Private Parts

Breasts are much in the news recently. Remember Tom Wolfe’s The Painted Word? Both Governor Cuomo and Mayor de Blasio have been trying to deal with upsurge of painted breasts in Times Square and then Sunday August 23^rd was GoTopless Day in which women demonstrated their right to show their breasts in public (“Seeking Equality, Not Tips, Topless Marchers Draw a Crowd in Manhattan," NYT, 8/23/14). The nice thing about breast demonstrations is that there are no reports of violence on the part of the participants or the police (a peaceful situation that would only be interrupted by the intrusion of fringe elements who might try to remove their underpants too). In fact if you look at the expressions on the faces of the police assigned to topless rallies, they tend to be mostly smiling and content. But all these naked breasts bring back  nostalgia for a more innocent time in American history when showing a breast really meant something and in which there was a food chain to undressing with the full sight of the breast and finally the seemingly impossible full view of the naked female genitalia resting at the top or bottom depending on which way you looked at it. Men could be demure since back in those days, before the notoriety of porn stars like John Holmes and Ron Jeremy and before advent of gay rights or women’s liberation, for that matter, the penis was not even considered something that anyone would want to see. Howard Stern may have named his biography Private Parts, but for such an exhibitionist it’s a misnomer. Back in the 50’s the concept of private parts was really taken seriously and there were even marriages resulting in consummation and conception in which the lights were off and  neither the male nor the female ever truly saw what was coming or what tunnel the train was going into. Is the world really a better place now that women are showing their breasts on August 23rd ? Are people happy taking indulging  other liberties which were never heard of in the past, like lovers urinating and even defecating in front of each other? It’s a far cry from the halycon days when a straying satin bra strap or bulging package in Jockey underpants meant something. How are people going to have sex once all the mystery of the other is gone?

A Trigger of a Different Color

Lenny Bruce (Examiner Press Photo)

Trigger was Roy Rogers’ horse. His original name was actually Golden Cloud. Was Roy anticipating the whole movement against triggering language that derived out of feminist theory and that has recently spread like one of those fires in drought stricken areas of the West, according to a recent Times piece, “Warning: The Literary Canon Could Make Students Squirm” (NYT, 5/17/140 To what extent does language create and affect human action? And to what length must we go in terms of policing language in order to purify human intentions and motives? Is such a project feasible? During the 60’s comedians like Lenny Bruce went to jail to protect free speech and George Carlin would later carry on the banner and create a lucrative career by defying censorship—as did other personalities like Andrew Dice Clay and Howard Stern. Stern created a virtual empire of transgression, which continues on today. But backlash was forming in what one might have thought was one of the most improbable of precincts. If the right had always been sparing in its defense of the First Amendment they found an ally in militant feminists who began to regard the free expression of pornography as a form of exploitation. Christian fundamentalists and left wing feminist activists might seem like strange bedfellows, to carry the pornography metaphor even further, but they did and to some extent continue to remain allies when it comes to the question of triggering language that has become a new issue on college campuses. The Times piece goes on to describe how students have protested certain books which they feel have “triggering” or offensive language and how such students have advocated the use of “trigger warnings.” The article cites works like The Great Gatsby, The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Things Fall Apart as examples of books that have come under scrutiny in a number of colleges and universities including the University of California at Santa Barbara, Oberlin, Rutgers and the University of Michigan, for containing language which is offensive or hurtful to those students traumatized by issues of misogyny or racism. To deny that language can create thought and that it can be prone to misinterpretation by psychopaths, who believe that a book depicting rape somehow condones it, is obviously counter to the truth of experience. However, are we ready to perform an even greater act of violence, by amputating the title of a classic like Joseph Conrad’s The Nigger of the “Narcissus”: A Tale of the Forecastle to read “The Person of Color of the Narcissus” or to redact the text of The Merchant of Venice so that there is no mention that Shylock is a Jew, under the theory that such knowledge could incite anti-Semitism?

Radio Unnameable

There are only two days left to see Radio Unnameable, Paul Lovelace and Jessica Wolfson’s documentary about Bob Fass— the Ur albeit soft spoken radio shock jock, the precursor to Howard Stern, the postscript to Lenny Bruce and the inspiration for the last vestiges of free thinking that may be found on rogue public radio stations. NPR and PRI have a template in which First Amendment dirty laundry is washed and bleached in a strong detergent of political correctness. Fass pioneered what he called “free form” radio, which occurred in the wee hours of the morning. In fact, the film clips of the era in which Fass had his heyday look like outtakes from Taxi Driver and some of the call-ins could easily have been part of Scorsese’s script. But  "Alice’s Restaurant" and "Mr. Bojangles,” debuted  on the program and Joni Mitchell, Jose Felciano and Bob Dylan all found their way to the WBAI studios where Fass also interviewed the likes of Ed Sanders, Judith Malina, Julius Lester, Abby Hoffman and Paul Krassner. One of the most joyous of the events that Fass created on the air was a party at the international terminal of JFK called "the fly-in,” (in which in a use of words he admits is injudicious Fass describes his listeners as “crashing” at Kennedy). His commentary would also accompany the    “Yip-in" (in which the hands were removed from the clock above the information booth in Grand Central Station), the "be-in" and ultimately the l968 march on the Democratic Convention (culminating in the trial of the Chicago 7). The intellectual horsepower that he was able to summon makes one painfully aware of what Occupy Wall Street lacks. If Fass didn’t change the world, he certainly saved one life. One night someone named Kenny, who’d intentionally overdosed, called in and Fass kept him on the air until the call could be traced. Curiously Radio Unnameable is playing at Film Forum which is right across the street from one of the homes of Grove Press, whose Evergreen Review published some of Fass’s guests. Right down the street from the Grove Press site, is an AA clubhouse, that in Fass’s heyday was an afterhours club catering to pre-op transsexuals. How times do change.