CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK PT 3

 Season the third, but without the Great Bird.

SPOCK'S BRAIN-- The argument: "Brain and brain-- males are only good for one thing; having their brains sucked out of their heads." "Sorry, my dear, we're going to KEEP our brains where they are. But as a consolation prize, we'll do away with your gynocentric dominatrix culture and restore equity between the sexes-- see later episode TURNABOUT INTRUDER for details."

THE ENTERPRISE INCIDENT-- Now it's time for the Trekkers to play "KEEPING up with the Romulans" by stealing their tech. The only "sharing" is interrupted between Spock and the sexy Romulan Commander.

AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD-- Well, no. Contrary to the Gospel saying, even godlike powers don't make a bunch of little kids into leaders, any more than it worked for big kid Charlie X. So they have to KEEP to their own lane.

IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY? -- The Trekkers think their emissary Spock ought to be able to SHARE the privilege of communing with an alien ambassador. But his "keeper" doesn't like SHARING, though in the end she's forced to do so.

DAY OF THE DOVE-- Not all energy-beings are as saintly as the Organians; here's one that wants to "keep" hostilities between Trekkers and Klingons going at fever pitch. And this time both groups make the existential decision to SHARE a common interest, if only in survival.

FOR THE WORLD IS HOLLOW AND I HAVE TOUCHED THE SKY-- Once again we have a stratified civilization that must be taught to SHARE a common destiny with the rest of the universe.

PLATO'S STEPCHILDREN-- Hey, Trekkers, you can't confine your attacks to Greek gods, but you gotta go after their philosophers too? Still, nobody's going to cry for the Platonians when they're forced to SHARE parity with other sentients.

WINK OF AN EYE-- "No, thank you; we'd rather KEEP clear of your breeding-pens."

THE EMPATH-- Certain aliens demand that Gem SHARE her very life to prove herself. The Trekkers show the ETs that, "Love means never having to SHARE so much that it kills you."

ELAAN OF TROYIUS-- Unlike "Plato's Stepchildren," this time the Trekkers must teach just one arrogant aristocrat how to SHARE for the sake of her people. However, this time the Trekker captain suffers a bit for Elaan having overSHARED with him.

LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD-- "No, thank you, KEEP both your revolutionaries and reactionaries to your dead planet."

REQUIEM FOR METHUSELAH-- Neither father nor potential son-in-law get to "keep" the lady fair. All they SHARE is mutual tragedy, though Spock has a different form of SHARING-moment.

THE WAY TO EDEN-- Didn't we already do two episodes about "KEEPING off the Eden-grass?" Oh well, space hippies make everything better.

THE CLOUD MINDERS-- Now let's have the Trekkers teach the haves to SHARE with the have-nots-- and with zero mentions of socialism, to boot.

THE SAVAGE CURTAIN-- Wel, you Trekkers *said* you wanted to SHARE the glory of your Liberal perfection with everyone and everyone's dog. So why would you object to dramatizing your beliefs by acting them out?

TURNABOUT INTRUDER-- If there's one person with whom you don't want to "share" your body and soul, it's your vengeful, possibly hormonal ex. Kirk has to figure out how to KEEP his sunny side up long enough to convince his fellow Trekkers that he's not a victim of gender dysphoria and that he really wants to KEEP his male soul in his male body.       

 

 

ENTERPRISING EXECUTIVES

I've been giving, both in my three-part CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK essay-series and in a forthcoming review of the first season of the series STAR TREK PICARD, considerable thought to the differing ethical systems of the 1966-68 STAR TREK and the 1987-94 STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION. 

My starting point, almost inevitably, is David Gerrold's observation from his popularization of Star Trek fandom, THE WORLD OF STAR TREK: that Gene Roddenberry's creation was President Lyndon B. Johnson's "Great Society in Space." The idea might or might not have been original to Gerrold, but it's substantially correct, with one major amendment. Though Johnson was unquestionably the man in the oval office during the three seasons of The Original Series (henceforth TOS), the two policies with which Johnson is most associated-- the "liberal" policy of the Civil Rights Act and the "conservative" one of Communist containment via the continuation of the Vietnam War-- had their genesis in the tenure of Johnson's predecessor John F. Kennedy. Thus the ethos of TOS, with its skillful balance of Liberal and Conservative ethical propositions, derives from Kennedy-- who incidentally was also the first "space age" American Prez-- to the extent that said ethos derives from any President at all.

