Hi. Was Chester Gould creator of Dick Tracy comics Jewish? I read somewhere where he was but then I read somewhere where he wasn't. So... Jewish or Not?
Gould wasn't just a WASP but also someone with a real fear of the immigrant. In grad school, I spent a lot of time arguing that his grotesques -- Flattop, Shakey, The Blank, and the rest -- were really just code for ethnic others, for gangsters who'd stood out from "real Americans" because of their sinister Italian-ness or their treasonable Jewishness. Dick Tracy is fun, I'll grant, but I read most of it as mistrusting immigrants and celebrating the kind of traditional Americn that the Tribune's publisher Col. McCormick used the rest of his paper to celebrate as well.
Hi. Was Chester Gould creator of Dick Tracy comics Jewish? I read somewhere where he was but then I read somewhere where he wasn't. So... Jewish or Not?
ReplyDeleteNot a Jew.
ReplyDeleteGould wasn't just a WASP but also someone with a real fear of the immigrant. In grad school, I spent a lot of time arguing that his grotesques -- Flattop, Shakey, The Blank, and the rest -- were really just code for ethnic others, for gangsters who'd stood out from "real Americans" because of their sinister Italian-ness or their treasonable Jewishness. Dick Tracy is fun, I'll grant, but I read most of it as mistrusting immigrants and celebrating the kind of traditional Americn that the Tribune's publisher Col. McCormick used the rest of his paper to celebrate as well.
ReplyDelete