Censorship Class: Seven Words and Indecency

After last week’s look at smutty film, this week my censorship students got to explore the weirdly connected worlds of stand up comedy and broadcast TV. In some ways this is the week where I explore the evolution of swearing in public and how fuck became a much less egregious word than it once was. So, of course, we began with the comedian Lenny Bruce who is the foundation of so much modern comedy.

I showed my students a segment of CNN’s History of Comedy on Lenny Bruce to give them a sense of his stand up but also the esteem he is held in by later comics. Unfortunately, I screwed up and had to provide them a transcript of his Gate of Horn performance that led to his 1962 obscenity trial in Chicago. This is not the ideal way of consuming stand up and most of the students were unimpressed with the bits (to be fair so was I because the transcript kills so much of it; but we also had a discussion about how they didn’t have to like it.) The key is that Bruce had no taboo topics. He discussed sex explicitly, complete with words like cock, cunt, and cum, words that were not said on the open stage at the time. Probably even more importantly he critiqued religion, especially the Catholic Church. Such as one joke about the Cardinal of NY wearing an $8000 ring while 40 poor people live in a single apartment up the block. Or stating that priests have sex with nuns or masturbate. These kinds of comments drew anger from Catholic officials. Chicago’s Captain of the Vice Squad warned the nightclub’s owner that “If [Bruce] ever speaks against religion, I’m going to pinch you and everyone in here. … [H]e mocks the pope—and I’m speaking as a Catholic—I’m here to tell you your license is in danger.”

This strategy spilled over into the obscenity trial, as the trial transcript excerpts I provided demonstrated. (Full transcripts available here). The prosecutor referred repeatedly to the mocking of religion (Judaism too) and brought out police testimony on the religious jokes. He never explained clearly how such jokes implicated the obscenity test that turned on prurient interest in sex. This was because the trial was mostly about outrage of “regular” citizens against what today would be called a coastal, Hollywood elite. The prosecutor almost treated it as a blasphemy case. And the strategy worked. Bruce beat some trials, such as in San Francisco, but was convicted in Chicago, which was eventually overturned as SCOTUS obscenity law became more liberal, and in New York. Sadly, Bruce died of an overdose before his appeal was finalized and it would take almost forty years for the New York governor to pardon him.

Why do I spend time on Bruce? Well, partly it is an element of pulling largely forgotten stories of censorship out of the closet. More importantlay, the idea of charging a comic with a crime for their words implicates the most fundamental core of free speech. It is an absurdity that modern Americans would struggle mightly with (I hope, the authoritarian slide currenlty is disturbing on many levels). Comedy has often led to controversy and heated public debate, any good social commentary should, but trying to put Bruce in jail for his commentary is an absurdity that mocks the very idea of freedom. But this also represents the power of established elites and cultural norms. Bruce dared to comment on things that were sacrosanct to these elites, and he did so using dirty language that these elites surely used behind closed doors but not in polite society. Bruce’s trials were a paradigm example of using obscenity law to combat social change. And a lesson in the ultimate futility of that strategy. Thus Bruce sat at a crucial developmental point in obscenity and social norms.

George Carlin

In many ways, George Carlin inherited the mantle of Lenny Bruce as the countercultural comic of the Baby Boomers. Thanks to the changes in obscenity law, he wouldn’t spend years being hounded by prudes. But his comedy still entered the annals of constitutional law when a NYC radio station played his famous “Seven Words You Never Say on Television” segment at 2PM on an October day in 1973. When a professional prude complained, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) issued a finding that the segment was indecent and, thus, prohibited under FCC rules but issued only a warning. SCOTUS would ultimately uphold this decision in a 5-4 vote based on the idea that radio was both uniquely pervasive in modern life and uniquely accessible to children. My students were deeply skeptical of this, especially the child aspect. Some were skeptical that there was harm here. After all, what really is the supposed harm of a minor hearing the word “fuck” or “cocksucker.” If they were unaware of the words and even noticed it, the most likely outcome is a simple question to a parent about meaning. But for professional prudes the very act of hearing a word they term dirty is a harm, it pollutes an otherwise pure soul or something to that effect. As Justice Brennan’s dissent argued, once you decide to tune into the radio (or TV) I’m of the mind that you accept that you may hear something offensive to you. It’s like going outside; I don’t have the right to a sanitized world when I take a walk around town. If I see/hear something in town I don’t like, I can look away; if I hear something on the radio that is displeasing, I can switch the station. But I don’t have the wisdom of SCOTUS justices.

The Carlin decision would eventually lead to greater and greater demands for the FCC to censor “indecent” material. That term alone is amusingly vague. One student suggested it would be topics we would be uncomfortable talking to our moms about. Honestly that is about as good a definition as any. It’s just a silly, slippery concept. that means nothing much outside of the judgment of who applies it. So this is why I closed with the wild world of Nipplegate when a briefly exposed breast (but not nipple) during the 2004 Superbowl halftime show led to a collective whining session about immoral entertainment for about nine months. We had a pretty amazing discussion that focused on how a breast could be indecent without a nipple showing as that is the line usually drawn. This is why I love this class, I’d never once focused on that but my students ran with it.

All of this led to the finale around fleeting expletives. You see in 2003 and 2004 a few people said in live award shows words like fuck or shit. For years, the FCC had treated that as no big deal because it was unplanned and quick but the conservative FCC under W. Bush decided it was nearly a crime against humanity. I gave my students one of these speeches, one from Bono. Now I’ve never given this actual full speech before, just the excerpt. So I was amusingly surprised when multiple students informed me that they didn’t even notice anything that could be controversial on first listen. One actually was more surprised by the reference to noted rapist Harvey Weinstein. I was actually a little surprised that they didn’t cue to the fuck in Bono’s speech but then again anyone with half a brain knows that Bono is not talking about having sex, he is using fuck to express excitement. I refer to it as an Irish fuck, meaning kind of like putting an exclamation point on a statement. The censors, however, would say the students’ failure to catch it is evidence of the loss of public morality.

We closed with a bit on whether the FCC rule makes any sense today where so few of us consume any material directly through broadcast and instead get it from streaming services. I’ve long been of the opinion that the original content on streaming and basic cable demonstrates that the FCC rules are pointless. Even where they don’t apply, most content is not overly raunchy or scandalous. That maybe, just maybe, the capitalist system of consumer choice works just fine. But I’m an evil degenerate college professor, so what do I know?

Next week my students have a free research week but then we turn to the dirty world of popular music. Oh Tipper Gore, here we come.