Naturally I am not, any more than Gerrold, arguing a conscious attempt by Roddenberry or any of his collaborators to pattern their work after any public statements by any political figure. Professionals producing television shows in that era sought to reach the largest possible audience by transforming political propositions into fictional flights of fancy. Kennedy and Johnson alike should be viewed less as direct influences and more as cultural touchstones.

With that concept of ethos-orientation in mind, how should one regard the ethos of STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION (aka TNG). As it happens, two Presidents reigned during TNG's seven years. However, only one held office during the first three years of the show, which also happen to be the years during which Gene Roddenberry's influence over TNG progressively waned, partly due to the poor health that took his life in 1991.

Was TNG a reflection of President Jimmy Carter's ethos of America? Any resemblances may be less evident than the Kennedy influence on TOS. But where Kennedy was precipitate in his decisions, Carter's tenure was marked by caution. Kennedy sought to inspire citizens with high-sounding rhetoric; Carter was more down-to-earth. Most of all, Kennedy told Americans that they should ask what they could do for their country, while Carter, in the wake of the Nixon scandal, told his constituents "I'll never lie to you."

The characters of TNG, in their earliest conception, have one dominant trait in common with Jimmy Carter: over-earnestness. In the 1980s, as Roddenberry saw the franchise he'd created taken over by other hands, TNG gave him his last chance to infuse a teleseries with his guiding ethos. Yet this time he didn't want a series that stressed heroic action and character conflict. As many TNG critics have observed, Roddenberry wanted characters who had advanced beyond personal interest, not least with regard to that old devil sensuality. As the characters lacked personality in those early years, the players couldn't do much except to pontificate-- though always with the most earnest attitudes possible. For me, as a viewer not much impressed with TNG's early years, the culmination of this tendency appeared most egregiously in the first-season episode "Skin of Evil," which I call "The One Where Picard Has Righteous Conversations with an Oil Slick." 

TNG fans would aver that in later years the show transcended that period. I would have to do a complete rewatch to see if I agreed, but I tend to think that the ethos of TNG was always compromised by its impractical nature. And yet, many fans of TNG did not like the first season of PICARD, and I did-- which promises an interesting if one-sided discussion as to where the TNG universe finally took a good turn.                   

             

THE READING RHEUM: THE HOUND OF THE BASKERVILLES (1902)

I've probably read Doyle's HOUND two or three times just for pleasure, but not since starting this blog in 2007. I recall occasionally ascribing high mythicity to the novel in this or that essay, but I never analyzed the book, even though the story is one of the best-known in literature, making it something of a "popular myth." That, however, doesn't count in terms of my charting a narrative's epistemological patterns. I have reviewed at least four cinematic adaptations of HOUND on the movie-blog, and I've never discerned high mythicity even in the two best and most famous films, the 1939 Fox film and the 1959 Hammer outing. 

Having reread the book now with my myth-stalker's hat on, I find that Doyle was in no way subtle about his primary myth-theme. The author hints at that theme in the first chapter, when Holmes and Watson discuss the pedigree of their client Dr. Mortimer by consulting a medical directory (the Victorian version of the Internet). They find that the doctor has authored articles with titles like "Is Disease a Reversion?" and "Some Freaks of Atavism." This concern with the distant past plays into the case Mortimer had brought to Holmes. The doctor tells Holmes and Watson that he half-believes in the Baskerville curse, that may have killed the former baronet Charles and may yet take the life of the sole heir. Sir Henry.

