan que a la madre y
al hijo enterrarian a un tiempo,
pero ya que con grandes
remedios le restituyeron el
conocimiento fuese al hijo y
despues que con traspasamiento
de muerta con muchedumbre de
lagrimas le viuio el rostro[281],
començo en esta manera a dezir.

LLANTO DE SU MADRE DE
LERIANO
¡O alegre descanso de mi vegez,
o dulce hartura de mi voluntad, oy
dexas dezir hijo[282] y yo de más
llamarme madre, de lo qual tenia
temerosa sospecha por las
nueuas señales que en mi vi de
pocos dias a esta parte.
Acaesciame muchas vezes
quando mas la fuerça del sueño
me vencia, recordar con vn
tenblor supito que hasta la
mañana me duraua; otras vezes
quando en mi oratorio me hallaua
rezando por tu salud, desfallecido
el coraçon me cobria de un sudor
frio en manera que dende a gran
pieça tornaua en acuerdo. Hasta
los animales me certificauan tu
mal. Saliendo vn dia de mi
camara vinose vn can para mi y
dió tan grandes aullydos que assi
me corté el cuerpo y la habla que
de aquel lugar no podia mouerme,
y con estas cosas daua mas
credito a mis sospecha que a tus
mensaieros, y por satisfazerme
acordé de venir a veerte donde
hallo cierta la fe que di a los
agueros. ¡O lunbre de mi vista, o
ceguedad della misma, que te veo
morir y no veo la razon de tu
muerte; tú en edad para beuir, tú
temeroso de Dios, tú amador de
la virtud, tú enemigo del vicio, tú
amigo de amigos, tú amado de
los tuyos! Por cierto oy quita la
fuerça de tu fortuna los derechos
a la razon pues mueres sin tienpo
y sin dolencia. Bienauenturados
los baxos de condicion y rudos de
engenio, que no pueden sentir las
cosas sino en el grado que las
entienden, y malauenturados los
que con sotil iuyzio las
trascenden, los quales con el
entendimiento agudo tienen el
sentimiento delgado. Pluguiera a
Dios que fueras tú delos torpes en
el sentir, que meior me estuviera
ser llamada con tu vida madre del
rudo que no a ti por tu fin hijo que
fue de la sola. ¡O muerte cruel
enemiga, que ni perdonas los
culpados ni asuelues los
inocentes! Tan traydora eres que
nadie para contigo tiene defensa;
amenazas para la vejez, y lieuas
en la mocedad; a vnos matas por
malicia y a otros por enuidia,
avnque tardas nunca olbidas, sin
ley y sin orden te riges. Más razon
auia para que conseruases los
veynte años del hijo moço que
para que desases los sesenta de
la vieia madre. ¿Por qué volviste
el derecho al reues? Yo estaua
harta de estar biua y él en edad
de beuir. Perdoname porque asi
te trato, que no eres mala del
todo, porque si con tus obras
causas los dolores, con ellas
mismas los consuelas leuando a
quien dexas con quien leuas, lo
que si comigo hazes mucho te
seré obligada. En la muerte de
Leriano no ay esperança y mi
tormento con la mia recebira
consuelo. ¡O hijo mio, que será de
mi veiez contenplando en el fin de
tu iouentud? Si yo biuo mucho
será porque podran mas mis
pecados que la razon que tengo
para no bivir; ¿con qué puedo
recibir pena mas cruel que con
larga vida? Tan poderoso fue tu
mal que no tuviste para con él
ningund remedio. Ni te valio la
fuerça del cuerpo, ni la virtud del
coraçon, ni el esfuerzo del animo;
todas las cosas de que te podias
valer te fallecieron. Si por precio
de amor tu vida se pudiera
conprar, mas poder tuviera mi
deseo que fuerça la muerte. Mas
para librarte della ni tu fortuna
quiso, ni yo triste pude. Con dolor
será mi beuir y mi comer y mi
pensar y mi dormir basta que tu
fuerça y mi deseo me lieuen a tu
sepoltura.

