Obscene Postcards At The English Seaside

Remember when Dr. Faustus blogged about a 1941 George Orwell essay that looked in detail at the social significance of racy cartoon postcards as offered for sale on the English seaside?

Of course you do:

What you may not know is that in 1954 (long after Orwell’s essay), a very elderly McGill “fell foul of several local censorship committees” and was found guilty of breaking the Obscene Publications Act of 1857. Well, now word comes from Eastbourne on “a sunny seaside pier” with a 21st-update. Some things have changed (the postcards are now photographic) and some things have not (they’re still “cheeky”).

Another thing that hasn’t changed from the age when Orwell called these postcards “barely legal” and McGill was convicted of obscenity is that people whose lives are devoid of more important things to worry about are still offended by cheeky seaside humor. Meet Mr. Ashley Steinschauer, an assistant minister at the Elim Family Church in Eastbourne, who is proud to have filed a complaint with the local authorities that triggered a police visit to Mr. Ian Donald’s gift shop:

I was shocked to see the postcard on sale right outside the shop.

I spoke to some elderly residents in Eastbourne and their worry is that the postcards are not cartoons anymore. They are real women and that’s a huge difference.

In Brighton I could understand it, but not here in Eastbourne. It’s damaging the image of the town and making it look sleazy.

“How far down the line does it go and where does it stop? I think it shows a real shift in morality and it’s got to stop.

Fortunately, the cop “did see the funny side” and a member of the same Borough Council that sent him around now acknowledges that “the saucy postcard is a vital part of our seaside heritage.”

Similar Sex Blogging:

• An Aggressive Courtship
• Getting Leid In Hawaii
• On the Art of Donald McGill
• California Dream Girls

It’s All For Science I Tell You

Okay, ErosFans, let’s test your publication acumen. Where do you think the following might have appeared?

There must be something in the water here in Lanesboro, Minnesota, because last night I dreamt of an encounter with a very muscular African-American centaur, an orgiastic experience with — gasp — drunken members of the opposite sex and (as if that weren’t enough) then being asked by my hostess to wear a white wedding dress while giving a scientific keynote presentation. “Does it make me look too feminine?” “Not at all,” she assured me, “it’s a man’s dress.”

If you guessed something porny I commend you on your browsing habits.

But if you guessed Scientific American give yourself a gold star.

I owe this bit of fine weirdness to my recent discovery of Dr. Jesse Bering’s Bering in Mind column at Sci Am, a discovery which I in turn owe to Dr. Bering’s being interviewed this past weekend on Bloggingheads.tv’s Science Saturday feature by John Horgan.

Now Dr. Bering has recently completed a book on an the empirical epistemology of religion called The Belief Instinct, but for some reason Horgan just wanted to spend the whole hour talking about sex. (Some people are like that, I guess.) Which is just fine, because Dr. Bering can talk very fluently indeed about sex and all the fun psychological research that’s going on there. You have to love a gay psychologist who will write a column with the title Top scientists get to the bottom of gay male sex preferences. In another column Dr. Bering recounts doing research in the files of the Kinsey Institute on the origins of people’s kinks in childhood experiences. (He uncovers the story about the origins of a “rubberphile” which was really something.) Dr. Bering promises us he’s writing a book on the subject, tentatively entitled Perv. (I hope he keeps the title.) I get the sense that Dr. Bering is working from the intuition that people’s fantasies and experiences are one of the best windows into the mind we can find.

As I reflected on all this, it occurred to me: who needs the Kinsey Institute? What are I and many of you and millions of other people doing on the Internet but writing about fantasies and experiences? Some of us might be doing it more elaborately than others, but even the humblest Tumblr reblogger is creating an image of a mind, in showing the world what it was in the vast visual record available to it that turned that mind on. Collectively we are all creating one of the widest and deepest pools of raw sexual self-report data humanity has ever known.

And that, in turns, brings my mind back to legal matters. Here in the United States there is a legal test called the Miller test, after a Supreme Court case, Miller v. California, 413 U.S. 15 (1973), which holds that in order to be obscene (and thus lacking protection as free speech) a work must, among other bad attributes “…taken as a whole, [lack] serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.” (My emphasis.)

How many of us realized we were contributing to science? But we are. All our content has serious scientific value, whether that’s part of our intention or not. And that’s another bit of armor against those who would harm us.

A Letter From Prisoner #44902-112

This has been circulating on the adult webmaster forums I sometimes frequent. Commentary seems superfluous:

Friday, Feb. 6th, 2009 LA MDC

Greetings friends and fans,

I’m sorry that I haven’t contacted everyone before this late date, but recent extraordinary events have overwhelmed me, and rendered me incapable of anything but defensive actions. This is actually the very first opportunity that I have had to sit down and collect my thoughts in sufficient quantity and clarity to justify writing to you at all. I hope you are all in the best of health, and free to move about your world without having to ask permission to do so.

I want to assure you that physically I feel great, as I’ve made some very positive changes in my life, ridding myself of the grip that cigarettes and alcohol have had on my health and well-being. I must confess that I had little choice in the matter because I am presently incarcerated in a federal prison, but these are changes that will help me regain my health and renew my spirit and ultimately emerge from this prison a better man.

Some said it was inevitable that I should pass through here someday, because I’ve always had a problem with authorities telling me what I can and cannot do — but it still seems surreal that I’m in here not for what Paul Little did as a person, but for what the fictional character Max Hardcore did in a movie. Movies that no one was forced to watch (well, except inside a federal courthouse), movies that we as adults in this country ostensibly have the freedom to enjoy or ignore.

The authorities have finally jailed me on the incredibly vague and subjective crime of “obscenity”. Of course, the United States government took it upon itself to order and scrutinize these films despite the fact that no one in the community where I was tried had complained about them. It was clear at my trial that none of the jurors from Tampa Bay had ever seen anything like my videos, but those same people have decided what adults all over this country and, by extension, all over the world can watch in the privacy of their homes. And these films were presented to this jury not in their entirety, but in a way crafted by a judge concerned primarily by perceived “demeaning treatment” in the movies, including the use of “harsh and abusive language” as directed toward certain female actresses in a small number of my movies. Seems strange that an administration that condoned real torture would be so shocked and concerned about “demeaning treatment” and “harsh language” between consenting adult actors in a fictional film, but that’s what happened…

Amazingly, the jury went along with the whole government program, as I now know they almost always do, and convicted me on all 10 counts. The judge sentenced me to 46 months and a fine of nearly one hundred thousand dollars. I’m holding out hope that I can get conviction overturned in a higher court, but it’s an uphill battle that few ever win. Until the ridiculous Miller test of obscenity is thrown onto the trash heap of judicial history, I’m afraid just about any controversial artist could be convicted of it. The laws on the books are clearly out of step with what the public has demanded, so I’m sure it is only a matter of time before the government gets out of the business of trying to enforce morality. However, in the meantime, I would encourage all of you to spread the word about this case throughout the adult and mainstream entertainment industries, as well as letting your representatives in government know how outraged you are about this gross infringement on your freedom of speech.

They are flicking the lights in here and that means it’s time to head off to our cells and be counted in for the night. But I’ll write back soon and let you know how things are going, and pass on the benefit of my experience here. Until then, stay positive and live every day as if it were your last.

Sincerely,
Paul F. Little

Mailing Address

Paul F. Little, Federal # 44902-112
Section 5-North
Metropolitan Detention Center, Los Angeles
P.O. Box 1500
Los Angeles, CA 90053