I've mentioned in one film-review that there's never a possibility, in Holmes' modern London, that there exists a demon-hound that slew the Baskervilles' degenerate ancestor in the 17th century, or one that might take the life of Sir Henry. Holmes duly mocks the very idea, despite taking the case. In the end the existence of a demon-hound matters less than the fact that the world that bred such superstitions still endures. Thus the still-savage land of Dartmoor can cast a spell upon some Victorian men, as attested by Watson when, as Holmes' agent, he first views the wild moorland around Baskerville Hall:

MY DEAR HOLMES: My previous letters and telegrams have kept you pretty well up to date as to all that has occurred in this most God-forsaken corner of the world. The longer one stays here the more does the spirit of the moor sink into one's soul, its vastness, and also its grim charm. When you are once out upon its bosom you have left all traces of modern England behind you, but, on the other hand, you are conscious everywhere of the homes and the work of the prehistoric people. On all sides of you as you walk are the houses of these forgotten folk, with their graves and the huge monoliths which are supposed to have marked their temples. As you look at their gray stone huts against the scarred hillsides you leave your own age behind you, and if you were to see a skin-clad, hairy man crawl out from the low door fitting a flint-tipped arrow on to the string of his bow, you would feel that his presence there was more natural than your own. The strange thing is that they should have lived so thickly on what must always have been most unfruitful soil. I am no antiquarian, but I could imagine that they were some unwarlike and harried race who were forced to accept that which none other would occupy.

The curse of the Baskervilles might not extend back to the days of prehistoric menhirs, but the event that brought about the supposed curse, in which a hot-blooded lord dedicated his soul to Satan for the sexual possession of an innocent maiden, remains no less remote from the experience of Victorian Londoners. 

And yet, England has its share of non-superstitious degeneracy. Selden, the murderer who haunts the moors, is directly compared to a caveman when Watson first sees him. Master plotter Stapleton, the one who arranged his uncle's death and tries to do the same with his cousin Henry, is called a "throwback" when Holmes descries how much a portrait of a 17th-century Baskerville resembles Stapleton. Stapleton's real name is the same as that of his father Rodger Baskerville, and no one knew of Stapleton's existence because he was born abroad, when his father left England under some cloud. In fact, a fair number of modern Britons have similar clouds. Stapleton and his wife Beryl get involved in some vague corruption long before the hound plot, and Laura Lyons, one of Stapleton's pawns, suffers from having made a bad marriage, though Doyle imputes all the wrongdoing to a no-good husband. If, as Mortimer believes, all disease really is a "reversion" to some less exalted state, that would include the disease of crime, which can be cured only by the relentless logic of a master detective.

While the cinema has its own ways of conveying mythicity, so far even the most faithful adaptations of HOUND known to me haven't been able to tune into Doyle's myth-theme. After finishing the novel, I re-watched the 1939 version again. Sure enough, the script only uses the prehistoric settings briefly and doesn't even show the villain meeting the harsh justice of a death in the Grimpen Mire. It's not impossible, though, that there's some HOUND-film I've not seen that taps into the deeper theme, and I look forward to finding it. 

ADDENDUM: I didn't originally apply the "clansgression" label to the 1902 novel, because Doyle downplays the fact that Stapleton is Sir Henry's cousin. And the author certainly does not pass comment on the fact that when Stapleton seeks to pimp out his wife by causing Sir Henry to fall for the glamorous Beryl, he's "sharing" her with a first cousin, even though (1) no sexual congress takes place, (2) Beryl does not become emotionally entwined with Henry as he does with her, and (3) Stapleton/Baskerville becomes jealous of the tete-a-tete even though no transgression has occurred. The novel ends with Stapleton's death and the assertion that Beryl knew nothing of the murder plot, implying that she'll be exonerated of complicity-- though Doyle also devotes little space to the cooling of Henry's passion for his cousin's wife.  

        

CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK PT 2

 Second season, for the same reason.

AMOK TIME-- Kirk is told to "keep" his place. But if he did that, how would everyone have found out that even for a Vulcan, a mere mating-drive can't compete with the bonds forged by mutual SHARING of dangers and adventures. ("Slash" interpretations not considered.)

WHO MOURNS FOR ADONAIS? -- If earlier episodes told the Trekkers to KEEP clear of "men like gods," what chance does a mere ET-god have in the Roddenverse?

THE CHANGELING-- These mergers between mechanical devices of different power-levels rarely work out, and the Trekkers have to teach Nomad that he should have KEPT within his own lane. 

MIRROR, MIRROR-- Lurking beneath every sincere devotee of the Trekkers' humanism lies the mirror-reversed image of a Machiavellian, questing for pure power. And yet despite this fact, the world of naked power-politics must and will SHARE the same destiny of the world of squishy Liberals. 

THE APPLE-- What's the point of living in a world where you "share" everything but sex? Once again, it's necessary to KEEP all those officious gods out of the way in order to realize mankind's (almost) atheist destiny.

