Examination of a large number of these papers shows that, putting aside
school stories, the favourite subjects are Wild West, Frozen North,
Foreign Legion, crime (always from the detective's angle), the Great War
(Air Force or Secret Service, not the infantry), the Tarzan motif in
varying forms, professional football, tropical exploration, historical
romance (Robin Hood, Cavaliers and Round-heads, etc.) and scientific
invention. The Wild West still leads, at any rate as a setting, though
the Red Indian seems to be fading out. The one theme that is really new
is the scientific one. Death-rays, Martians, invisible men, robots,
helicopters and interplanetary rockets figure largely: here and there
there are even far-off rumours of psychotherapy and ductless glands.
Whereas the GEM and MAGNET derive from Dickens and Kipling, the WIZARD,
CHAMPION, MODERN BOY, etc., owe a great deal to H. G. Wells, who, rather
than Jules Verne, is the father of 'Scientifiction'. Naturally it is the
magical Martian aspect of science that is most exploited, but one or two
papers include serious articles on scientific subjects, besides
quantities of informative snippets. (Examples: 'A Kauri tree in
Queensland, Australia, is over 12,000 years old'; 'Nearly 50,000
thunderstorms occur every day'; 'Helium gas costs ?1 per 1000 cubic
feet'; 'There are over 500 varieties of spiders in Great Britain';
'London firemen use 14,000,000 gallons of water annually', etc., etc.)
There is a marked advance in intellectual curiosity and, on the whole, in
the demand made on the reader's attention. In practice the GEM and MAGNET
and the post-war papers are read by much the same public, but the mental
age aimed at seems to have risen by a year or two years--an improvement
probably corresponding to the improvement in elementary education since
1909.
The other thing that has emerged in the post-war boys' papers, though not
to anything like the extent one would expect, is bully-worship and the
cult of violence.
If one compares the GEM and MAGNET with a genuinely modern paper, the
thing that immediately strikes one is the absence of the leader-principle.
There is no central dominating character; instead there are fifteen
or twenty characters, all more or less on an equality, with whom
readers of different types can identify. In the more modern papers
this is not usually the case. Instead of identifying with a schoolboy of
more or less his own age, the reader of the SKIPPER, HOTSPUR, etc., is
led to identify with a G-man, with a Foreign Legionary, with some variant
of Tarzan, with an air ace, a master spy, an explorer, a pugilist--at
any rate with some single all-powerful character who dominates everyone
about him and whose usual method of solving any problem is a sock on the
jaw. This character is intended as a superman, and as physical strength
is the form of power that boys can best understand, he is usually a sort
of human gorilla; in the Tarzan type of story he is sometimes actually a
giant, eight or ten feet high. At the same time the scenes of violence in
nearly all these stories are remarkably harmless and unconvincing. There
is a great difference in tone between even the most bloodthirsty English
paper and the threepenny Yank Mags, FIGHT STORIES, ACTION STORIES, etc.
(not strictly boys' papers, but largely read by boys). In the Yank Mags
you get real blood-lust, really gory descriptions of the all-in,
jump-on-his-testicles style fighting, written in a jargon that has been
perfected by people who brood endlessly on violence. A paper like FIGHT
STORIES, for instance, would have very little appeal except to sadists
and masochists. You can see the comparative gentleness of the English
civilization by the amateurish way in which prize-fighting is always
described in the boys' weeklies. There is no specialized vocabulary. Look
at these four extracts, two English, two American;
When the gong sounded, both men were breathing heavily and each had great
red marks on his chest. Bill's chin was bleeding, and Ben had a cut over
his right eye.
Into their corners they sank, but when the gong clanged again they were
up swiftly, and they went like tigers at each other. (ROVER)
* * *
He walked in stolidly and smashed a clublike right to my face. Blood
spattered and I went back on my heels, but surged in and ripped my right
under the heart. Another right smashed full on Ben's already battered
mouth, and, spitting out the fragments of a tooth, he crashed a flailing
left to my body. (FIGHT STORIES)
* * *
It was amazing to watch the Black Panther at work. His muscles rippled
and slid under his dark skin. There was all the power and grace of a
giant cat in his swift and terrible onslaught.
