Girls Kissing, Pre-Code Edition
I’m curious about the provenance of this girls-kissing image, which I’m guessing might come from a pre-Hays-Code Hollywood movie:
Anybody know more about it?
As for where I found it, that was on a Tumblr site I won’t be crediting. I’ve had a little rant building about that. It’s too boring for its own post, so here it is:
I have a rule of thumb about [not] crediting certain Tumblr sites. It boils down to whether or not the Tumblr-site in question is making even a minimal effort to credit their own sources. If they are not, and especially if they’re not and I’ve seen three or more items from ErosBlog on their Tumblr without link credit, then fuck ’em.
It gets me bitched at in the comments occasionally — especially when the person the Tumblr swiped from, finds their picture here and assumes I stole the picture directly — but I have my reasons.
Tumblr sites come in several basic styles:
- There’s the “everything is a reblog” site. These are harmless and often fun — a person surfs other Tumblrs, hits the reblog button when they see an image they like, creates a personally-unique image stream as a result and leaves intact as much attribution as they found. I always try to attribute these. (But, like everybody else, I have many images on my hard drive that may been right-click-saved from one of these at some point. Perfection is impossible.)
- There’s the “lots of original scans” site. These are rare but valuable; they feed the Tumblr ecosystem. Somebody is making original posts based on taking images on paper (or film) and feeding them through a scanner. Usually there are some words of attribution that accompany these. I always try to attribute these. (But, like everybody else, I have many images on my hard drive that may been right-click-saved from one of these at some point. Perfection is impossible. I am repeating myself because it’s important to keep it in mind; lack of attribution, my own and others, is most often because the ability to attribute has been lost, and not because of unwillingness to attribute.)
- There’s the “cleaning my hard drive” site. These are common, probably the most common, and usually are mixed with lots of reposts. People who have been right-click-saving for years now finally have a way to share the images they enjoy, so they are Tumblr-posting them in an orgy of self-expression. The amount of attribution varies, but is usually slight-to-rare. Charitably speaking, we can assume these folks have forgotten which blogs and porn sites and image forums and newsgroups and dial-up bulletin boards (kickin’ it old school!) they harvested the images from. I generally give these folks the benefit of the doubt and will attribute, at least until I spot something to tip the balance away from doubt (like a lot of porn photos from recent photoshoots with the watermarks removed, or multiple uncredited pictures from the last week on ErosBlog.)
- Finally, there’s the “pure ripoff” Tumblr site. These look like “cleaning my hard drive” sites except there’s no hard drive collection, they’re just building a feed out of stuff they repost without credit from wherever they can find it. You can’t ever be 100% sure about this of course, but the the true “cleaning my hard drive” guy typically has some pictures he knows something about and a bunch he doesn’t, which means you’ll get some attributions from time to time. The “pure ripoff” guy never attributes anything, except sometimes Tumbr reposts because they’re automatic. Another way to spot these is that because they aren’t working from an archived of right-click-saved treasures, all of their pictures tend to be “current” — if you spend as much time looking at dirty pictures as I do, you’ll be able to surf through the stream and say where most of them came from, or at least recognize them as something you saw elsewhere in the past month. It’s my strong belief that this last sort of Tumblr site should not receive link credit, any more than the pirate boards or the Russian porn-swap forums. And so, from me at least, they don’t.
Similar Sex Blogging:
Shorter URL for sharing: https://www.erosblog.com/?p=5826
I am one of those people who has thousands of images on his hard drive and I must admit that early in my blogging career I would just right-click and ‘save as…’ whatever information or code was already attached to the image. However, in recent years I’ve been adding the site name to the front of the information or code or title that is there.
I’ll often include an image or two to the posts I write and if you (OK, not you…because every year for FOUR years the #1 item on my bloggy-xmas-wish-list is to be included on the ErosBlog blogroll and it never happens) but if one of the many other people who visit our site holds their cursor over an image it’ll say (for instance) ‘erosblog vintage-naked-typist’ If you ever were to darken our doorway, would that be enough to escape your wrath? I’m not really looking for approval from you. It’s just that I know what it feels like to be ripped off and am wondering if I’m taking reasonable steps not do it to anyone else.
Thanks.
sss
Sissy, to be honest, not really — proper credit is link credit. If you find a photo somewhere else, and you like it enough to use it on your site, the only credit that really means anything is a link to where you found it.
As for your xmas wish list, I’m not very familiar with your blog; I’ll have a look. I’ll confess your name is lodged in my memory in a not-positive way from years ago as somebody who used to make comments with a link in the text of the comment, which is a spammy no-no. But I’ve got a mind like a steel trap (rusty and broken and lost in the woods) so it’s very possible that’s a confused/mistaken memory — and anyway, even if it’s a true memory it’s years and years old. Statute of limitations must have run, eh?
From the hats, the image looks late 1920s, thus post Hays. There was still some salacious content in movies until 1933, when the Catholic church threatened Hollywood that they would direct priests to order congregations to boycott movies if they didn’t get in line.
I did think that having the site name and whatever info they had attached to it would be adequate, but you’re right it’s not a link and I’ll change my image saving habits. Having said that, I have a lot of images and will probably continue to use the ones that fit with whatever I’m writing and unlike many Tumblr site, I DO write.
I don’t recall the incident, but including a link in a comment sounds like something I may have done. It wouldn’t have been to be spammy though. I’d probably posted something that had something to do with something you’d posted and I wanted to tell you about it. Perhaps new bloggers should get etiquette guidlines?
I just remembered that you did our blog a huge favour shortly after we stared. There’s a Tom & Jerry cross-dressing/pegging cartoon that I use on the blog as well as for a profile picture whenever one is needed. I first saw the image on your site and you were nice enough to give me the artists name so I could get his permission to use it.(see, I’m not always a theif) I’m pretty sure I thanked you in a post, but I guess you were being pissy about me being spammy and wouldn’t have read it. Who knows, maybe THAT was the link I posted in the comments?
Cheers,
sss
The late 20’s were pre-Hays, not post. The Motion Picture Production Code came into being in 1930, but it was 1934 before all Hollywood films had to have a seal of approval. My guess is that this shot was in a silent film before 1930 and may not have intended to be particularly salacious.
As you can now take an image and drop it into Google Search, I just tried that and got a reference at
http://vintagel...e-our
that this is from “Our Dancing Daughters” from 1928 with Joan Crawford.