5 thoughts on “Pulp Parade #65: Just a regular ol’ flogging”

  1. I realize these publications were very disreputable when released, but I wonder at the social context. If a 12 year old boy tried to buy this flagellant issue would the newsagent chase him away? Sort of like a preteen trying to buy a Playboy issue in 1970?
    Of course, one change is that these were actual lurid stories with equally salacious pictures. Today it’s mostly pictures. The need for actually reading the tale is far less important today.

    • I have a project underway in which I’m trying to find out more about the social context of these pulps — I’m especially interested in claims that censorship efforts led to their demise — but it is so far going slowly. There may be a post if I find out anything interesting.

      • I don’t know about censorship, but having most of your target audience drafted and sent into real blood and guts situations in the 40s didn’t help sales.

        • I’ve heard similar theories with respect to WWII paper rationing being a cause of the decline of the pulps, but the timing doesn’t seem to quite work. Many of these pulps petered out by about mid 1941 at the latest (and you can see a distinct pull-back in salaciousness of the covers as early as 1940), both events before U.S. entry into the war in December 1941. It’s true that conscription was (re-)introduced in 1940, but even then there was a maximum number of 900,000 inductees prior to August 1941, so it’s unclear that this would have had that much of an effect.

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