He volleyed blows with a bewildering speed for so huge a fellow. In a
moment Ben was simply blocking with his gloves as well as he could. Ben
was really a past-master of defence. He had many fine victories behind
him. But the Negro's rights and lefts crashed through openings that
hardly any other fighter could have found. (WIZARD)
* * *
Haymakers which packed the bludgeoning weight of forest monarchs crashing
down under the ax hurled into the bodies of the two heavies as they
swapped punches. (FIGHT STORIES)
Notice how much more knowledgeable the American extracts sound. They are
written for devotees of the prize-ring, the others are not. Also, it
ought to be emphasized that on its level the moral code of the English
boys' papers is a decent one. Crime and dishonesty are never held up to
admiration, there is none of the cynicism and corruption of the American
gangster story. The huge sale of the Yank Mags in England shows that
there is a demand for that kind of thing, but very few English writers
seem able to produce it. When hatred of Hitler became a major emotion in
America, it was interesting to see how promptly 'anti-Fascism' was
adapted to pornographic purposes by the editors of the Yank Mags. One
magazine which I have in front of me is given up to a long, complete
story, 'When Hell Game to America', in which the agents of a
'blood-maddened European dictator' are trying to conquer the U.S.A. with
death-rays and invisible aeroplanes. There is the frankest appeal to
sadism, scenes in which the Nazis tie bombs to women's backs and fling
them off heights to watch them blown to pieces in mid-air, others in
which they tie naked girls together by their hair and prod them with
knives to make them dance, etc., etc. The editor comments solemnly on all
this, and uses it as a plea for tightening up restrictions against
immigrants. On another page of the same paper: 'LIVES OF THE HOTCHA
CHORUS GIRLS. Reveals all the intimate secrets and fascinating pastimes
of the famous Broadway Hotcha girls. NOTHING IS OMITTED. Price 10c.' 'HOW
TO LOVE. 10c.' 'FRENCH PHOTO RING. 25c.' 'NAUGHTY NUDIES TRANSFERS. From
the outside of the glass you see a beautiful girl, innocently dressed.
Turn it around and look through the glass and oh! what a difference! Se
t
of 3 transfers 25c.,' etc., etc., etc. There is nothing at all like this
in any English paper likely to be read by boys. But the process of
Americanization is going on all the same. The American ideal, the
'he-man', the 'tough guy', the gorilla who puts everything right by
socking everybody on the jaw, now figures in probably a majority of boys'
papers. In one serial now running in the SKIPPER he is always portrayed
ominously enough, swinging a rubber truncheon.
The development of the WIZARD, HOTSPUR, etc., as against the earlier
boys' papers, boils down to this: better technique, more scientific
interest, more bloodshed, more leader-worship. But, after all, it is the
LACK of development that is the really striking thing.
