Obscenity

Since obscenity can manifest itself in various ways, this entry focuses on the semantic changes of the terms obscene and obscenity . These changes have been curiously haphazard as different interest groups in English cultural history have sought to define the terms. In earlier times both words had a basic sense of religious violation. The emphases on sexual depravity or extreme vulgarity are basically modern interpretations dating from only the eighteenth century. Prior to that period publications were policed by the ecclesiastical courts, which were far more concerned about unorthodox views and heretical statements. However, in the last two centuries, taboos have moved from religious to sexual and racial areas. Considering the powerful impact that the concept of “obscenity” and the categorization of “obscene” have had on modern culture, especially in relation to pornography, the terms are comparatively recent in the history of the language and still surprisingly vague in their definitions.

The obvious problem is that what is “obscene” depends on many variables relating to age, culture, personal preferences, and notions of taboo. D.H. Lawrence rightly observed in the second paragraph of Pornography and Obscenity (1929): “What is obscene to Tom is not obscene Lucy or Joe, and really, the meaning of a word has to wait for majorities to decide it.” Bertrand Russell had a more pragmatic view: “It is obvious that ‘obscenity’ is not a term capable of exact legal definition; in the practice of the courts, it means ‘anything that shocks the magistrate’” (1928, 124) Obscene and obscenity do not originally have as strong a semantic overlap as might be expected. Nevertheless, both have become key terms in assessing the public acceptability of books, films, and stage performances

The basic definition of obscenity as given by the Oxford English Dictionary is “impurity, indecency, lewdness,” which is broad but not entirely condemning. The first instance has a sexual emphasis, being Thomas Nashe’s comment in 1589 on “Virgil’s unchast Priapus and Ovid’s obscenity” ( The Anatomie of Absurditie , chapter 3). Yet John Milton provides a powerful religious use in his tract on Divorce (1643): “Worse than the worst obscenities of heathen superstition” (II iv). The sense of unseemly eroticism is clearly exemplified in a much later quotation from the Christian Times (October 6, 1893) referring to “Pictures of foul obscenity not to be surpassed in Pompeii” (995).

As the entry for pornography shows, prior to 1857 the application of obscenity to literature was problematic, since the relevant offence was termed obscene libel . The use of obscenity to refer to “an instance of foul language” is not treated separately in the OED entry, but the first recorded instance appears to be in 1768: “Whenever he [the Earl of Moreland] heard any Profaneness or Obscenity in the Streets, he would stop to reprove and expostulate with the Offender” (Henry Brooke, The Fool of Quality , III, xvi, 343). In recent decades a very broad condemnatory sense has developed, evidenced in “The obscenity of racial hatred” in The Times of March 21, 1970, and the comment by Robert Fisk in the Independent newspaper on the Iraq war: “It was an outrage, an obscenity” (March 27, 2003).

Obscene is designated as “of doubtful etymology” by the OED , which nevertheless derives it from Latin obscenus , which had a strong religious sense of “inauspicious, ill-omened, abominable, disgusting, filthy, lewd.” Shakespeare is accorded the first quotation, in 1597, from Richard II when the Bishop of Carlisle condemns the usurping of the throne as “So heinous, black and obscene a deed” (IV i 122). The earlier meanings are clearly intended, in view of the disastrous consequences of the action. However, the term possibly derives from Latin caenum , “filth,” and there are Elizabethan quotations referring to “obscene ballads” and to “obscene and filthy communications.” Robert Graves in his illuminating essay “Poetry and Obscenity” stresses a theatrical context, deriving the second element from Latin scænus , and Greek skene , “scene.” He argues that the secondary sense of “depraved” or “indecent” developed when “plays, originally performed in honour of deities and heroes under the protection of Dionysus, god of the Mysteries, came to include scenes of indecent buffoonery offensive to the gods themselves … [especially] when public sexual handling of one another by Roman actors—the ‘actresses’ being boys—became fashionable” (1972, 63).

