DITKO ON THE SPECTRUM OF SADISM PT. 2

 In PART 2, I cited one possible formula for all of fictional narrative, based largely on the radical of conflict:  

most if not all art requires the element of *transgression*-- simply expressed, that X wants Y but someone doesn't want X to have Y (where the "someone" might even be Y). 

This conflict doesn't always eventuate in fictional violence. But the first two important critics of the comic-book medium, Gershon Legman and Frederic Wertham, thought that, at least within the context of children's entertainment, fictional violence was always capable of poisoning the well of young minds, resulting in the unwanted syndromes of sadism or masochism. Though their ideals were not the same, Legman and Wertham favored the same sort of one-sided, hectoring arguments to prove they were right. Today, Legman is barely known to comics-critics, and Wertham is seen as a massively dishonest, though possibly well-meaning, fraudster. I may be the only person who's critiqued them in tandem within essays written for this century, emphasizing that neither of them seemed to know how to distinguish between syndromic and non-syndromic forms of sadism. In SADISM OF THE CASUAL KIND I wrote:

"Casual sadism" as I conceive it is not a syndromic phenomenon. It is just one of many affects communicated by many forms of fiction generally and the adventure-genre specifically, and it refers here to the pleasure one takes in seeing a "villain" violently beaten by the hero. For that matter it can occur in any number of non-literary contexts, particularly those of adversarial sports. Legman and Wertham assumed, perhaps both of them were so phobic to any kind of fictional violence, that "casual sadism" could develop into the syndromic kind.

I'm also probably the only writer who ever gave either of them any credit for getting anything right in the midst of their overall wrongness. In the 2024 essay GIVING THE DEVIL HIS DUE, I mentioned how at age 10 I encountered a mention of Legman in this 1965 TIME essay, whose writer was enamored enough with Legman's 1949 book LOVE AND DEATH to quote a significant passage, part of which reads:

...in the identifications available in the comic strips—in the character of the Katzenjammer Kids, in the kewpie-doll character of Blondie—both father and husband can be thoroughly beaten up, harassed, humiliated and degraded daily.

Now, suppose in that same year of 1965, there had been another young reader of that TIME essay, name of "John." Being also about ten, John would have been reading comic strips since he could read, including both BLONDIE and KATZENJAMMER KIDS, but he probably wouldn't have known anything about sadism or masochism. But John reads that passage, and though he doesn't give a squat about the Katzenjammers, John gets a bit of a buzz from the idea of hapless Dagwood being "degraded daily," in such a way that all the pains and humiliations he suffers, no matter their origins, are somehow ascribable to "the kewpie-doll character of Blondie." John isn't sure, because of Legman's vague language, as to exactly why the adult readers of Chic Young's domestic comic strip would find such fantasies attractive. But the broad implication would seem to be that something about seeing Dagwood forced to be The Eternal Goat must also give those adults such a buzz.

Now-- was John, or any of the millions of Americans who regularly watched the tortures of Dagwood, necessarily a syndromic sadist because he, or they, derived some sadistic or masochistic pleasure from seeing those tortures? Legman would have said so. I would say that one only becomes a syndromic fetishist of any kind because the subject continues to seek that particular pleasure over and over, rather than just getting the buzz from time to time when one encounters the stimulation in a "casual" fashion, without especially looking for it. This is the same "casual sadism" that moved Elizabethans to watch both "bear baiting" spectacles and Shakespearean dramas, because the cruelties of both were diverting, though not necessarily syndromic.

Now suppose that I read every Ditko comics-story in existence, and I found no sadistic/masochistic content in anything but in his collaborations with unquestionable fetishist Eric Stanton. That could prove that Ditko had no more than a casual creator's interest in the dynamics of sadomasochistic art. We don't seem to have any testimony from the reticent Ditko as to what he thought or felt about working with Stanton. However, Stanton did make a significant comment on general relationships of artists sharing the same studio.

PURE IMAGES: I've shared studios with different artists and you can't help but work on each other's stuff. You'll be there reacting with energy to their work, and in turn they get excited about the project.

STANTON: Yes, you have to. You'll be working in one train of thought and you don't even realize that there are other opportunities.

PURE IMAGES #1 (1990)

To slightly reiterate my point from the first essay, if Ditko were a syndromic sadist, I think we would have seen much more evidence of his inclinations in his rich career. I would expect to see something closer in spirit to the oeuvre of Tom Sutton, who produced both sadomasochistic art for the erotic comics market and edgy mainstream horror stories that dripped with perversity. But that's just how things look to me at a point when I've yet to read every story Steve Ditko ever produced.