Nothing On But The Radio
Bacchus’s Saturday post had to do with a new technology for erotica of the future. I must confess that I found it exciting to read: the potential there is immense, whether for massively multi-player erotic gaming or social networking or just creating and sharing stories and scenarios according your own idiosyncratic fancy. Excelsior!
As I read the post, I was reminded of the fact that my technophilia tends to swing both ways (make of that what you will, with my blessing). I like not only present technologies and the promise of future better ones, but also past ones. And I was reminded of a careless remark I once made to Bacchus in correspondence to the effect that whatever technology of representation anyone creates, its use to make and distribute porn cannot possibly be far behind.
Not quite right, I thought on reflection. Of course, it’s arguably true about our ability to sculpt in stone.
(The Venus of Laussel probably from about 20,000 B.C.E., original in the Musée d’Acquitaine, Bordeaux.)
Or our ability to draw things:
(The Cosmic Union of Geb and Nut, detail from an Egyptian papyrus, circa 1,025 B.C.E.)
Or even our ability to paint on drinking vessels.
(The Brygos Painter, who flourished around 480-470 B.C.E., Erastes Soliciting an Eromenos, original in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford.)
These are all ancient examples. And we can of course think of modern examples. It seems almost too obvious to point out that there was precious little lag between the invention of photography and people taking their clothes off for the camera, or between the creation of moving pictures and someone making a sex movie. And of course, we all know that the Internet is for porn. (Will I ever get tired of linking to that post? Nah.)
And I don’t doubt, of course, that as soon as someone figured out how to write, someone was hard on their heels writing dirty stories, at least once the medium of writing because common enough that it was out of the hands of a small caste of priests and scribes, and maybe before even then.
But of course further reflection turned up some really important exceptions. Broadcast television and radio, naturally. I am pretty sure that the earliest decades of radio and television weren’t all that racy anywhere by contemporary standards (I would be happy to stand corrected if I am wrong about this.) One might argue that radio is by its nature not all that well suited to erotic representation, although I think that the existence of actual audio erotica like Susie Bright’s Cyborgasm would belie this claim. (Also, I like to amuse myself with thoughts of possible alternate reality old-time radio shows like Fibber McGee and Molly Get It On or Amos & Andy & Ted & Alice.)
More likely, it seems that broadcast radio and television came into their own as technologies at a moment in history when in North America and Europe, Christianity was going through the last phase in which it was hegemonic with respect to public policy. As we’re probably aware this religion has some rather special views on eros and sexuality, ones summarized by Nietzsche in his aphorism “Das Christenthum gab dem Eros Gift zu trinken: – er starb zwar nicht daran, aber entartete, zum Laster.” Since broadcasting by its very nature is something easy for anyone to monitor — and anyone includes the public authorities. There was of course a large non-Christian world in the early twentieth century as well, but this consisted largely of rather poor countries, many of which were dependencies of some kind of the United States or various European powers, or countries indulging various collectivist state-building enterprises. The governments of the latter class of countries sure weren’t interested in having their miserable serfs citizens distracted by eros, except insofar as they could be induced thereby to generate more laborers and cannon-fodder. So radio and television, in their advent, were unsurprisingly chaste.
I suppose of course there was always amateur radio, complete with transmissions in Morse code:
-- --- .. .-. .- .----. ... / -. . -..- - / -... .. - / --- ..-. / ... . .-.. ..-. -....- -. .- .-. .-. .- - .. --- -. / -- .- -.- . ... / -.-. .-.. . .- .-. / .-- .... .- - / .... .- .--. .--. . -. ... .-.-.- / / .-..-. .- -. -.. / .. / -- . .- -. / .. / .-- .. .-.. .-.. .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- .. / -- . .- -. .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- .-..-. / / ...- . .-. -.-- / -... .-. .. . ..-. / .--. .- ..- ... . .-.-.- / .-..-. .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- --- .... .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- .. -. ... .. -.. . / -- . .-.-.- .-.-.- .-.-.- .-..-. / / - .... . / - . -. - .- -.-. .-.. . / .--. .. ... - --- -. ... / -... .- -.-. -.- / .- -. -.. / ..-. --- .-. - .... .-.-.- / / -- --- .. .-. .- .----. ... / ..-. .- -.-. . / -.. .. ... - --- .-. - ... .-.-.- / / ... .... . / -... . --. .. -. ... / - --- / .--. .- -. - / .- -. -.. / -- --- .- -. .-.-.- Well, maybe not.
