3 ms·

How to Be Obscene (1927)

54 points by dredmorbius 2y ago

swiftcoder 2y ago
I have a feeling this advice still works pretty well, albeit probably not centered on Boston in the current age
- quesera 2y ago
  It's really quite horrifying to read about common police actions in cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco even just 50 years ago. Then again, it was worse elsewhere.
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  What I (submitter) had noted about the piece was that the time and place have changed, the topics, tactics, motives, and consequences rather less so. Noting that classic works and Biblical passages also tend to cross tripwires is another constant.
graemep 2y ago
I think the problem with this is that the things that would be offensive enough to enough people to get attention are exactly the sort of things that publishers would refuse to publish. The world has changed and its not obscenity that offends anymore, its racial slurs and the like that would get the most attention. Its also harder for most people to do honestly because its not the subjects you cover, but what you say about them that will offend. That kills the " deal with the facts of life frankly and honestly" idea - it would only work if your honest view is one that people will find objectionable - but then so will most publishers.
- nicolas_t 2y ago
  Plenty of books got banned in the deep south for things that are hardly obscene. Just add a teenage LGBT character, have some paragraphs that are written from his point of view, mention harassment by bigots and you have a very bannable book. You can always count on the small mindedness of a small percentage (unfortunately growing) of the population.
  - throwaway346434 2y ago
    I have always relied on the unkindness of strangers...
  - graemep 2y ago
    > Plenty of books got banned in the deep south for things that are hardly obscene. Just add a teenage LGBT character, have some paragraphs that are written from his point of view, mention harassment by bigots and you have a very bannable book. Banned meaning "not stocked in school libraries" and that only in a particular part of the US. That is a long way short of arresting booksellers. It sill not get you the level of attention "obscenity" would get you, now will it it promote your book. I have read several articles about US school book bans and I cannot recall the title of a single one or the name of a single author - because the media attention is on the issue rather than on a single book.
  - klyrs 2y ago
    Do you include Idaho, Montana, Illinois, the Dakotas, Alberta and Saskatchewan in "the deep south"?
- bryanrasmussen 2y ago
  In the case of Racism and Anti-Racism there are some aspects of Anti-Racism that is akin to fashion in how they change over time - https://medium.com/luminasticity/racism-racism-and-its-modes-54b771a67d24 https://medium.com/luminasticity/racism-racism-and-its-modes... so books that when published were Anti-Racist, like To Kill A Mockingbird, can now be banned in places due to charges of Racism.
  - graemep 2y ago
    > so books that when published were Anti-Racist, like To Kill A Mockingbird, can now be banned in places due to charges of Racism. What that shows is that some people are incapable of understanding anything from outside their own cultural context - they cannot understand the past or other cultures. This is a common problem with anything from the Bible to a contemporary work by a foreigner. Racism is, like race, a cultural construct. It is not the same thing over time or in different places. I have my own take on that, mostly from my own experience: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different
- elp 2y ago
  I think its always been a high risk strategy but if you have enough popularity / power to survive the attempted censorship/ cancellation you are golden. A modern version would surely be J.K Rowling. State loudly and publicly that trans-women are men. Real world mothers, who buy most children's books, would find this uncontroversial to the point of being obvious but the resulting publicity from the outrage and attempted cancelling has at least in part driven her to have multiple books on the Amazon bestseller lists for YEARS at time.
  - graemep 2y ago
    I have not looked at the numbers, but did her sales increase after the controversy?
  - klyrs 2y ago
    Where is JK Rowling subject to censorship? Around the time her first movie was put out, I recall pastors railing against the "Satanism" in her books, but that's an exercise of speech. Since then, religious folk see her as more of an uneasy ally, as LGBT folk are now critical of her, another exercise of speech. What censorship do you refer to?
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
damnesian 2y ago
[flagged]
- brobdingnagians 2y ago
  A difficulty now is that we have morality police on both sides who believe strongly that they are right. And each side believes they are purveyors of uncomfortable truths for the other side. Both sides also believe in censoring their opponents. And both sides believe that they are the true defenders of American values. Fundamentally, America is divided into two sides who both believe they are fighting a Holy War against the infidels on the other side.
  - alexilliamson 2y ago
    Yes, but only one side has the guns.
    - r2_pilot 2y ago
      > Yes, but only one side has the guns. Aside from the unnecessary inflammatory injection of firearms, I'd like to clarify and say "only one side thinks only they have the guns". Not that this should matter in a civilized country.
      - krapp 2y ago
        In a civilized country, civil society and the rule of law don't depend on the ever-present threat of populist violence to begin with. The US is not a civilized country, and one side definitely not only has most of the guns, but has proven itself more eager to use those guns in the service of their ideological goals than the other.
        deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
      - CaptWillard 2y ago
ta20240226 2y ago
> But then some good angel puts it into the head of a Boston preacher to read your book and take it to the Boston police, and the police go and arrest a bookclerk for selling your book, which is obscene. Instantly the press agencies flash the name of your book to every town and village in the United States, and your publishers get orders by telegraph from Podunk and Kalamazoo. This reminds me of Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College a couple of weeks ago. This was a speech by a fairly obscure guy (he is a place kicker) at a fairly obscure college. But because he said something our culture considers obscene, his speech was on the front page of all the news sites and talked about on Twitter. Normally, maybe a few hundred people would have heard his speech. Now likely millions of people have at least heard a portion of his speech.
plg 2y ago
It bugs me that I can read New Yorker articles using the Apple News app but I can’t read it on its own website.
- quesera 2y ago
  I have no trouble reading New Yorker articles on their website. I disable JavaScript by default. No JavaScript is required for newyorker.com, and apparently allowing it would be a downgrade.
- chasil 2y ago
  I discovered archive.ph here a few weeks ago, and it likely solves your problem.
cess11 2y ago
Similar tactics were used by the YIP and Situationist International some decades later. Abbie Hoffmann's Steal This Book had a rather long reach, for example both the hip-hop act Coup (1998) and the rock orchestra System of a Down (2002) released records called something like Steal this Album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party
jjbinx007 2y ago
https://archive.is/zSjKf https://archive.is/zSjKf

