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eBook details

• Title: Of Catholics, Commies, And the Anti-Christ: Mapping American Social Borders Through Cold War Comic Books (Report)
• Author : Journal of Religion and Popular Culture
• Release Date : January 22, 2009
• Genre: Religion & Spirituality,Books,
• Pages : * pages
• Size : 241 KB

Description

[1] When the Soviets detonated their first atomic bomb in 1949, it was clear to Americans that the Cold War would be a dangerous and unsettling era. Starting in 1951, schools began to show children the "Duck and Cover" safety film from the federal government's Civil Defense: a brief video in which Bert the Turtle taught them how to protect themselves under their desks in case of an atomic attack. (1) Cold War fears of communist assaults upon U.S. soil were pervasive and strong. One of the main, if not the principal, emphasized that the difference between communist regimes and the U.S. was America's predominantly Christian background. Christian leaders and communities stressed America's religious background and distinguished the communist Soviet government as an "evil power." (2) [2] With this unease regarding the country's--and Christianity's--future in America, the Cold War proved to be an auspicious time to restructure the boundaries of American identity. Communism, an undeniable American enemy, prompted new anxieties about the country's character. What did it mean to be an American? Cold War popular culture reflected various answers to this question, and comic books offer a lens for examining the social atmosphere in which they were created, published and read. This paper will examine three comic books from Christian publishers and explore how they used the Cold War as a backdrop for understanding American identity and its religious element. Two of these comics come from Catholic educational publishers and the third comic is an anti-Catholic tract by Jack Chick. In their stories, religion and the way the comic defines and visualizes America are linked. Engaging the relationship between Catholicism and communism, these comics reflect different perspectives concerning American's religious landscape and its relationship to the nation's identity. This paper will also briefly compare these three religious publications with non-religious, mainstream Cold War comics in order to see the critical role played by the element of religious identity in the religious comics.

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