Girls Lean Back Everywhere: The Law of Obscenity and the Assault on Genius is a book written by American lawyer, Edward de Grazia. It is a book chronicling the history of literary censorship in the United States and elsewhere.
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| Author | Edward de Grazia |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Genres | Non-fiction |
| Published | 1992 |
| Publisher | Vintage; 2nd Printing edition (March 2, 1993 |
| Media type | |
| Pages | 832 |
| ISBN | 978-0679743415 |
The book details the history of struggles against literary censorship, particularly in the United Kingdom and the United States of America. As the narrative develops, it turns increasingly to US First Amendment law. It tells the stories of various censorship struggles and cases throughout the twentieth century. The book is dedicated to Justice William Brennan. [1]
The title comes from Jane Heap, discussed in chapter one, which is based on the biographical writings of Heap and Margaret Anderson. Heap and Anderson were American feminists and publishers, who in 1918 published the "Nausicaa" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses in their magazine, The Little Review . [2] Their effort to publish the work was censored as the result of a criminal prosecution instigated by John S. Sumner, Secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice. [2] In response to Sumner, Heap wrote of James Joyce:
Mr. Joyce was not teaching early Egyptian perversions nor inventing new ones. Girls lean back everywhere, showing lace and silk stockings; wear low-cut sleeveless blouses, breathless bathing suits; men think thoughts and have emotions about these things everywhere—seldom as delicately and imaginatively as Mr. Bloom (in the "Nausicaa" episode)--and no one is corrupted. [1]
Other chapters tell the stories of numerous publishers, authors, and works, including Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness; D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover'; Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov; Theodore Dreiser and Émile Zola; and comedian Lenny Bruce, as well as of censor boards and organizations, such as the Boston Watch and Ward Society, the National Vigilance Association, and the Cincinnati Citizens for Community Values. [1] The final chapter covers censorship in the 1980s of photographers Andres Serrano, Robert Mapplethorpe, and Jock Sturges; musicians 2 Live Crew; and performance artists Karen Finley and Holly Hughes. [2]
The book is organized in the form of a court transcript, effectively "put[ting] the arts vigilantes on trial." [1]
The first two chapters of the book were published serially in the Cardozo Arts & Entertainment Law Journal . [2]
The book has been described as "monumental", [3] "authoritative", [4] and "inspired", [1] although sometimes "bloat[ed] ... with facts irrelevant to censorship." [1] Publishers Weekly described the book as a "remarkable tour de force of literary/legal sleuthing". [5]
Ulysses is a modernist novel by the Irish writer James Joyce. Parts of it were first serialized in the American journal The Little Review from March 1918 to December 1920, and the entire work was published in Paris by Sylvia Beach on 2 February 1922, Joyce's fortieth birthday. It is considered one of the most important works of modernist literature and has been called "a demonstration and summation of the entire movement". According to the writer Declan Kiberd, "before Joyce, no writer of fiction had so foregrounded the process of thinking".
Roth v. United States, 354 U.S. 476 (1957), along with its companion case Alberts v. California, was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States which redefined the constitutional test for determining what constitutes obscene material unprotected by the First Amendment. The Court, in an opinion by Justice William J. Brennan Jr. created a test to determine what constituted obscene material: Whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards would find that the material appeals to a prurient interest in sex, and whether the material was utterly without redeeming social value. Although the Court upheld Roth’s conviction and allowed some obscenity prosecutions, it drastically loosened obscenity laws. The decision dissatisfied both social conservatives who thought that it had gone too far in tolerating sexual imagery, and liberals who felt that it infringed on the rights of consenting adults.
The Obscene Publications Act 1959 is an Act of Parliament of the United Kingdom Parliament that significantly reformed the law related to obscenity in England and Wales. Prior to the passage of the Act, the law on publishing obscene materials was governed by the common law case of R v Hicklin, which had no exceptions for artistic merit or the public good. During the 1950s, the Society of Authors formed a committee to recommend reform of the existing law, submitting a draft bill to the Home Office in February 1955. After several failed attempts to push a bill through Parliament, a committee finally succeeded in creating a viable bill, which was introduced to Parliament by Roy Jenkins and given royal assent on 29 July 1959, coming into force on 29 August 1959 as the Obscene Publications Act 1959. With the committee consisting of both censors and reformers, the actual reform of the law was limited, with several extensions to police powers included in the final version.
Margaret Caroline Anderson was the American founder, editor and publisher of the art and literary magazine The Little Review, which published a collection of modern American, English and Irish writers between 1914 and 1929. The periodical is most noted for introducing many prominent American and British writers of the 20th century, such as Ezra Pound and T. S. Eliot, in the United States and publishing the first thirteen chapters of James Joyce's then-unpublished novel Ulysses.
The Hicklin test is a legal test for obscenity established by the English case R. v Hicklin (1868). At issue was the statutory interpretation of the word "obscene" in the Obscene Publications Act 1857, which authorized the destruction of obscene books. The court held that all material tending "to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences" was obscene, regardless of its artistic or literary merit.
Artistic merit is the artistic quality or value of any given work of art, music, film, literature, sculpture or painting.
The Little Review, was an American avant-garde literary magazine founded by Margaret Anderson in Chicago's historic Fine Arts Building, published literary and art work from 1914 to May 1929. With the help of Jane Heap and Ezra Pound, Anderson created a magazine that featured a wide variety of transatlantic modernists and cultivated many early examples of experimental writing and art. Many contributors were American, British, Irish, and French. In addition to publishing a variety of international literature, The Little Review printed early examples of surrealist artwork and Dadaism. The magazine's most well known work was the serialization of James Joyce's Ulysses.
