What do you think?
Rate this book
Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation: A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico
In Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation, Anne Rubenstein examines how comic books—which were overwhelmingly popular but extremely controversial in post-revolutionary Mexico—played an important role in the development of a stable, legitimate state. Studying the relationship of the Mexican state to its civil society from the 1930s to the 1970s through comic books and their producers, readers, and censors, Rubenstein shows how these thrilling tales of adventure—and the debates over them—reveal much about Mexico’s cultural nationalism and government attempts to direct, if not control, social change.
Since their first appearance in 1934, comic books enjoyed wide readership, often serving as a practical guide to life in booming new cities. Conservative protest against the so-called immorality of these publications, of mass media generally, and of Mexican modernity itself, however, led the Mexican government to establish a censorship office that, while having little impact on the content of comic books, succeeded in directing conservative ire away from government policies and toward the Mexican media. Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation examines the complex dynamics of the politics of censorship occasioned by Mexican comic books, including the conservative political campaigns against them, government and industrial responses to such campaigns, and the publishers’ championing of Mexican nationalism and their efforts to preserve their publishing empires through informal influence over government policies. Rubenstein’s analysis suggests a new Mexican history after the revolution, one in which negotiation over cultural questions replaced open conflict and mass-media narrative helped ensure political stability.
This book will engage readers with an interest in Mexican history, Latin American studies, cultural studies, and popular culture.
Since their first appearance in 1934, comic books enjoyed wide readership, often serving as a practical guide to life in booming new cities. Conservative protest against the so-called immorality of these publications, of mass media generally, and of Mexican modernity itself, however, led the Mexican government to establish a censorship office that, while having little impact on the content of comic books, succeeded in directing conservative ire away from government policies and toward the Mexican media. Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation examines the complex dynamics of the politics of censorship occasioned by Mexican comic books, including the conservative political campaigns against them, government and industrial responses to such campaigns, and the publishers’ championing of Mexican nationalism and their efforts to preserve their publishing empires through informal influence over government policies. Rubenstein’s analysis suggests a new Mexican history after the revolution, one in which negotiation over cultural questions replaced open conflict and mass-media narrative helped ensure political stability.
This book will engage readers with an interest in Mexican history, Latin American studies, cultural studies, and popular culture.
- GenresHistoryComicsNonfiction
224 pages, Paperback
First published September 23, 1998
2 people are currently reading
78 people want to read
About the author
Anne Rubenstein
6 booksDr. Anne Rubenstein is an Associate Professor at York University who specializes in the History of Mexico. Her publications include Bad Language, Naked Ladies, and Other Threats to the Nation: A Political History of Comic Books in Mexico; De los pepines a los agachados: Comics y censura en Mexico; Fragments of a Golden Age: Mexican Cultural Politics Since 1940 (co-edited with Gilbert Joseph and Eric Zolov) and Men' s Rooms: Masculinity, Sexuality and Space in Modern Mexico (co-edited with Victor Macías).
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
November 30, 2012
Culture is both a product of and a catalyst for social norms, and cultural relics — even those as seemingly insignificant as comic books — are valuable tools with which to analyze society. With that in mind, Anne Rubenstein, in her book Bad Language, Naked Ladies, & Other Threats to the Nation, explains the colorful significance of Mexico’s “little stories” on the country’s political history. By examining them as small frames within the larger tapestry of Mexican history and politics, Rubenstein highlights the larger issues that have arisen in Mexican culture over the past seven decades, and she argues that the people who took part in discussions about comic books justifiably felt that they were fighting in “a conflict over the fate of their families and their nation." Through her evidence and analysis, she presents a clear case for the importance of comic books in shaping many aspects of postrevolutionary Mexico.
Rubenstein sets out to prove that critical analysis of comic books throughout 20th-century Mexico yields more than just “generic repetitions of stories that have long since grown tired,” because the historietas afford a glimpse of “how the ultimate victors of the revolution transformed their faction into both a government and the idea of a nation." Anthropologists have come up with many different ways of studying postrevolutionary Mexico, sometimes going so far as to question the existence of a Mexican national culture. Rubenstein argues that there was indeed a single national culture, but that it was rooted in two different discourses: modernity and tradition. The struggle between tradition and modernity ingrained itself in Mexican society at least since the time of Benito Juarez, and the Porfiriato was deeply involved in the years leading up to the Revolution. Rubenstein argues that, even though “commentators assumed that comic books … must be a modernizing force,” they consistently utilized “the words, veiled assumptions and values of ‘tradition.'" “New technology,” and specifically “new forms of transportation” were prominent in comic books, but traditional “questions of character and morality within marriage” were vital to readers. The role of women also had a distinct role in the debate. The contrast between the stereotypical traditional woman, who “stayed at home, preferably in rural areas,” and the urban, working, sexualized chica moderna was pivotal in understanding the traditional/modern discourse. Comic books presented a Mexico that idealized both the past and the future.
Comic books did not strongly favor tradition over modernity or modernity over tradition, and in that balance, they reflected Mexican society. But some of the arguments against comic books were rooted in that most traditional and conservative part of Mexican life – the Catholic church. Beginning in 1933, the Legion of Decency, an organization sponsored by the archdiocese of Mexico City, argued that “comic books had to be controlled by the state” because “readers might sympathize with [some] of the sinning characters." The Legion of Decency warned its followers about movies that could be conceived as morally repugnant, but it went a step further with comic books and calling for government censorship of the historietas. Comic books were a hotbed for conservative criticism of modernity and the many changes that came with it. Criticism was marked by a wide variety of issues: “the connection between education and immorality, the especially sexual nature of comic books, the danger posed to children, the link between comic books and crime, the substitution of complaints about mass media for complaints about education, the demand for stronger action by the state, and the perceived relation between mass media and national weakness."
