The Question Carlin Left Behind: What Is Obscenity?

Is pornography an obscenity or an act of free speech?

The recent death of comedian George Carlin reminded us of one of his greatest routines and most bizarre encounters with our media. It led to a Court determination that there were seven dirty words that could not be used on the airwaves.

This decision codified one aspect of a much broader and still selective interpretation of obscenity laws — an issue that is still with us as network censors who operate under the sanitized idea of “standards and practices” try to cleanse the airwaves of images and ideas deemed objectionable and offensive.

At the same time, there is growing push back on all sides. Some church and conservative groups act as the morality police patrolling the culture for any breaks with norms they believe should be upheld. Ironically, it is the Fox Network, owned by the rightist mogul Rupert Murdoch, that has been most combative with regulators and challenge their prohibitions of sexually charged programming while refusing to pay FCC imposed fines.

On the liberal side, the Civil Liberties Union rejects censorship on first amendment grounds.

Part of the problem is that there is little agreement on what constitutes obscenity. It usually has a sexual connotation, but in Latin, obscenus, means “foul, repulsive, detestable.” Go to the Wikpedia and you find:

“The word still retains the meanings of ‘inspiring disgust’ and even ‘inauspicious; ill-omened’, as in such uses as ‘obscene profits’, ‘the obscenity of war’, etc. It can simply be used to mean profanity, or it can mean anything that is taboo, indecent, abhorrent, or disgusting.”

Puncturing the pervasive hypocrisy on this issue have been comic social commentators like Carlin and Lenny Bruce, and other writers, theater artists, filmmakers and not always well liked mavericks like New York’s Ugly George, who drew large audiences for sexually titillating TV shows.

“Ugly, aka George Urban was a public access cable pioneer who became a global phenomenon, even as his show was tossed off Manhattan public access five times. Today, TimeWarner, the company that runs the access channels does far more explicitly sexual programming on its pay TV channels like HBO.

It was that phenomenon that led me to investigate this issue for a new film, just out on DVD from Pathfinder Pictures. It’s called BOOB TUBE: Sex, TV and Ugly George. They hype it this way:

“Before reality TV, before ‘Girls Gone Wild’, before the idea of young ladies baring their breasts for the camera became vogue, Ugly George roamed the streets of New York and persuaded young women to undress for his camera.

How did he get away with it? Why would any woman in her right mind cooperate? Could he possibly have had sex with more ladies than Wilt Chamberlain, as he claims? “Boob Tube” documents two stories, one about a one man crusading machine against hypocrisy and two, about society’s deep rooted obsession with naked women.”

A website that reviews DVDs picks up the story:

“This film, directed by ‘News Dissector’ Danny Schecter, is a very structured look at George Urban’s life-long obsession with the ladies, tracing his youth, his legendary role in the early days of cable television, his more recent activities and his legacy. Loaded with sexual footage from George’s series and archival photos, it tells several stories, using George as a focal and jumping-off point. First and foremost is the growth of sex in the media, moving from the underground of stag reels to mainstream America, a change that coincided with George’s glory days.

Ugly George’s story is not a positive one, as, despite being a part of cable’s massive growth in the ’80s, he never made much money doing what he did, and in the age of the Internet, he’s a bit of a relic, battling for attention with incredibly easy access to much more explicit porn. Unfortunately for him, he’s not exactly a sympathetic character, claiming responsibility for half the innovations in TV and possessing an incredibly sleazy personality. Plus, the fact that someone so kooky could convince so many women to get naked, isn’t about to get him a lot of compassion from men or women, though Schechter manages to find a few people who fondly remember George (or more precisely his show.)”

The idea that only “sympathetic characters” are legit subject of films leads to the homogenizing and sanitizing of issues. In point of fact, many of the most unsympathetic characters in TV are the shadowy ones with power who conceal their real agendas or kibosh programming about far more serious obscenities. Which George, for example, do you believe has had the ugliest impact on the world? Bush or Urban?

When a television station in Australia aired the film recently, the Sydney Morning Herald reviewer raised a key issue posed in the movie:

“Is pornography simple perversion or an act of free speech? Does the pornographer seek to exploit or provoke political dissent? It’s an argument that rages even in this raunch-cultured world where the stand-off between art and porn is yet to reach an agreement. Where ‘Ugly’ George Urban fits into all this is by claiming credit for kick starting the mainstreaming of porn, or at least being there to capitalize when ‘tits and ass’ took to small screens across America.”

In this context, Ugly George’s story is still timely. Most media reformers avoid these issues even as the public remains fascinated by them. “Ugly” fought for more overt sex on TV, and in the end was dumped from the airwaves. Today those same airwaves are overloaded with commercialized sex, ads for erectile dysfunction pills (“Call Your Doctor If Your Erection lasts For More Than Four Hours”) and every perversity — except perhaps real footage of the carnage of war.

The name “Ugly George” seems to have become an eighth dirty word. He is treated like a leper of licentiousness, a man who most recoil from rather than embrace. His angry outsider persona makes most people uncomfortable and that makes him easy to dismiss. And yet, his own one of a kind creativity made him a force of nature and an unlikely celebrity, a man who could have, with the right breaks and financing, become a, um, contender.

Paranoid, contemptuous, aggressive, self-involved are four words I have heard describe him, but his story is worth watching and his contempt for TV sexual hypocrisy worth hearing. It may be outrageous, even ugly, but it is very real. Boob Tube has been on TV in Australia, but what about the USA?

– News Dissector Danny Schechter directed Boob Tube, a film available wherever DVDs are sold. His new book PLUNDER on the Wall Street role in our economic disaster will be out in the fall. Comments to Dissector@mediachannel.org

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Like most things in life, what is defined as “obscene” is clearly personal although there are people who would like to regukate the lives of every other human being on earth to ensure that they’d never have to confront images or suggestions of things that make them uncomfortable.
To be sure, children should not be exposed to vulgarity and the naked human body should never be considered vulgar.
Being raised as a chaste Cathoic girl I had never heard of Ugly George but I am sorry that he hasn’t recieved his due or at least what he feels he should receive.
In the land of the future, grown-up Americans will despense with their false prudery and embrace their true humanity. One day, unfortunately, far in the future the Mrs. Grumbies will release their hold on morality..