EL AUCTOR
El lloro que hazia su madre de
Leriano crecia la pena a todos los
que en ella participauan y como él
siempre se acordase de Laureola,
de lo que alli pasaua tenia poca
memoria, y viendo que le
quedaua poco espacio para gozar
de ver las dos cartas que della
tenia, no sabia qué forma se
diese con ellas; quando pensaua
rasgallas pareciale que ofenderia
a Laureola en dexar perder
razones de tanto precio, quando
pensaua poner las en poder de
algun suyo temia que serian
vistas, de donde para quien las
enbió se esperaua peligro. Pues
tomando de sus dudas lo mas
seguro hizo traer una copa de
agua y hechas las cartas pedaços
echoles en ella y acabado esto
mandó que le sentasen en la
cama y sentado beuioselas en el
agua y assi quedó contenta su
voluntad. Y llegada ya la ora de
su fin, puestos en mi los oios dixo:
acabados son mis males, y assi
quedó su muerte en testimonio de
su fe. Lo que yo senty y hize,
ligero está de iuzgar; los lloros
que por él se hizieron son de
tanta lastima que me parece
crueldad escriuillos. Sus onrras
fueron conformes a su
merecimiento, las quales
acabadas acordé de partirme. Por
cierto con meior voluntad
caminara para la otra vida que
para esta tierra. Con sospiros
caminé, con lagrimas party, con
gemidos hablé y con tales
pasatienpos llegué aqui a Peñafiel
donde quedo besando las manos
de vuestra merced.

ACABOSE ESTA OBRA

INTITULADA «CARCEL DE
AMOR»
EN LA MUY NOBLE I MUY LEAL
CIUDAD DE SEUILLA
A TRES DIAS DE MARÇO AÑO
DE 1492
POR QUATRO COMPAÑEROS
ALEMANES
 NOTAS:
[274] Quiero, en la primera edición.
[275] Quizá debe leerse un en vez de en.
[276] Tefeo dice claramente la primera edición, y no Teseo,
aunque más corriente parecía el segundo nombre que el primero.
[277] Atados dice la primera edición.
[278] Querían dice la primera edición.
[279] Cumple dice la primera edición, pero parece errata.
[280] Acaso puliendo.
[281] Parece que debe leerse lavó.
[282] Parece que debe leerse de ser en vez de decir.
 TRACTADO
QVE HIZO
NICOLAS NUÑEZ
SOBRE EL QVE
DIEGO DE SAN
PEDRO
COMPUSO DE
LERIANO Y
LAUREOLA
LLAMADO
"CARCEL DE
AMOR".

Mvy uirtuosos señores: Porque si

conosciendo mi poco saber,
culpardes mi atreuimiento en
uerme poner en acrescentar lo
que de suyo está crescido, quiero,
si pudiere, con mi descargo
satisfazer lo que hize, aunque mi
intencion me descarga. Leyendo
un dia el tractado del no menos
uirtuoso que discreto Diego de
sant Pedro que hizo de carcel de
amor: en la historia de Leriano a
Laureola que endereçó al mvy
uirtuoso senor el senor alcayde
de los Donzeles, parecime que
quando en el cabo del dicho[283]
que Leriano por la respuesta sin
esperança que Laureola le hauia
embiado se dexaua morir, que se
partio desque lo ui muerto para
Castilla a dar la cuenta de lo
passado, que deuiera uenirse por
la corte a dezir a Laureola de
cierto como ya era muerto
Leriano. Y aunque le paresciera
que al muerto no le aprouechaua,
a lo menos satisfiziera se a si si
huuiera en ella alguna muestra de
pesar por lo que hauia hecho;
pves sabia que si Leriano pudiera
alcançar a saber el
arrepentimiento de Laureola diera
su muerte por bien empleada. E
porque me parescio que lo
dexaua en aquella corte con
occupacion de algunos negocios,
o por se desoccupar para
entender en otros que mas le
cumplian, no lo hize yo por dezillo
mejor, mas por saber si a la
firmeza de Leriano en la muerte
daua algun galardon, pues en la
uida se lo hauia negado, acordé
hazer este tractado que para la
publicacion de mi falta fuera mvy
mejor no hazello; en lo qual quise
dezir: que desque el avctor lo uido
morir e uido que se hizieron sus
honras, segun sus merecimientos;
e los llantos, segun el dolor; se
fue por do Laureola estaua, e le
contó la muerte del injustamente
muerto, lo qual fenesce en el
cabo que ella dió, e comiença
desta manera.

