C R I M I N A L S ?
B O O K  T H E M !

[CONT'D.]

"The Devil made me do it" was, apparently, a reasonable defense at the beginning of our nation's history. However, these early communities were not above using the presumably devil-filled individuals for the edification of the flock or solidification of social mores. The Medler Collection contains many early sermons, with long windy titles like "The Danger of Living without the fear of God: A Discourse on Robbery, Piracy and Murder in which Dueling and Suicide are particularly considered: delivered in Boston, February 21, 1819. The Lord's Day Following the Execution of the Pirates."

The intentions behind such sermons seem honorable, however, because despite the racy titles, the texts do not describe violent acts. But by 1850 "pulp novels"–sometimes called "penny thrillers" or "penny terrors"–show a less clear sense of purpose than the sermons. By 1870, the familiar excuse of preparing the criminal and readers to meet their maker takes up only a line or two amid pages of sensationalized descriptions of violence.

As publishing became cheaper, crime magazines became popular. The Police Gazette was one of the longest-running and most popular ones; a yearly subscription was $2 in 1848. Its headlines promise graphic accounts and depictions of violence with titles like "Suitor Shot in Mouth."

It didn't take long before social critics like Junius Henri Browne, in his 1869 "Mirror of New York" social conditions, The Great Metropolis, condemned the effect of such literature: "They reprint all the sensational facts and gossip they can find in the country press, or exhume from the licentious haunts Of [New York] City. The better class of the community do not read them, unless they happen to contain something extraordinarily racy and waton, when curiosty overcomes the scruples of conscience and of decorum."

Anticipating many critics of today's mass-media violence, Browne argued that representations incited the criminal's burgeoning young mind: "No marvel he [the metropolitan thug] gloats over these inspiring accounts and cuts of the Police Gazette."

The Medler Collection also contains accounts of crimes that are seemingly the antithesis of bloody pulp magazines. Usually written by a police reporter or detective, these are hardcover and maintain a factual rather than shocking tone. Such books often contain transcripts of the court proceedings and, in works published after 1890, photographs. Their informative tone recreates an objective scene of the crime, or at least the semblance of one.

Edwin Porter's 1893 The Fall River Tragedy: a History of the Borden Murder includes photographs of the house and everyone involved in the trial–the servant girl, the jury, the medical examiner–except for the recently acquitted Lizzie Borden or her sister Emma. A sense of decorum pervades the account, and nowhere is the famous chant written: "Lizzie Borden took an axe, killed her mother with forty whacks. When she saw what she had done, she gave her father forty-one." On the other hand Porter does use models to pose as the prone corpses of Mr. and Mrs. Borden, rather like contemporary re-enactments of violent crimes on TV fare like "America's Most Wanted."

The Medler Collection gives us pause to wonder what we will look like when scholars and students look back art at our mass media 100 years from now. It also makes us question human nature–not only the failings that lead to violent crime but the obviously widespread delight in hearing about, reading about, visualizing and re-enacting such crimes. For more information on the Clements Library, visit its Web site at http://www.clements.umich.edu

Although the images of violence in pulp magazines were, and still are, shocking, Prof. Leonard Eron argues that the images of today are more violent. Eron, an adjunct research scientist at U-M's Research Center for Group Dynamics and adjunct professor of psychology, has researched the causes of violent behavior in children and young people since 1960. He notes that in contemporary video games the viewer becomes an actual participant. Instead of just looking on as a voyeur, the participant sees, hears and is physically involved in inflicting the violence. The attraction, he believes, "is in the activity, and the activity desensitizes the participant."

Cara J. Spindler '99 was Michigan Today's 1998-99 student intern.