LONDON – About 31 years ago, give or take, I received a two-day suspension from my high school for possession of “indecent materials,” that allegedly “interfered with the operations” of my school.
What were these indecent materials? Two (then-recent) albums from American rock musician/composer Frank Zappa’s enormous catalog, Sheik Yerbouti and You Are What You Is.
Since I had brought the records (yes, I do mean vinyl records, kids) to school with the intent of loaning them to a friend, I was told my punishment could have been much worse. I could have been expelled for “contributing to the delinquency of a minor” by exposing my poor, innocent pal to these “vile and loathsome” songs.
At the time, suppressing laughter as I sat in the principal’s office, I thought to myself, “It’s a damn good thing I left Joe’s Garage at home. If they think “I Have Been in You” is bad, these motherfuckers would have executed me over “Stick it Out.”
These days, I doubt the current administrators at my old school even think about what kids are listening to through their earbuds, much less contemplate suspending them over it. Of course, it’s also true you can fit Zappa’s entire discography on a thumb drive, label it “summer vacation pics” and pass it to your friend in the middle of class without any adult being the wiser.
The relationship between shifting social mores and the advance of technology isn’t necessarily causal, but there’s an undeniable correlation between the easier-than-ever distribution of ideas and content in the internet age and the increased tolerance for depictions and descriptions that push the boundaries of our ever-malleable notions of “good taste” and “decency.”
Roughly 15 years before I found myself on the wrong side of a particularly uptight principal for having the poor judgment to commit the heinous crime of Attempted Zappa Distribution, someone far more prominent than me was subjected to far more serious recriminations merely for suggesting some porn might have merit.
If you’re familiar with the name Anthony Burgess, it’s probably by way of his most famous book, or the movie made from it, A Clockwork Orange. Although he died in 1993, Burgess is about to have a posthumous work added to his bibliography: a transcription of a speech he gave to a group of priests and government officials in Malta in 1970.
Burgess, who self-identified as a conservative libertarian, caused quite the local uproar with his speech, in which he had the audacity to suggest people shouldn’t summarily disregard the potential value of all “obscene” works of art and literature.
As an article in The Guardian puts it, Burgess “used the lecture to argue that obscenity and pornography should be judged according to literary merit.”
In response to this argument — which likely wouldn’t so much as raise a single eyebrow in any reasonably free state these days — the government of Malta seized Burgess’ home.
That’s right: Simply for discussing the possibility there may still be literary value in some obscene and/or erotic works, Burgess was treated like a nefarious crime boss.
This wasn’t the first time the Maltese government had fucked with Burgess over his overly libertine ways, either.
“He was trying to move in with his library when quite a large chunk of it was seized by the Maltese post office,” explained Andrew Biswell, a professor of English at Manchester Metropolitan University and director of the International Anthony Burgess Foundation.
Making matters worse, the books seized from Burgess weren’t targeted due to their language or subject matter, so much as the takings were based on assumptions related to the books’ titles and authors.
“He struck up a correspondence with the post office asking for the books to be returned,” Biswell said, “and they said they would let him know as soon as they had read them.”
Come to think of it, the vice principal didn’t listen to my Zappa albums, either. He just stuck them in a drawer and told me I could have them back later — as soon as all us peons had been let out of our last class on the final day of the semester.
Just as my old school probably doesn’t impose an involuntary leave of absence on students for having “Cool for the Summer” on their playlists, I suspect these days the Maltese government wouldn’t do much more than yawn over the once-shocking Burgess lecture which is soon to be published for the first time.
The internet and social media aren’t the only reasons why things have loosened up substantially around (most of) the globe since the 1970s and ’80s, of course. But in a world where multiple mainstream publications reference Pornhub’s analytics on a near-daily basis, mere references to obscene ideas or descriptions probably aren’t going to lead to anybody’s house being seized, even in Malta.
I suppose it’s possible the pendulum will swing back the other direction, particularly if the ongoing effort to blame porn for a spate of societal ills spreads from state legislatures to the U.S. Congress.
But in a time when presidential candidates can shrug off a casual confession of sexual misconduct as “locker room talk,” I suspect it’s going to take more than a description of a tiny chrome-plated machine that looks like a magical pig with marital aids stuck all over it to get yourself sent to the principal’s office.