EL AVCTOR
Pves despues que ui que a la
muerte dél sin piedad
consintiendo morir no podia
remediar, ni a mi consolar, acordé
de me partir para mi tierra, de
baxo de la qual antes quisiera
morar que en la memoria de mi
pensamiento, e por uer e por oyr
las cosas que en la corte de su
muerte se dezian y Laureola por
él hazia, pensé de me yr por alli,
assi por esto, como por
despedirme de algunos amigos
que en ella tenia, y por dezir a
Laureola (si en disposicion de
arrepentida la uiesse) quanto á
mal le era contado entre los leales
amadores la crueldad que usó
contra tan quien merecido el
galardon le tenia; yo que en mi
partida, no poca priessa me daua
por huyr de aquel lugar donde le
ui morir, por ver si fuyendo
pudiera partirme de pensar en él,
llegué a la corte más
acompañado de tristeza que de
gana de biuir, membrandome
como el que de su conoscimiento
me dió principio hauia ya hecho
fin, e despues de reposar, no que
el pensar reposasse, fuyme a
palacio, donde con mucha tristeza
de muchos que su muerte sabian
fui recebido. E despues de
contalles la secreta muerte del
amigo suyo y enemigo de sí,
fuyme a la sala donde solia
Laureola hablarme, por uer si la
ueria. Pero yo que la uista de las
lagrimas que por él lloraua tenia
quasi perdida, mirando no la
ueya, e como ella tan
embaraçado me uiesse, e como
discreta sospechando que le
queria hablar, creyendo que no la
hauia uisto se bolvio a la camara
do hauia salido; pero yo que el
sentir tan perdido como el uer no
tenia, sentí que se yua, e buelto
en mi ui que era la que a Leriano
sin uida, e a mi sin anima hauia
hecho. A la qual con muchas
lagrimas e penados sospiros en
esta manera comenzé a dezir.

PROSIGUE EL AVCTOR A
LAUREOLA
¡Qvanto me estuuiera mejor
perder la uida que conoscer tu
mucha crueza e poca piedad!
Digo esto, señora, porque assi
quisiera con razon alabarte de
generosa en uerte satisfazer los
seruicios con tanta fe hechos,
como la tengo en loar mucho tu
fermosura e gran merecer, e no
que dieras la muerte a quien
tantas uezes con mucha uoluntad
por tu seruicio quería tomalla. E
pues esto esperauas hazer, no
engañaras a él, ni cansaras a mi,
ni turbaras la limpieza de tú linaje.
Cata que las de tan alta sangre
como tú, mas son obligadas a
satisfazer el menor seruicio del
mundo, si dél son consentidoras,
que a guardar su mayor honra;
que cierta te hago que si su
muerte uieras, siempre tu uida
lloraras; mira quanto le eres en
cargo, que en el tiempo de su
morir, quien mas memoria de su
alma e de su cuerpo hauia de
tener, se membró de tus cartas,
las quales fechas pedaços, en
agua beuió, porque nadie dellas
memoria huuiesse, e por lleuar
consigo alguna cosa tuya, e
porque mas compassion hayas
dél en la muerte que huuiste en la
uida, te hago saber que si como
yo lo uieras morir, de compassion
hizieras en presencia lo que en
ausencia tu poco amor e mucho
oluido fizieron que no feziste. O
quantos su muerte llorauan e la
causa no sabian! pero a mi que el
secreto no se me escondió, con
mas razon mucho mas que a
nadie pesaua, membrandome
como en tu mano estaua su uida,
uiendo tu mucha crueldad e su
poco remedio, a él heziste morir e
a su madre, porque no muere, e a
mi que biuiendo muera. No creo
que codicias la uida, conosciendo
lo que has hecho, sino en que
sabes que pocos lo sabian, e
agora temerás menos la fama de
tu mala fama que ues clara mi
muerte, do aunque quiera no
quedará quien tu crueza
publicara. No pensé tan poco
dezirte, ni tanto miedo mostrarte.
E si con la calidad te enojo, con la
cantidad te contento. Pues si gran
razon hauia de osar, mas no de
acabar tan ayna; e si por atreuido
algo merezco, mandame matar,
que mas merced me harás en
darme la muerte que en dexarme
tal uida.

SIGUE EL AVCTOR
Mvy assossegada estuuo
Laureola a todo quanto le dixe, no
porque el rostro no mostraua las
alteraciones del coraçon, pero
como discreta suffriendo las
lagrimas dissimulando el enojo,