La Comisíon Calificadora de Publicaciones y Revistas Ilustradas was the state’s answer to calls for censorship. Created in 1944, it was largely without the funding or power it World have needed to be successful in censoring comic books, and for nine years, the men and women hired to police the morality of Mexican publications didn’t even get their salaries. The commission did, however, ensure that the Mexican government a “central, mediating position” in the dialogue “between modernists and traditionalists over mass media, popular culture, and national identity." It flourished in filling roles that were not explicitly assigned to it, and it “absorbed the fury and distracted the attentions of some politically organized social conservatives." The Commission is a striking example of the way the priista Mexican government co-opted extremists in the name of stability. It appeased conservatives in more than one way by hiring commissioners “less for their devotion to the hard work of setting up a new bureaucracy than for their public reputation for morality."
Rubenstein uses a loosely chronological structure to frame her history of comic books, and her arguments are well-founded. The fact that she has included specific samples – both through her own description and in graphic form between chapters – both makes the book more readable and her assertions more salient. The actual advertisements and stories that filled the historietas are essential to the reader’s understanding of the concepts Rubenstein puts forth, and their inclusion allows readers to see for themselves some of the evidence Rubenstein has compiled. Throughout the book, she contends that comic books were more than superheroes and melodrama in the Mexico Miracle Years, and important cultural battles were being fought over their content and existence. As a battleground for traditionalists and modernists, comic books walked the line between glorifying and vilifying change, but more importantly, they fostered a debate that helped Mexico find stability in the shadow of the Revolution.
Rubenstein sets out to prove that critical analysis of comic books throughout 20th-century Mexico yields more than just “generic repetitions of stories that have long since grown tired,” because the historietas afford a glimpse of “how the ultimate victors of the revolution transformed their faction into both a government and the idea of a nation." Anthropologists have come up with many different ways of studying postrevolutionary Mexico, sometimes going so far as to question the existence of a Mexican national culture. Rubenstein argues that there was indeed a single national culture, but that it was rooted in two different discourses: modernity and tradition. The struggle between tradition and modernity ingrained itself in Mexican society at least since the time of Benito Juarez, and the Porfiriato was deeply involved in the years leading up to the Revolution. Rubenstein argues that, even though “commentators assumed that comic books … must be a modernizing force,” they consistently utilized “the words, veiled assumptions and values of ‘tradition.'" “New technology,” and specifically “new forms of transportation” were prominent in comic books, but traditional “questions of character and morality within marriage” were vital to readers. The role of women also had a distinct role in the debate. The contrast between the stereotypical traditional woman, who “stayed at home, preferably in rural areas,” and the urban, working, sexualized chica moderna was pivotal in understanding the traditional/modern discourse. Comic books presented a Mexico that idealized both the past and the future.
Comic books did not strongly favor tradition over modernity or modernity over tradition, and in that balance, they reflected Mexican society. But some of the arguments against comic books were rooted in that most traditional and conservative part of Mexican life – the Catholic church. Beginning in 1933, the Legion of Decency, an organization sponsored by the archdiocese of Mexico City, argued that “comic books had to be controlled by the state” because “readers might sympathize with [some] of the sinning characters." The Legion of Decency warned its followers about movies that could be conceived as morally repugnant, but it went a step further with comic books and calling for government censorship of the historietas. Comic books were a hotbed for conservative criticism of modernity and the many changes that came with it. Criticism was marked by a wide variety of issues: “the connection between education and immorality, the especially sexual nature of comic books, the danger posed to children, the link between comic books and crime, the substitution of complaints about mass media for complaints about education, the demand for stronger action by the state, and the perceived relation between mass media and national weakness."
La Comisíon Calificadora de Publicaciones y Revistas Ilustradas was the state’s answer to calls for censorship. Created in 1944, it was largely without the funding or power it World have needed to be successful in censoring comic books, and for nine years, the men and women hired to police the morality of Mexican publications didn’t even get their salaries. The commission did, however, ensure that the Mexican government a “central, mediating position” in the dialogue “between modernists and traditionalists over mass media, popular culture, and national identity." It flourished in filling roles that were not explicitly assigned to it, and it “absorbed the fury and distracted the attentions of some politically organized social conservatives." The Commission is a striking example of the way the priista Mexican government co-opted extremists in the name of stability. It appeased conservatives in more than one way by hiring commissioners “less for their devotion to the hard work of setting up a new bureaucracy than for their public reputation for morality."
Rubenstein uses a loosely chronological structure to frame her history of comic books, and her arguments are well-founded. The fact that she has included specific samples – both through her own description and in graphic form between chapters – both makes the book more readable and her assertions more salient. The actual advertisements and stories that filled the historietas are essential to the reader’s understanding of the concepts Rubenstein puts forth, and their inclusion allows readers to see for themselves some of the evidence Rubenstein has compiled. Throughout the book, she contends that comic books were more than superheroes and melodrama in the Mexico Miracle Years, and important cultural battles were being fought over their content and existence. As a battleground for traditionalists and modernists, comic books walked the line between glorifying and vilifying change, but more importantly, they fostered a debate that helped Mexico find stability in the shadow of the Revolution.
Displaying 1 of 1 review