The term started to develop a sexual specialization during the seventeenth century, mainly through the use of the phrase obscene parts for “private parts,” from Latin partes obscenae meaning the genitals. Both John Dryden in his translation (1697) of Vergil’s Æneid (III, l. 545) and Alexander Pope in his translation (1725) of Homer’s Odyssey use the phrase: “Her [Scylla’s] parts obscene the raging billows hide” ( Odyssey , Book xii, l. 115). Clearly this sexual connection lay behind the definitions of obscene and obscenity which were to become crucial in the assessment of literature and the arts.

In 1857 the Obscene Publications Act was passed, but “only after intense opposition in both Houses [Commons and Lords], and on the assurance of the Lord Chief Justice John Campbell that it was to apply ‘exclusively to works written with the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth and of an nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind’” (Taylor 1954, 204-5). However, the “Campbell” Act of 1857 became modified by some later comments made by Lord Chief Justice Alexander Cockburn in a case in 1868 ( Rex v. Hicklin , LR 3 QB 360 1868). Although strictly uttered obiter dicta and not a true definition, they nevertheless became the standard criterion for obscenity for nearly a century:

I think the test of obscenity is this, whether the tendency of the matter charged as obscenity is to deprave and corrupt those whose minds are open to such immoral influences and into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall.

(cited in Craig 1962, 44)

Because this “test” did not allude to content, intention, or shock-value, it became an effective legal instrument allowing only sections of a work to be assessed. The results, in the form of numerous successful prosecutions, are discussed in the entries on censorship and lawsuits. The high profile cases naturally became a part of the public record, but in the early 1950s the number of “novels in respect of which orders for destruction have been made by various Magistrates Courts” was approximately 4,000. “The titles were all listed in a secret Blue Book that was issued to chief constables by the Home Office” and its existence was kept secret from MPs (Travis 2001, 98-99). In the Blue Book for 1954 were Daniel Defoe’s Moll Flanders and Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary .

The eventual revision of the Obscene Publications Act in 1959 (Acts 7 & 8 Elizabeth II c. 66 § 1) resulted in the following similar definition:

An article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect is, taken as a whole, such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely to read, see or hear the matter contained and embodied in it.

The phrases “into whose hands a publication of this sort may fall” and “persons who are likely to read” admitted a double standard in format and publication, whereby an edition of Boccaccio leather-bound was “literature” but in paperback became “pornography.” Elements of class and gender also became explicit in the famous trial concerning D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover in 1960 when the counsel for the prosecution asked frequently: “Is it a book that you would even wish your wife or servants to read?” However, in addition to the important qualification “taken as a whole,” the new Act allowed for expert witnesses to be called by the defense. This factor more than any other produced a landmark verdict in favor of the publishers.

The United States Supreme Court has ruled that the constitutional protection of freedom of speech (which it upheld notably in Cohen v. California ¹⁹⁷³, a case of an obscenity on a jacket) does not extend to obscenity in literature, which it defined in Miller v. California (1973) in terms of a three-part test, often referred to as “the Miller test”:

(a) whether the average person, applying contemporary community standards, would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;

(b) whether the work depicts or describes, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and

© whether the work, taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.

Other important rulings concerning obscenity are Roth v. United States 354 U.S. 476 (1957) and Jacobellis v . Ohio 378 U.S. 184 (1964).

It is significant and anomalous that in relation to literature, stage, and film, the notions of both “obscene” and “obscenity” are still geared almost exclusively to material regarded as prurient or sexually corrupting. The modern generalized senses of “horrific,” “disgusting,” or “revolting” still have little significance. Thus in Shakespeare’s savage tragedy Titus Andronicus (1590), “obscenity” in the sexual sense is not especially prominent, but unimaginably hid- eous crimes are staged, including rape followed by mutilation, the victim’s tongue being cut out, and even cannibalism. Yet the play has never been banned or even condemned as “obscene.” In recent times war has been legitimately described as “the ultimate obscenity,” but films such as Apocalypse Now! (1979), Platoon (1987), and Full Metal Jacket (1988) containing the most gruesome depictions of war, still do not fall under the category.