To begin with, there is no political development whatever. The world of
the SKIPPER and the CHAMPION is still the pre-1914 world of the MAGNET
and the GEM. The Wild West story, for instance, with its cattle-rustlers,
lynch-law and other paraphernalia belonging to the eighties, is a
curiously archaic thing. It is worth noticing that in papers of this type
it is always taken for granted that adventures only happen at the ends of
the earth, in tropical forests, in Arctic wastes, in African deserts, on
Western prairies, in Chinese opium dens--everywhere in fact, except the
places where things really DO happen. That is a belief dating from thirty
or forty years ago, when the new continents were in process of being
opened up. Nowadays, of course, if you really want adventure, the place
to look for it is in Europe. But apart from the picturesque side of the
Great War, contemporary history is carefully excluded. And except that
Americans are now admired instead of being laughed at, foreigners are
exactly the same figures of fun that they always were. If a Chinese
character appears, he is still the sinister pigtailed opium-smuggler of
Sax Rohmer; no indication that things have been happening in China since
1912--no indication that a war is going on there, for instance. If a
Spaniard appears, he is still a 'dago' or 'greaser' who rolls cigarettes
and stabs people in the back; no indication that things have been
happening in Spain. Hitler and the Nazis have not yet appeared, or are
barely making their appearance. There will be plenty about them in a
little while, but it will be from a strictly patriotic angle (Britain
versus Germany), with the real meaning of the struggle kept out of sight
as much as possible. As for the Russian Revolution, it is extremely
difficult to find any reference to it in any of these papers. When Russia
is mentioned at all it is usually in an information snippet (example:
'There are 29,000 centenarians in the USSR.'), and any reference to
the Revolution is indirect and twenty years out of date. In one story in
the ROVER, for instance, somebody has a tame bear, and as it is a Russian
bear, it is nicknamed Trotsky--obviously an echo of the 1917-23 period
and not of recent controversies. The clock has stopped at 1910. Britannia
rules the waves, and no one has heard of slumps, booms, unemployment,
dictatorships, purges or concentration camps.
And in social outlook there is hardly any advance. The snobbishness is
somewhat less open than in the GEM and MAGNET--that is the most one can
possibly say. To begin with, the school story, always partly dependent on
snob-appeal, is by no means eliminated. Every number of a boys' paper
includes at least one school story, these stories slightly outnumbering
the Wild Westerns. The very elaborate fantasy-life of the GEM and MAGNET
is not imitated and there is more emphasis on extraneous adventure, but
the social atmosphere (old grey stones) is much the same. When a new
school is introduced at the beginning of a story we are often told in
just those words that 'it was a very posh school'. From time to time a
story appears which is ostensibly directed AGAINST snobbery. The
scholarship-boy (cf. Tom Redwing in the MAGNET) makes fairly frequent
appearances, and what is essentially the same theme is sometimes
presented in this form: there is great rivalry between two schools, one
of which considers itself more 'posh' than the other, and there are
fights, practical jokes, football matches, etc., always ending in the
discomfiture of the snobs. If one glances very superficially at some of
these stories it is possible to imagine that a democratic spirit has
crept into the boys' weeklies, but when one looks more closely one sees
that they merely reflect the bitter jealousies that exist within the
white-collar class. Their real function is to allow the boy who goes to a
cheap private school (NOT a Council school) to feel that his school is
just as 'posh' in the sight of God as Winchester or Eton. The sentiment
of school loyalty ('We're better than the fellows down the road'), a
thing almost unknown to the real working class, is still kept up. As
these stories are written by many different hands, they do, of course,
vary a good deal in tone. Some are reasonably free from snobbishness, in
others money and pedigree are exploited even more shamelessly than in the
GEM and MAGNET. In one that I came across an actual MAJORITY of the boys
mentioned were titled.
Where working-class characters appear, it is usually either as comics
(jokes about tramps, convicts, etc.), or as prize-fighters, acrobats,
cowboys, professional footballers and Foreign Legionaries--in other
words, as adventurers. There is no facing of the facts about
working-class life, or, indeed, about WORKING life of any description.
Very occasionally one may come across a realistic description of, say,
work in a coal-mine, but in all probability it will only be there as the
background of some lurid adventure. In any case the central character is
not likely to be a coal-miner. Nearly all the time the boy who reads
these papers--in nine cases out often a boy who is going to spend his
life working in a shop, in a factory or in some subordinate job in an
office--is led to identify with people in positions of command, above
all with people who are never troubled by shortage of money. The Lord
Peter Wimsey figure, the seeming idiot who drawls and wears a monocle but
is always to the fore in moments of danger, turns up over and over again.