54 points by dredmorbius 2y ago

swiftcoder 2y ago

I have a feeling this advice still works pretty well, albeit probably not centered on Boston in the current age

quesera 2y ago
It's really quite horrifying to read about common police actions in cities like Boston, New York, San Francisco even just 50 years ago. Then again, it was worse elsewhere.
dredmorbius 2y ago
What I (submitter) had noted about the piece was that the time and place have changed, the topics, tactics, motives, and consequences rather less so. Noting that classic works and Biblical passages also tend to cross tripwires is another constant.

graemep 2y ago

I think the problem with this is that the things that would be offensive enough to enough people to get attention are exactly the sort of things that publishers would refuse to publish. The world has changed and its not obscenity that offends anymore, its racial slurs and the like that would get the most attention. Its also harder for most people to do honestly because its not the subjects you cover, but what you say about them that will offend. That kills the " deal with the facts of life frankly and honestly" idea - it would only work if your honest view is one that people will find objectionable - but then so will most publishers.

nicolas_t 2y ago
Plenty of books got banned in the deep south for things that are hardly obscene. Just add a teenage LGBT character, have some paragraphs that are written from his point of view, mention harassment by bigots and you have a very bannable book. You can always count on the small mindedness of a small percentage (unfortunately growing) of the population.
- throwaway346434 2y ago
  I have always relied on the unkindness of strangers...
- graemep 2y ago
  > Plenty of books got banned in the deep south for things that are hardly obscene. Just add a teenage LGBT character, have some paragraphs that are written from his point of view, mention harassment by bigots and you have a very bannable book. Banned meaning "not stocked in school libraries" and that only in a particular part of the US. That is a long way short of arresting booksellers. It sill not get you the level of attention "obscenity" would get you, now will it it promote your book. I have read several articles about US school book bans and I cannot recall the title of a single one or the name of a single author - because the media attention is on the issue rather than on a single book.
- klyrs 2y ago
  Do you include Idaho, Montana, Illinois, the Dakotas, Alberta and Saskatchewan in "the deep south"?
bryanrasmussen 2y ago
In the case of Racism and Anti-Racism there are some aspects of Anti-Racism that is akin to fashion in how they change over time - https://medium.com/luminasticity/racism-racism-and-its-modes-54b771a67d24 https://medium.com/luminasticity/racism-racism-and-its-modes... so books that when published were Anti-Racist, like To Kill A Mockingbird, can now be banned in places due to charges of Racism.
- graemep 2y ago
  > so books that when published were Anti-Racist, like To Kill A Mockingbird, can now be banned in places due to charges of Racism. What that shows is that some people are incapable of understanding anything from outside their own cultural context - they cannot understand the past or other cultures. This is a common problem with anything from the Bible to a contemporary work by a foreigner. Racism is, like race, a cultural construct. It is not the same thing over time or in different places. I have my own take on that, mostly from my own experience: https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different https://pietersz.co.uk/2023/08/racism-culture-different
elp 2y ago