John Quinn was an Irish-American cognoscente of the art world and a lawyer in New York City who fought to overturn censorship laws restricting modern literature and art from entering the United States.
United States v. One Book Called Ulysses, 5 F. Supp. 182, is a landmark decision by the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York in a case dealing with freedom of expression. At issue was whether James Joyce's 1922 novel Ulysses was obscene. In deciding it was not, Judge John M. Woolsey opened the door to importation and publication of serious works of literature that used coarse language or involved sexual subjects.
Chicago Review is a literary magazine founded in 1946 and published quarterly in the Humanities Division at the University of Chicago. The magazine features contemporary poetry, fiction, and criticism, often publishing works in translation and special features in double issues.
An obscenity is any utterance or act that strongly offends the prevalent morality of the time. It is derived from the Latin obscēnus, obscaenus, "boding ill; disgusting; indecent", of uncertain etymology. Generally, the term can be used to indicate strong moral repugnance and outrage in expressions such as "obscene profits" and "the obscenity of war". As a legal term, it usually refers to descriptions and depictions of people engaged in sexual and excretory activity.
The "Genius" is a semi-autobiographical novel by Theodore Dreiser, first published in 1915. The story concerns Eugene Witla, a talented painter of strong sexual desires who grapples with his commitment to his art and the force of his erotic needs. The book sold 8,000 copies in the months immediately following publication but encountered legal difficulties when it was declared potentially obscene. Dreiser's publisher was nervous about continuing publication and recalled the book from bookstores, and the novel did not receive broad distribution until 1923. When The "Genius" was reissued by a different publisher, the firm of Horace Liveright, it immediately sold more than 40,000 copies.
R v Peacock was an English Crown Court case that was a test of the Obscene Publications Act 1959. In December 2009, the defendant, a male escort named Michael Peacock, had been charged by the Metropolitan Police for selling hardcore gay pornography that the police believed had the ability to "deprave or corrupt" the viewer, which was illegal under the Obscene Publications Act. He was subsequently acquitted through a trial by jury in January 2012.
Book censorship is the removal, suppression, or restricted circulation of literary, artistic, or educational material on the grounds that it is morally or otherwise objectionable according to the standards applied by the censor. The first instance of book censorship in what is now known as the United States, took place in 1637 in modern-day Quincy, Massachusetts. While specific titles caused bouts of book censorship, with Uncle Tom’s Cabin frequently cited as the first book subject to a national ban, censorship of reading materials and their distribution remained sporadic in the United States until the Comstock Laws in 1873. It was in the early 20th century that book censorship became a more common practice and source of public debate. Throughout the 20th and early 21st centuries there have been waves of attempts at widespread book censorship in the US. Since 2022, the country has seen a dramatic increase of attempted and successful censorship, with a 63% rise in reported cases between 2022 and 2023, including a substantial rise in challenges filed to hundreds of books at a time. In recent years, about three-fourths of books subject to censorship in the US are for children, pre-teenagers, and teenagers.
United States obscenity law deals with the regulation or suppression of what is considered obscenity and therefore not protected speech or expression under the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In the United States, discussion of obscenity typically relates to defining what pornography is obscene, as well as to issues of freedom of speech and of the press, otherwise protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. Issues of obscenity arise at federal and state levels. State laws operate only within the jurisdiction of each state, and there are differences among such laws. Federal statutes ban obscenity and child pornography produced with real children. Federal law also bans broadcasting of "indecent" material during specified hours.
R v Penguin Books Ltd, was the public prosecution in the United Kingdom of Penguin Books under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for the publication of D. H. Lawrence's 1928 novel Lady Chatterley's Lover. The trial took place over six days, in No 1 court of the Old Bailey, between 20 October and 2 November 1960 with Mervyn Griffith-Jones prosecuting, Gerald Gardiner counsel for the defence and Laurence Byrne presiding. The trial was a test case of the defence of public good provision under section 4 of the Act which was defined as a work "in the interests of science, literature, art or learning, or of other objects of general concern".
Edward Richard de Grazia was an American lawyer, writer, and free speech activist.
The obscenity trial over the publication of James Joyce's Ulysses in The Little Review, an American literary magazine, occurred in 1921 and effectively banned publication of Joyce's novel in the United States. After The Little Review published the "Nausicaa" episode of Ulysses in the April 1920 issue of the magazine, the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice instigated obscenity charges against Little Review editors Margaret Caroline Anderson and Jane Heap. The editors were found guilty under laws associated with the Comstock Act of 1873, which made it illegal to send materials deemed obscene through the U.S. Mail. Anderson and Heap incurred a $100 fine, and were forced to cease publishing Ulysses in The Little Review.
Rabe v. Washington, 405 U.S. 313 (1972), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the application of obscenity laws and criminal procedure to the states. On 29 August 1968, William Rabe, the manager of a drive-in movie theater in Richland, Washington, was arrested on obscenity charges for showing the film Carmen, Baby. Due to First Amendment concerns, the local court convicted Rabe not on the basis that the film as a whole was obscene, but that exhibiting it in a drive-in theater was. The Supreme Court reversed the conviction holding that the citizens of Washington had no notice under the Sixth Amendment that the place where a film was shown was an element of the offense.
Ginzburg v. United States, 383 U.S. 463 (1966), was a decision by the United States Supreme Court involving the application of the First Amendment to Federal obscenity laws. One of a trio of cases, Ginzburg was part of the Supreme Court's attempt to refine the definitions of obscenity after the landmark 1957 case Roth v. United States.