CATSPAW-- And while you're at it, make sure you also tell all witches and warlocks to KEEP off the Trekkers' lawns.     

  

I, MUDD-- At the same time, the Trekkers must remain ever alert to KEEP down all those upstart A.I. who can't appreciate the logic of the wreath of pretty birds that smell bad-- or was that the logic of the tweeting flowers?

METAMORPHOSIS-- You can't overSHARE more than to learn that your nice, clean first contact with an ET was actually her idea of Boogie Nights. And yet this time, the prospects for this mixed marriage look positive.

JOURNEY TO BABEL-- The SHARING of common goals by civilized races is all very well, but father and son SHARING in the (light) mockery of the wife/mother is the real standout ethic here.

OBSESSION-- Kirk as Ahab? Or once again, is he saved by SHARING the eminently sane priorities of all faithful Trekkers?

THE TROUBLE WITH TRIBBLES-- See what happens when you "share" too much? You learn you to KEEP your decks clear of those verminous critters that'll eat you out of house and home if you let them. You know. Progressives.

THE GAMESTERS OF TRISKELION-- Just like the Mirror Universe, all big-brained aliens must learn to SHARE in the glories of representative democracy.

A PIECE OF THE ACTION-- On the other hand, "sharing" scientific innovations with gangsta ETs might make you wish you'd just KEPT traveling past that particular planet.

A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR-- Call this one "KEEPING up with the Klingons," not in terms of conspicuous consumption but rather military escalation. "Sharing" a disease isn't altogether ethical.

BY ANY OTHER NAME-- As in "Arena" and "Mirror, Mirror," the very process of "keeping" your borders can lead to mutual respect and the SHARING of common humanity.

THE OMEGA GLORY-- Nothing says SHARING like worlds so parallel they even have the natives mangling their Latin.

BREAD AND CIRCUSES-- Only some minor SHARING of parallel evolution-- regarding, of all things, revealed religion.

ASSGNMENT EARTH-- The Trekkers learn that they're not the only cosmic busybodies seeking to SHARE beneficent ethics with lesser worlds-- even such primitive frontier-planets as 1960s Earth.

(Second season episodes excluded: THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE, FRIDAY'S CHILD, THE DEADLY YEARS, WOLF IN THE FOLD, THE IMMUNITY SYNDROME, RETURN TO TOMORROW, PATTERNS OF FORCE, THE ULTIMATE COMPUTER.)

               

CLASSIC-LIBERAL TREK PT 1

In my original essay-series KEEPING VS SHARING, starting here, I provided an overview of the ways in which Liberal ethics prioritized "Sharing" while Conservative ethics prioritized "Keeping." The nature of that overview, though, meant that I could not address certain fine points.  

One personal point is that for most of my life, I considered myself a Liberal. However, I belonged to that now almost extinct subspecies known as the "Classical Liberal," a species almost been crowded out of existence by a toxic form of Liberal known as "the Progressive." Though the Classical Liberals were never perfect, they had a definite ethical compass validated by many (though not all) historical events. I am proud to say that I was never sucked into the barren pseudo-ethics of the Progressive, who has nothing to say but "Share what we tell you to Share, even if we, the movement's leaders, often don't practice what we preach." Still, rather than flipping completely to the ethics of Conservatism, I consider myself a Centrist, seeking to chart a course between the extreme virtues and vices of both systems.

Classical Liberalism may never return to the political sphere, but its distinctions from Toxic Progressivism can be well illustrated by sussing out the ethical stances depicted, episode by episode, in STAR TREK THE ORIGINAL SERIES. Under the aegis of both Gene Roddenberry and his successor Fred Freiberger, the series demonstrates that the Liberalism of that era was not manically fixated only upon the Sharing-ethic. The makers of Classic-Liberal Trek knew that sometimes even the generous had to watch their borders.

Not every episode shows a strong ethical orientation toward one system or another. Some stories are just life-and-death conflicts for the starring characters, who of course engage the sympathies of the audience on a visceral level. But the majority of the TREK tales seek to align the sympathetic characters with either Liberal ("Sharing") or Conservative ("Keeping") ethical attitudes. Taking each relevant episode in broadcast order, I will sum which attitude the narratives seek to represent. To keep the story-summaries concise, I want to avoid breaking down specific actions by specific characters, speaking of the totality of the sympathetic characters as "The Trekkers." It's not the best of all possible cognomens, but the writers never supplied a usable substitute.

