Intellectual Freedom Manual, 7th edition
This is a topic that has been observed for many, many years. I began looking how intellectual freedom and censorship has occurred in the past and how the issues were handled. I found many interesting articles, but on that caught my attention first was “The Day Obscenity Became Art” by Fred Kaplan in the online version of the New York Times Opinion section. In 1873 Congress outlawed obscenity, which was defined as “works that ‘community standards’ would regard as ‘lustful,’ ‘lewd,’ ‘lascivious’ or ‘prurient.’” Then in 1959 a law suit was filed by a book publisher against the US Postal Service because it was confiscating copies of the novel “Lady Chatterley’s Lover” by DH Lawrence because it was considered “obscene”. Through the court case, both attorneys dissected the First Amendment in order to promote their cases. In the end, it was determined that the First Amendment protected writers and publishers and did not give the US Postal Service the right to confiscate material because of obscenity. This is just one example of how intellectual freedom and censorship is much broader than picking up a book at the library – have you ever thought of how that book got to the library?
The mail…Thank you Barney Rosset from Grove Press for standing up against censorship!!!
January,
ReplyDeleteThat was such an interesting post to me, mainly because I used to work for the United States Postal Service. I cannot imagine confiscating anyone's stuff, especially their books. I also had to laught at how risque Lawrence's books were considered, especially considering all the literature is out there today. Can you imagine how much worse things would have been had the Supreme Court not ruled for writers and publishers?
Great story! Can you imagine standing those standing in line for the last Harry Potter book a few years ago at midnight being told that they would not be getting the book because UPS objected so they confiscated the boxes! Crazy how times have changed. Of all of the issues brought up this week this is my favorite because it really made me think about how different life was just a half century ago. My grandma was just telling me the other day, she is 68, how she would read a book a day on non-school days and summer break. Well eventually she had read all of the books at the town library in the children's area so she wanted to move on to the adult books. But before she could check any adult material out she had to get the approval of the librarian to say the book was suitable for her to read. Mind you this was a very small town, but can you imagine a librarian doing that now?
ReplyDeleteChristine
You raise a lot of interesting questions. The turning point came in the 1973 Miller v. California case. The Supreme Court established three criteria for obscenity: 1. whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest, 2. whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by state law; and 3. whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political or scientific value.
ReplyDeleteI can only imagine how different things would be for many if the USPS continued to prohibit mail "offensive" books. My mom works for the USPS, so I asked her what she knew about this. She said that the "postal inspectors" can search any piece of mail that is "questionable", but she did not know anything about confiscating books based on being "offensive".
ReplyDeleteIt's interesting to me how similar the two definitions of obscenity are:
ReplyDelete"In 1873 Congress outlawed obscenity, which was defined as “works that ‘community standards’ would regard as ‘lustful,’ ‘lewd,’ ‘lascivious’ or ‘prurient.’”
and then
"The Supreme Court established three criteria for obscenity: 1. whether the average person applying contemporary community standards would find the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest"
Both of them reference "community standards" as a reference point, which sounds like a good idea because it allows flexibility in an area that, as Leah pointed out, changes rapidly - what was once offensive risque is now bland! But at the same time, they don't define "community" (neighborhood? city? state? country? ethnic group?), so I don't know how useful that would be. And why does my community get to decide what is or isn't appropriate?