- Homosexuals, lesbians, sadists, masochists,
and other sex deviants.
- We are going to now indoctrinate children
into the wonders of various sexual orientations.
- Through this salacious material,
these abnormalities are corrupting the minds
and the hearts of our children.
- [Narrator] Part culture war, part conspiracy theory,
and always fascinating,
moral panics are a defining aspect of modern mass media.
Are violent video games making mass shooters?
Can subliminal messages
drive heavy metal teens to self-harm?
And what on Earth are we going to do
about those obscene rap lyrics?
At best, a moral panic can lead to progress
as culture pushes back against obsolete prejudice.
At worst, hearings are held, laws are passed,
and people get hurt.
The phrase 'moral panic' should bring to mind
wrongful convictions and ruined reputations,
banned books and parental advisory labels.
It should also bring to mind...
the Teletubbies.
[soft upbeat music]
- Moral decay.
- A sickness of the mind.
- Upsetting moral effect.
- Oughta be a law against them.
- Perversion for profit.
Here is the most vicious, the most insidious feature
of these publications.
They constantly portray abnormal sexual behavior
as being normal.
They glorify unnatural sex acts.
They tell youngsters that it's smart, it's thrilling.
It provides kicks to be a homosexual, a sadist,
and every other kind of deviant.
- [Narrator] Kids' media is an easy target
for conservative bullies and their war on queerness.
Queer kids' shows like 'Steven Universe'
face an enormous backlash.
Big-budget Disney films are censored and banned
around the world for the barest scraps
of queer representation.
State legislatures across the U.S. are working on bills
banning books and drag performance as we speak.
These attacks on art and culture can trace their roots
through the Teletubbies and 'Sesame Street'
back to 'Batman & Robin.'
And it all stems from the same homophobic premise:
that children's entertainment is involved
in an LGBTQ+ conspiracy to brainwash
or groom kids into becoming queer.
- You can't turn somebody gay.
I've been inundated with heterosexual representation
from the moment I've been watching television
or reading anything, and yet, I'm not straight.
- There's this misunderstanding about sexuality
that it's molten and fluid when, when you're a kid
and there-those susceptible, one word, it pushes them over.
This is all delusion.
- [Narrator] In fact, Muppets and cartoon characters
are not conspiring to subvert heteronormative society.
But this falsehood is one of the most pernicious
moral panics of our time.
- It was just panic, especially panic in regards to kids,
like parents terrified that their children could be queer.
- [Narrator] It's a vile conspiracy theory
that's as old as media itself.
But this particular tale begins
in the buffet of moral panics that were the 1950s.
- Something happened in the '50s-
this new morality came in, and the nuclear family
was so, so strong that a homosexual is now something
lower than dirt, you know, just had to be exterminated.
- [Movie Narrator] What Jimmy didn't know
was that Ralph was sick-
a sickness that was not visible like smallpox,
but no less dangerous and contagious.
You see, Ralph was a homosexual.
- By the '60s,
a gay person, if represented, was pretty much evil.
- [Narrator] In this deeply conservative
and conformist decade, under the shadow of the Red Scare,
psychologist Fredric Wertham launched an attack
on the dominant kids' media of the day: comic books.
Riding on the coattails of a larger panic
over juvenile delinquency, Wertham blasted comics
in his book 'Seduction of the Innocent.'
In his trademark nigh unreadable gobbledygook,
Wertham blames comics for nearly everything wrong
with kids those days.
One chapter, titled 'I Want to Be a Sex Maniac!,'
is entirely devoted to psychological sex problems
that comic books allegedly cause in children,
largely focusing on the relationship
between Batman and Robin.
Some of the earliest Batman comics depict Bruce
and his sidekick/ward, Dick, in all manner of situations
that read very differently nearly a century later.
Wertham depicts them in the most uncharitable light possible
to imply the very worst.
In droning passages, he writes creepily
of the 'subtle atmosphere of homoeroticism
which pervades the adventures
of the mature 'Batman' and his young friend 'Robin.''
Even though there's no evidence that Bob Kane
and Bill Finger had any such intentions
when creating the characters.
The moral panic led to Senate hearings
on the comic book threat in 1954.
- Comic books are an important contributing factor
in many cases of juvenile delinquency.
- [Narrator] In response, the publishers created
their own censorship board, the Comics Code Authority,
to keep the books as square as possible
and banning queerness under a blanket
'sex perversion' provision.
Today, we mostly know the grim and brooding Dark Knight,
but there's a strong foundation
of camp at the character's core.
- Gleeps! It's Batman!
- [Narrator] From the kitsch masterpiece
that is the '60s TV show,
the Joel Schumacher's unapologetic '90s Bat-butts.
Kevin Conroy, the man who forever defined
Batman's voice, was gay.
And before he died, the actor wrote a comic
about the experiences he drew on to create the distinction
between Bruce Wayne and the Caped Crusader.
- Bruce Wayne is the mask. Batman is who he is.
It's all about putting on this face and
putting on this mask.
Especially before you come out,
queer people identify with that.
- [Narrator] Bruce Wayne's found family of orphans,
street kids, and reformed supervillains
has struck a chord with the queer community.
After Wertham's attacks, DC introduced Batwoman and Batgirl
to establish the dynamic duo's hetero bona fides in 1956.
Fifty years after her run as Batman's beard,
DC relaunched a new version of Batwoman
as lesbian lawyer Kate Kane in 2006.
Even Robin is canonically bi now-one of them, anyway.
- You, you think about ballroom culture,
you know, the house mother, the house father-
that's their family.
That's the people that-they look out for each other,
and that's basically what it is for the Bat-Family.
- [Narrator] But if the moral panic had killed
the superhero genre back in the '50s,
there would be no modern Batwoman, no Tim Drake,
and certainly no mad love between Harley Quinn
and Poison Ivy.
- It took so long, and it's so unfair that generations
and generations of kids had to grow up feeling
like who they are and what they are
is just inherently adult, and perverse,
and inappropriate because it doesn't belong
in something that the wider world considers family-friendly.
- [Narrator] Comics today are more queer
than they've ever been, but the road
towards more inclusion has been long and difficult.
By the '70s the Comics Code was largely toothless.
At the same time, the watershed Stonewall uprising
led to a revolutionary movement for LGBTQ+ rights.
Queer underground art flourished, as it still does,
but mainstream media would still be largely hostile
to representation and would remain so for decades to come.
- It wouldn't be 'til after Stonewall,
which happened to be the same year
as 'Sesame Street,' that TV started opening up to
at least having gay characters that could live.
Kissing would come much later, but at least they could live.
- It's sad, but I would almost appreciate,
even when it would come up in, like, a phobic way,
because it would at least acknowledge
that queer people existed in the world at all.
- [Narrator] There were at least some social gains
in the '70s.
For example, we realized that TV should probably
help kids learn instead of just selling them cereal.
And so, 'Sesame Street' was born.
But this televised revolution would only open up a new front
in the culture war,
from two best friends sharing bath times and bedrooms
to a purple alien tumbling about with a TV in his tummy.
As the 20th century drew to a close,
the moral panic around queerness and kids was evolving
as fast as the media itself.
How would a supposedly more enlightened culture handle it?
One word. - Eh-oh!
[gentle music]