Staying Up Late, Talking Dirty, and All That

IF the Sitwells belong to the history of publicity, the Burtons, Richard and Elizabeth, belong to the history of obscenity. It has fallen to them—a plum ripe with what is referred to in the script of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as “H.I.—HI!— historical inevitability” — to preside over the liquidation of the Production Code. They went through a lot to make the movie (“I really had a dread that something would happen between me and Elizabeth because of the nature of this play,” Richard Burton tells McCall’s), but they will be vindicated the day they get their Oscars for having had the courage to be. It’s hard to suffer for obscenity’s sake, to risk one’s livelihood, go to jail, be vilified, cast out, spat upon as in the old days. Ralph Ginzburg’s fate is a mere slip, as time must prove, of the judicial pen. The Zeitgeist is not mocked.

Obscenity has lost the virulence it once possessed as a modern-day quasireligion with its own prophets, saints and martyrs flourishing in plain wrappers (cata – combs). Maurice Girodias, who kept the flame for years, is out of a job. Although Allen Ginsberg undoubtedly imagines that he is doing holy work as a neo-Dostoevskyan fool in its name, obscenity is mostly the cause and trade of mundane evangelists and hack litigants who pursue a kind of therapeutic mission. They are not content to license the obscene for use by an unkempt minority but wish to propagate it as a natural good among the kempt. They have succeeded to a great extent. The movie of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a case in point, a small case. The people who made it have awarded themselves a smashing victory over mass media censorship. There are several reasons why the victory is hollow.

AC

About the Author

Arlene Croce

Featured Tags

IF the Sitwells belong to the history of publicity, the Burtons, Richard and Elizabeth, belong to the history of obscenity. It has fallen to them—a plum ripe with what is referred to in the script of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? as “H.I.—HI!— historical inevitability” — to preside over the liquidation of the Production Code. They went through a lot to make the movie (“I really had a dread that something would happen between me and Elizabeth because of the nature of this play,” Richard Burton tells McCall’s), but they will be vindicated the day they get their Oscars for having had the courage to be. It’s hard to suffer for obscenity’s sake, to risk one’s livelihood, go to jail, be vilified, cast out, spat upon as in the old days. Ralph Ginzburg’s fate is a mere slip, as time must prove, of the judicial pen. The Zeitgeist is not mocked.

Obscenity has lost the virulence it once possessed as a modern-day quasireligion with its own prophets, saints and martyrs flourishing in plain wrappers (cata – combs). Maurice Girodias, who kept the flame for years, is out of a job. Although Allen Ginsberg undoubtedly imagines that he is doing holy work as a neo-Dostoevskyan fool in its name, obscenity is mostly the cause and trade of mundane evangelists and hack litigants who pursue a kind of therapeutic mission. They are not content to license the obscene for use by an unkempt minority but wish to propagate it as a natural good among the kempt. They have succeeded to a great extent. The movie of Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? is a case in point, a small case. The people who made it have awarded themselves a smashing victory over mass media censorship. There are several reasons why the victory is hollow.