And so we begin with THE MAN TRAP, in which the Trekkers face "The Salt Vampire," a genderfluid alien that devours humans. Even though the beast is the last of its kind, the Trekkers must KEEP loyalty to their own kind and exterminate the brute.

In CHARLIE X, the Trekkers seek to "share" human culture with a shipwrecked human. But Charlie's been given god-like powers, and the Trekkers must KEEP clear of all teen deities with anger issues.

Going WHERE NO MAN HAS GONE BEFORE-- if you don't count Adam and Eve, right after they ate of the fruit of knowledge--the Trekkers learn the same lesson seen in CHARLIE X: KEEP away from "men (and women) like gods."

THE NAKED TIME is the time in which everyone casts off the chains of the social contract and begins "sharing" whatever they feel like sharing. The Trekkers use time-travel to beat devolution and to KEEP their psyches in good working order.

THE ENEMY WITHIN-- Through the example of one Kirk too many, the Trekkers learn that every man must SHARE the good and evil in his soul to be able to function in the world. 

MUDD'S WOMEN-- Though feminists probably don't like the idea of women being both goddesses and queens of the kitchen, at base the Trekkers recapitulate the old saw that men and women must SHARE the burdens of existence (and without even getting into the topic of progeny).

WHAT ARE LITTLE GIRLS MADE OF? is the question, but the answer is, "Not being so nice that they don't KEEP away from robots posing as humans." (Data would be mortified.)

THE CORBOMITE MANEUEVER-- The Trekkers use guile to "keep" a potential enemy at arm's length, only to find that they both SHARE in the implicit brotherhood of ETs.

THE CONSCIENCE OF THE KING-- "Neither a borrower nor a 'sharer' be:" justice must be KEPT by unearthing the sins of the king, even when those sins have passed on to the next generation.

BALANCE OF TERROR-- Who will KEEP sovereignty in a war of rival powers?  

ARENA-- Though the source material was all about "keeping" the upper hand against one's enemy, here the Trekkers learn to SHARE the universe with an apparent rival.     

COURT MARTIAL-- "In the name of a humanity that KEEPS truth, as against those damn dirty machines that can be programmed to lie, I demand the correct verdict!"

THE RETURN OF THE ARCHONS-- The Trekkers must teach a whole planet, warped by the control of another damn dirty machine, to KEEP the counsels of the Federation on how to run one's civilization.

SPACE SEED-- Even though the Trekkers cannot allow an autocrat to return to power, they still find a way for him to SHARE in the manifest destiny of taming the spatial frontier.

A TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON-- This time it's a planet whose people think they can regularize the death-toll of war to avoid armageddon. The Trekkers show them how to KEEP an existential awareness of how messy death is.

THIS SIDE OF PARADISE-- No flaming sword needed here, to KEEP the Trekkers away from the perils of Eden.

THE DEVIL IN THE DARK-- Kill the monster! Oh, it's really a mother? And a mother who can save humans from loads of labor? Why, sign her up for a role in "The Not So Secret SHARER."

ERRAND OF MERCY--  "Who will 'keep' sovereignty in a war of rival powers?" Well, it would be either the Trekkers or the Klingons, except that a third power compels them to play nice and SHARE.

THE CITY ON THE EDGE OF FOREVER-- "Though they're disapprovin', KEEP them time-dogies movin,'" so that they run in the right direction and make certain that the good guys won World War Two-- even if a sacrifice proves necessary.

(Season One episodes omitted: MIRI, DAGGER OF THE MIND, THE MENAGERIE, SHORE LEAVE, THE GALILEO SEVEN, THE SQUIRE OF GOTHOS, TOMORROW IS YESTERDAY, THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR, OPERATION-- ANNHILATE!)

         

THE READING RHEUM: AYESHA, THE RETURN OF SHE (1904-05)

 

Roughly the same amount of time passed between this review and my 2008 review of Rider Haggard's masterpiece SHE (beginning here) as between the 1885 serialization of that novel and that of its sequel in 1904. I wll not, however, be devoting three separate posts to AYESHA as I did with SHE. While AYESHA also qualifies as a high-mythicity novel, the later book doesn't even come close to touching the hem of SHE's robe.