If anyone can think of any refuting exceptions, I welcome them in comments.
Shorter URL for sharing: http://www.erosblog.com/?p=4011
nice, luckily through the power of google I was able to find a morse code translator. As far as technologies go, there was the other amateur radio of the by-gone days: Citizens Band Radio. I remember many a night listening to the CB, and depending how clear it was outside (and the size usability of their antenna, heh!) I could get measurements and descriptions of many women even a couple of states away. Set to autoscan the 21+ channels, and you can definitely find some juicy conversations.
What sets broadcast media apart is that the ability to create content was highly restricted. As James pointed out, when anyone could get “on the radio”, things took their natural course…
As for writing, I recall reading (although I can’t recall where) that one of the bits of graffiti found inside a pyramid was a verse expressing a preference for unshaved women.
You might also want to add the introduction/refinement of the woodblock printing techniques in 17th century Japan, that immediately led to the development of shunga prints (and kudos if you added an image by, say Hokusai).
http://en.wikip...hunga
Oh, and perhaps the introduction of “Page 2 Girls” would help suffering US newspapers recover. Here in Japan, that seems to do the trick.
I am not all that familiar with radio in the late 20’s and early 30’s, but there is a famous instance of Mae West making some risque comments (to Jerry Mahoney, called a dummy because he was inanimate, but still smarter than Limbaugh, O’Reilly, and Beck combined). Actually, if you listen to the Marx Brothers and others, there is a lot of suggestive, though not outright pornographic0 dialogue in their movies and Groucho’s radio appearances. The censorsip we think of in radio and the movies in the past actually is a product of the mid-1930’s. I suspect if you want to find radio porn, you would look at the first dozen years of radio when it was still largely an expermental and amateur medium.
I’m confused. Is Bacchus back to referring to himself in the third person, or is this someone else? The post is attributed to Bacchus.
Sorry, Bleys. The post was written by Faustus but I screwed up while editing one of the images (to make it fit) and somehow the author flag got flipped. I’ve changed it back so it shows as a Faustus post now. Thanks for the heads up!
I’m no expert but I recall reading that East German television was extra sexy because the regime wanted to discourage the watching of West German television, which was kinda critical of the whole “worker’s paradise” thing.
One of the interesting things about the first cameras was that painters immediately seized on the idea of using them with their models – they could take a large number of poses and then have a record of the ones they liked and being artists, naturally the models were nude. It saved them a lot of time and the models were relieved of not having to hold a pose for a long period of time in a drafty and cold studio…
It was only after a few visitors to their studios had offered to buy the pictures, did the artists realize they could make a fair penny by selling the photos on their own… thus the “Spicy French Postcards” we have all heard about over the years…
When the “skin flick” movies first came out, the brothels in this country and in Europe bought them up to provide a cheaper form of entertainment than staging vignettes — it also freed up the girls to keep working at their craft…
The movies were very risqué until a number of unfortunate incidents in Hollywood, which infuriated the public [ex. The Fatty Arbuckle Rape Trial, etc.] and caused the law to get involved — principally, the Hayes Office and its Movie Code. The Marx Brothers and May West had all been actors before they hit the screen and they found that what they could say on Broadway wasn’t allowed on the silver screen — but being the subversives they were, still managed to slip in all sorts of things — augmented by Groucho’s blatant leer…
Radio and TV, unfortunately, were from the beginning highly regulated by the government — TV came of age in the Eisenhower Administration with the House Committee on Un-American Activities and the Communist Witch Hunts — and very few things slipped through — heck, they couldn’t even show an actual husband and wife in bed together [Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz] and god forbid she mention the fact that she became pregnant…
Thank god for the internet — but note that there are a lot of forces trying to censure what happens here — and they have to be stopped before they sink their claws into it…
Jim2 — I think you’re thinking of Charlie McCarthy — but spot on about the current crop of dummies (http://maewest.....html)
On a side note — just why do we have the FCC still regulating TV? As every station is now digital, shouldn’t this agency be disbanded, since they no longer have a function?? Just an idea……….