[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]
porting criticisms and reviews of the book, but these were later disallowed when the case was heard at the Old Bailey. Sir Gerald Dodson, the presid- ing judge in the case and also the recorder of London, determined that the novel did not meet his standard that all books must be suitable reading for a callow youth, or a girl just budding into womanhood. Hutchinson Pub- lishing and its director, Katherine Webb, were each fined 500 pounds. In his summing up, Sir Dodson stated: I should have thought any reader, however inexperienced, would have been repelled by a book of this sort, which is repugnant to every decent emotion which ever concerned man or woman. It is a very comforting thought that juries from time to time take a very solid stand against this sort of thing, and realise how important it is for the youth of this country to be protected and that the fountain of our national blood should not be polluted at its source. FURTHER READING Adams, Michael. Censorship: The Irish Experience. Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1968. Craig, Alec. Suppressed Books: A History of the Conception of Literary Obscenity. New York: World Publishing, 1963. Rolph, Cecil Hewitt. Books in the Dock. London: Deutsch, 1961. SERENADE Author: James M. Cain Original date and place of publication: 1937, United States Original publisher: Alfred A. Knopf Literary form: Novel SUMMARY Serenade is the story of John Howard Sharp, a concert singer who has landed fundless in Mexico City because his voice has failed him. He meets Juana Montes, a three-peso whore, who appears to be receptive to his advances until she hears him sing. She changes her mind because she hears a wooden quality in his voice that she associates with homosexuals. The two decide to join forces, nonetheless, and open a house of prostitution in Acapulco. On the way, they are caught in a rainstorm and take refuge in a church, where John rapes Juana. He justifies his action by saying, Yes, it was rape, but only tech- nically, brother, only technically. Above the waist, maybe she worried about the sacrilegio, but from the waist down she wanted me bad. 209 SEX They live together, indulging frequently in such sex play as smearing her nipples with soup. After a run-in with a Mexican official, the two move to California, where John regains his voice. When conductor Winston Hawes reenters John s life, their strong physical attraction to each other is evident. Desperate to save John from his homosexual feelings, Juana kills Winston and must escape from the United States into Mexico. John follows her, but Juana runs away only to be reunited with him as she is about to die at the hands of the official who originally forced them to flee Mexico. CENSORSHIP HISTORY Serenade was not the object of attempted censorship until a decade after publication. In 1949, after receiving complaints from patrons of the Free Public Library in Worcester, Massachusetts, the state attorney general ordered that copies of Serenade and god s little acre be removed from the library shelves. The case appeared before the Superior Court of Suf- folk County, Massachusetts, which judged the book not obscene. The attorney general filed an appeal with the Supreme Judicial Court where, in September 1950, Serenade was again cleared in a 4-3 decision in Attorney General v. Book Named Serenade, 326 Mass. 324, 94 N.E. 2d 259 (1950). In presenting the majority decision, Judge Spalding wrote that the sexual episodes in Serenade were not portrayed in a manner that would have a substantial tendency to deprave or corrupt readers by inciting lascivious thoughts or arousing lustful desires. FURTHER READING DeVoto, Bernard. The Easy Chair: Liberal Decisions in Massachusetts. Harper s Magazine, July 1949, pp. 62 65. Frohock, W. M. The Novel of Violence in America. Dallas, Tex.: Southern Methodist University, 1950. Worcester Library Directors Support Their Librarian. Library Journal, 1949, p. 649. SEX Author: Madonna Original date and place of publication: 1992, New York Original publisher: Warner Books Literary form: Pictorial SUMMARY Sex is a 128-page book of erotica and sexual fantasies written by Madonna. It was produced in a spiral-bound format with sheets of aluminum as cov- ers, wrapped in silver, and accompanied by a copy of Erotica on a single 210 SEX CD. As Madonna writes in the introduction, This is about sex. Sex is not love. Love is not sex. But the best of both worlds is created when they come together. She defends the sexual activity portrayed in the book as not meant to encourage others to engage in unsafe sex and explains that all of the photographs are based on her fantasies. She explains, when I let my mind wander, when I let myself go, I rarely think of condoms. My fan- tasies take place in a perfect world, a place without AIDS. She cautions readers that everything they see in the book is a dream, pretend. But if I were to make my dreams real, I would certainly use condoms. Safe sex saves lives. Pass it on. The brief essays in the book that are interspersed with the pictures are all written by Dita Parlow, a persona created by Madonna. On her CD Erotica, Madonna also shares performance credits with this imagined self. The photographs in the book explore diverse forms of sexual behavior, including homosexuality and fetishism. Madonna appears in photographs with various celebrities, including model Naomi Campbell, actress Isabella Rossellini, rappers Big Daddy Kane and Vanilla Ice, and gay porn star Joey Stefano. She is fully naked in some pictures and partially clothed in others; the photographs cover a range of locales. CENSORSHIP HISTORY Sex sold 1.5 million copies worldwide and appeared in the number-one posi- tion on both the Washington Post and the New York Times best-seller lists. Japan banned the book because its controversial photographs violated the country s censorship law. In New Delhi, India, police announced they would confiscate copies of Sex that entered the country. On November 26, 1992, in Paris, the Catholic group The Future of Culture filed two lawsuits against Madonna and her publisher for corrupting French youths with por- nography and petitioned the court to have all copies of the book in France destroyed. On December 7, 1992, the group lost its court battle to have the book destroyed. In December 1992, Judith Sees, chairperson of the Monroe County Library System board of trustees in Michigan, was warned by 20 families that they would remove their children from the 4-H program run by Sees because she had supported the inclusion of Madonna s book in the library collection. In 1992, the Mesa, Arizona, Public Library System cancelled its orders for copies of the book after local residents called and protested the proposed purchase. In October 1993, Library Journal reported that Kay Clark, vice presi- [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |