Public Pornography

The postwar flood of pornography shows no sign of abating and, for once, it seems, the dim congressmen, stern churchmen, and stiff-laced ladies are complaining about something real and reckonable.

Public Pornography

The postwar flood of pornography shows no sign of abating and, for once, it seems, the dim congressmen, stern churchmen, and stiff-laced ladies are complaining about something real and reckonable.

It is not my intent to oppose Vice, from which I derive as much pleasure as most people, but to point out that it is not Virtue; and that, while it doubtless has an ineradicable place in the scheme of things entire, that place tends, in polite society, to be private.

Its recent invasion of the public domain is unmistakable. The most obvious sign is that the two-bit monthlies “glorifying the American girl” which used to be confined to the newsstands around the tracks now overflow the back shelves of the racks in neighborhood drug and candy stores. Six years ago they could not be bought in a dry southern village, although they were imported from the nearby city to the barber shop, poolroom, and bar. Today they will be found on all the newsstands in a quiet Quaker town—or they were there until a mother, the local editor, and several ministers pounced upon the hapless police chief. They will be back again the day after tomorrow. The magazines are all the same: bosoms and butts, high heels, opera hose, leopard skins, manacles, whips and wrestling ladies. In the back pages, ads for “art photos” sent in plain envelopes via railway express. Was it for this that Peter Zenger stood trial?

Then, of course, there are the pulp books. Did the Gallup poll find x% of Americans, as against x+y%a of the English, reading books? That was before the days of M. Spillane. Mr. Spillane is highbrow compared to some of his competitors in the new market of culture. The covers are worse than the innards? If only this were always true. Certainly there is Farrell, Faulkner, Moravia— even Cain. But there is also smut beside which the Tropics are prim and their author a little girl in a starched white petticoat. The subject matter is not clinching—lesbianism, prostitution, abortion, adultery have been themes of great literature—but the treatment is. It is not faintly Nice or Latin. Don’t take my word; borrow a copy from your teenaged son and judge for yourself.

Finally, burlesque may be mentioned, an old institution that is flourishing again. The shows are packed—a second house has opened in Philadelphia—and, unless fading memories fail me, have hotted up in recent years (and American burlesque has always been dirtier than its English or French equivalent). But the most significant change is the audience, formerly male, now often mixed—an observation the new Kinsey confirms: “A decade or two ago the burlesque audiences were almost exclusively male; today the audiences may include a more equal number of females. It is difficult … to explain this attendance by females in view of the fact that so few of them are aroused erotically by such shows. Apparently most f...