Eighteen years also passes between the climax of SHE-- wherein POV characters Horace Holly and his adoptive son Leo Vincey witness the immortal queen Ayesha when she re-immerses herself in the Flame of Life-- and the beginning of AYESHA. Haggard didn't have to wait that amount of time to write his story, but perhaps he felt he had to experience what his characters experienced: the sense of "time's winged chariot hurrying near." Still, it creates a mild continuity problem-- one that Haggard seems aware of-- in that once Ayesha is reincarnated in a new, living body, there's no strong reason she must wait a full eighteen years to summon her reincarnated lover Leo and his adoptive father. Haggard chalks the delay to vague metaphysical factors and moves on.   

In any case, Holly and Leo are summoned from England to Tibet, the new exotic locale where Ayesha hangs her veil. Almost certainly Haggard chose Tibet because of that culture's associations with reincarnation, a major theme of the first book. And Haggard did admirable homework in researching the physical perils the two Englishmen would face. as well as the often-dizzying complexities of Tibetan Buddhism. That said, what distinguished Haggard's African novels was his personal experience with African lands and tribes, and thus AYESHA lacks those touches of verisimilitude.

Ayesha's original body was destroyed at the end of SHE, but her magically endowed spirit has usurped the dying body of a Tibetan holy woman, and with that form she has become the queen of a new race of people, and she's once more seeking union with Leo. However, since the novel needs conflict, Ayesha's power is challenged by another female who also falls in love with Leo before he reaches Ayesha. This cosmic chick-fight was fresh when Haggard did it in SHE, and it worked because Leo fell in love with the tribal girl Ustane before he met Ayesha or knew of his archaic association with the immortal queen. Here, Leo is pursued by Atene, whose name alone indicates her non-Tibetan, "lost race" heritage-- but he's never interested in Atene. Thus Haggard chose to copy from himself and did so badly.

The strongest aspect of AYESHA is that Leo doesn't quite know how to take his beloved being in a new, older body, rather than in the dazzling female form he knew. He's still in love with her mind, so to speak, but he also desires her beauty. To compensate, Ayesha calls upon supernatural powers and essentially remolds herself into the image Leo loved. But at novel's end the transformation levies a price, not unlike the one paid by the mortal Semele when she demanded that Zeus reveal to her his ineffable glory. In addition, though Ayesha spouts a lot of Buddhist teachings and the unity of religions, her character remains the same as it was in the first novel: once she's united with her eternal love, she plans to use her great knowledge to conquer the world.  

There are a lot of good scenes in AYESHA, but they just don't add up to a whole greater than the sum of its parts, as was the case with SHE. The other two SHE novels are prequels, so SHE and AYESHA together constitute the entirety of the story of the Ayesha-Leo romance. And though Haggard would never put things this way, I can't help thinking that what the author committed to literature was the longest case of "male and female blue balls" in narrative history.         

ABOMINABLE ACT

 Re: ACT's successful campaign against cartoon superheroes in the late 1960a--

____________

ACT might be considered the stepchild of W(ertham).  I doubt they bothered citing case studies-- even studies as flawed as those of W-- but they shared W's "monkey see, monkey do" attitude regarding audiences.

As a superhero fan, I hated ACT's successful campaign against animated supers back then. But maybe they would have petered out no matter what-- and maybe they took the hit that could have happened to hyper violent Marvel Comics. Despite being more overt about fight scenes than, say, SUPERMAN was even in the early days, I'm aware of no serious anti-Marvel screeds in the sixties, and instead, at least one vaguely friendly estimation from Leslie Fiedler in the 70s. Somehow Spider-Man never seemed threatening to the bluenoses of the time; he may have seemed of a piece with weird new cultural developments-- TM, the British Invasion, and of course "Camp Batman."  Mrs. Grundy still didn't want Spidey cartoons on TV, but nobody seemed to mind Spidey kicking butts in the comics. There might have been protests of the Warren horror mags, but if so nothing ignited a movement. I doubt Wertham could have started one had he tried to engage with Silver Age comics, but it would have been fun to see what he came up with.