(This character is a great favourite in Secret Service stories.) And, as
usual, the heroic characters all have to talk B.B.C.; they may talk
Scottish or Irish or American, but no one in a star part is ever
permitted to drop an aitch. Here it is worth comparing the social
atmosphere of the boys' weeklies with that of the women's weeklies, the
ORACLE, the FAMILY STAR, PEG'S PAPER, etc.
The women's papers are aimed at an older public and are read for the most
part by girls who are working for a living. Consequently they are on the
surface much more realistic. It is taken for granted, for example, that
nearly everyone has to live in a big town and work at a more or less dull
job. Sex, so far from being taboo, is THE subject. The short, complete
stories, the special feature of these papers, are ge
nerally of the 'came
the dawn' type: the heroine narrowly escapes losing her 'boy' to a
designing rival, or the 'boy' loses his job and has to postpone marriage,
but presently gets a better job. The changeling-fantasy (a girl brought
up in a poor home is 'really' the child of rich parents) is another
favourite. Where sensationalism comes in, usually in the serials, it
arises out of the more domestic type of crime, such as bigamy, forgery or
sometimes murder; no Martians, death-rays or international anarchist
gangs. These papers are at any rate aiming at credibility, and they have
a link with real life in their correspondence columns, where genuine
problems are being discussed. Ruby M. Ayres's column of advice in the
ORACLE, for instance, is extremely sensible and well written. And yet the
world of the ORACLE and PEG'S PAPER is a pure fantasy-world. It is the
same fantasy all the time; pretending to be richer than you are. The
chief impression that one carries away from almost every story in these
papers is of a frightful, overwhelming 'refinement'. Ostensibly the
characters are working-class people, but their habits, the interiors of
their houses, their clothes, their outlook and, above all, their speech
arc entirely middle class. They are all living at several pounds a week
above their income. And needless to say, that is just the impression that
is intended. The idea is to give the bored factory-girl or worn-out
mother of five a dream-life in which she pictures herself--not actually
as a duchess (that convention has gone out) but as, say, the wife of a
bank-manager. Not only is a five-to-six-pound-a-week standard of life set
up as the ideal, but it is tacitly assumed that that is how working-class
people really DO live. The major facts arc simply not faced. It is
admitted, for instance, that people sometimes lose their jobs; but then
the dark clouds roll away and they get better jobs instead. No mention of
un-employment as something permanent and inevitable, no mention of the
dole, no mention of trade unionism. No suggestion anywhere that there can
be anything wrong with the system AS A SYSTEM; there arc only individual
misfortunes, which are generally due to somebody's wickedness and can in
any case be put right in the last chapter. Always the dark clouds roll
away, the kind employer raises Alfred's wages, and there are jobs for
everybody except the drunks. It is still the world of the WIZARD and the
GEM, except that there are orange-blossoms instead of machine-guns.
The outlook inculcated by all these papers is that of a rather
exceptionally stupid member of the Navy League in the year 1910. Yes, it
may be said, but what does it matter? And in any case, what else do you
expect?
Of course no one in his senses would want to turn the so-called penny
dreadful into a realistic novel or a Socialist tract. An adventure story
must of its nature be more or less remote from real life. But, as I have
tried to make clear, the unreality of the WIZARD and the GEM is not so
artless as it looks. These papers exist because of a specialized demand,
because boys at certain ages find it necessary to read about Martians,
death-rays, grizzly bears and gangsters. They get what they are looking
for, but they get it wrapped up in the illusions which their future
employers think suitable for them. To what extent people draw their ideas
from fiction is disputable. Personally I believe that most people are
influenced far more than they would care to admit by novels, serial
stories, films and so forth, and that from this point of view the worst
books are often the most important, because they are usually the ones
that are read earliest in life. It is probable that many people who would
consider themselves extremely sophisticated and 'advanced' are actually
carrying through life an imaginative background which they acquired in
childhood from (for instance) Sapper and Ian Hay. If that is so, the