I think its always been a high risk strategy but if you have enough popularity / power to survive the attempted censorship/ cancellation you are golden. A modern version would surely be J.K Rowling. State loudly and publicly that trans-women are men. Real world mothers, who buy most children's books, would find this uncontroversial to the point of being obvious but the resulting publicity from the outrage and attempted cancelling has at least in part driven her to have multiple books on the Amazon bestseller lists for YEARS at time.
- graemep 2y ago
  I have not looked at the numbers, but did her sales increase after the controversy?
- klyrs 2y ago
  Where is JK Rowling subject to censorship? Around the time her first movie was put out, I recall pastors railing against the "Satanism" in her books, but that's an exercise of speech. Since then, religious folk see her as more of an uneasy ally, as LGBT folk are now critical of her, another exercise of speech. What censorship do you refer to?

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

damnesian 2y ago

[flagged]

brobdingnagians 2y ago
A difficulty now is that we have morality police on both sides who believe strongly that they are right. And each side believes they are purveyors of uncomfortable truths for the other side. Both sides also believe in censoring their opponents. And both sides believe that they are the true defenders of American values. Fundamentally, America is divided into two sides who both believe they are fighting a Holy War against the infidels on the other side.
- alexilliamson 2y ago
  Yes, but only one side has the guns.
  - r2_pilot 2y ago
    > Yes, but only one side has the guns. Aside from the unnecessary inflammatory injection of firearms, I'd like to clarify and say "only one side thinks only they have the guns". Not that this should matter in a civilized country.
    - krapp 2y ago
      In a civilized country, civil society and the rule of law don't depend on the ever-present threat of populist violence to begin with. The US is not a civilized country, and one side definitely not only has most of the guns, but has proven itself more eager to use those guns in the service of their ideological goals than the other.
      - deleted 2y ago
        [deleted]
    - CaptWillard 2y ago

ta20240226 2y ago

> But then some good angel puts it into the head of a Boston preacher to read your book and take it to the Boston police, and the police go and arrest a bookclerk for selling your book, which is obscene. Instantly the press agencies flash the name of your book to every town and village in the United States, and your publishers get orders by telegraph from Podunk and Kalamazoo. This reminds me of Harrison Butker’s commencement speech at Benedictine College a couple of weeks ago. This was a speech by a fairly obscure guy (he is a place kicker) at a fairly obscure college. But because he said something our culture considers obscene, his speech was on the front page of all the news sites and talked about on Twitter. Normally, maybe a few hundred people would have heard his speech. Now likely millions of people have at least heard a portion of his speech.

plg 2y ago

It bugs me that I can read New Yorker articles using the Apple News app but I can’t read it on its own website.

quesera 2y ago
I have no trouble reading New Yorker articles on their website. I disable JavaScript by default. No JavaScript is required for newyorker.com, and apparently allowing it would be a downgrade.
chasil 2y ago
I discovered archive.ph here a few weeks ago, and it likely solves your problem.

cess11 2y ago

Similar tactics were used by the YIP and Situationist International some decades later. Abbie Hoffmann's Steal This Book had a rather long reach, for example both the hip-hop act Coup (1998) and the rock orchestra System of a Down (2002) released records called something like Steal this Album. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situationist https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Youth_International_Party

jjbinx007 2y ago

https://archive.is/zSjKf https://archive.is/zSjKf