Donna Dennis

I enjoyed this history of the dance between smut and the law. Dennis argues, among other things, that publishers trying to stay on the right side of the law turned to explicit violence combined with nonexplicit sex, because sex was the target—something we see today. I was somewhat amused by the argument that “the indirectness that characterized sexual expression in even the most shocking examples of sensational literature may have stemmed from ‘deep-seated guilt’ about sexual desire and the ‘residual repressiveness of the Puritan conscience,’” producing euphemisms like “snowy globes.” Okay, sure, but also I think there’s only so many times per paragraph you can really write “tits” and still feel okay about yourself as a writer. I’m not saying that “throbbing member” or “snowy globes” is a good solution for most writers, just that it’s not always obvious what you should be writing. Dennis also notes that—unlike the sex reformers and contraception advocates also prosecuted under the Comstock laws in the later part of her period—porn publishers didn’t appeal to the First Amendment to defend themselves. If they defended themselves at all, it was on the grounds that enforcement worked an unconstitutional taking of private property (the expensive plates used to print the fancier books) and privacy. I was also interested in her suggestion that the lack of prosecution of obscenity by Tammany Hall reflected a relative preference for enforcing the laws against assaults and small property crimes—the kinds of things likely to happen to lower-class citizens—over enforcing the laws relating to public morality—the kinds of things upper-class citizens didn’t like to see in “their” city. Not just ideology about what the public wants from its laws, but also real resource constraints, are involved in these choices, and that’s a good reminder. In Dennis’s account, lack of enforcement reflected “both pervasive corruption and principled opposition to Republican moral ideology.” And finally, Dennis points out that Congress barred obscenity from the US mail, but neglected to regulate private express companies, providing them with a significant source of income: just another instance of porn as lucrative business model for new markets.… (mehr)