0 7 GANGSTERS CAN'T WIN! Crimes by Women and then Some: Female Empowerment in 1950s American Comic Books Peter W. Lee PhD history candidate at Drew University, NJ This paper was presented at the Thinking Gender Conference at UCLA, in January, 2012 Keywords: 1950s, comic books, Cold War, crime, culture, domesticity, femininity, gender roles, subversion, womanhood
1 Many historians have noted the cultural "retreat" of women into their domestic spheres at the end of World War II. From riveting Rosies to spirited bobbysoxers and zoot suitors, women were socially contained in rigid gender lines during the early Cold War.1 Nevertheless, an undercurrent of dissatisfaction flowed beneath the polished floors of idealized housewives. The personification of restless women was exemplified as femme fatales in film noir and its literary twin, the pulp novel.2 On the flip side, overly feminine women, such as the voluptuous Marilyn Monroe, have also threatened to upend the social order.3 However, unlike the regulated movie industry, mainstream comic books fell under the radar in the early Cold War. In comparison with pulps, comics, such as Crime Does Not Pay, outsold Raymond Chandler by millions per month, were illustrated in full color, and were accepted as disposable entertainment for kids. Although a rudimentary regulatory body for comics existed since the 1940s, it was largely symbolic. As a result, the industry had free reign to exploit the anxieties of the Cold War. Women in crime comics highlighted those tensions. Crime comics debuted in 1942, but after the war, they increased in number and in violence. Bad women were determined, devious, and dominated their male partners. In one sense, male creators used women as a manifestation of their own insecurities: masculinity itself was challenged by the increasing bureaucracy, anonymity, and luxury of the fifties. How can playboys in paradise combat communism when they, too, were contained in middle class family life? 4 As a result, the subversion of gender roles in crime comics made women doubly dangerous. Not only did they break free from their contained spheres, they trampled men along the way. Judge Elych Adlow, Chief Justice of the Municipal Court of Boston wrote to the Atlantic Monthly lamenting, "Unfortunately, a good many mothers who left home for a job
2 [during World War II] are still working, and their families are expected to bring themselves up the best way they can." Journalist Max Lerner agreed, writing in 1943 that "women are busting out of the mold in which we sought to fix them."5 That a woman could leave hearth and home and neglect her basic function as a mother was, well, criminal.6 In Prison Break #4, "Betty-Jane Watson, the Jail-Breaking Tigress" personified the woman trying to subvert society. "It's probably the usual - violence, robbery, mugging, terror!" sighs an aged jail matron.7 The caption confirmed: "Betty-Jane Watson would never cooperate with society. She was like a caged animal - doing the necessary work because she had to," such as laundry, scrubbing, and other domestic duties: prison really was