Literary V.-Chips

[Henry M]

I don't recall Diana suggesting institutionalized censorship.

On 26 Jan 97 at 12:49, Steelhead wrote:

> Ever since Mascaro weighed in with his astonishingly moronic
> commentary on that Kenosha Kid, Orson Welles (Gregg Toland's
> cinematography alone vaults CitKane to the top five films of all
> time), I've only read about one out every 20 postings to this list,
> which seems to be ensared in an entropic tailspin.
> 
> By chance (or destiny) I came Diana York Blaine's prudish postings
> on Larry Flynt, in particular, and pornographers (whatever that
> means) generically. Like the rolly-polly Andrea Dworkin in her
> censorship tracts, Blaine often speaks in the imperial "we" to parry
> her points. As someone who writes for living, I should probably be
> more infuriated and threatened by her censorious ravings
> than--curiously enough--I am. Certainly, I am not foolish enough to
> assert that DYB's position is anti-American. The best interpretation
> of the free speech clause of the constitution that I am aware of is
> Leonard Levy's remarkable book:  Legacy of Suppression, which argues
> convincingly that the "founding fathers" were no friends of free
> speech. Adams passed Sedition Laws and Jefferson enforced them
> against his political enemies. It's about power, as any reader of
> Foucault knows.
> 
> Blaine and her troops would probably be the first to stricken that
> great regicide and defender of unrestricted speech Milton (not to
> mention Donne, with all *his* crude metaphors) from the canon, have
> him replaced by that literary sing-song artist Anne Bradstreet. But
> as a writer, I say:  Go ahead, censor. Drive us underground. Make us
> speak our own dirty argot, our own porno ebonics. There is power in
> existing on the black margins of society, a community of exiles,
> outlaws. The more hotly the Culture Czarinas suppress speech, the
> stronger the Return of the Repressed when it comes, as that great
> comedy team Lenin and Freud always said.
> 
> So...what are DYB and her troops up to? The usual patronizing act
> with a post-modernist twist. They truly believe that most
> people--especially women I think--are idiots who don't know what is
> good, bad, or indifferent for them. This is in keeping with the
> class bias in the feminist ranks that revealed itself so horridly in
> the treatment of Paula Jones--just trailer trash who didn't know a
> good thing (being flashed by cock of presidential proportions) when
> she saw it.
> 
> The post-modern femininist censors (who oddly enough tend to believe
> as a group that it is only the "interpretation of a text" and not
> the text itself that has any "reality") are largely academics who
> can't write. Their heroines Cathrine MacKinnon and Andrea Dworkin
> spew forth some of the most turgid prose ever produced, which is
> admittedly a windfall for us pornographers since only the brain dead
> can penetrate their syntax.
> 
> The act of censorship validates their chosen calling in life:  the
> professional critic, the arbiter of taste, of standards of
> presentment and discourse. Who is to say if a text or photograph or
> film is pornographic--which is not to say arousing or obscene, but
> politically seditious? Certainly not the individual reader. The
> critic, of course, the academic hack, literary V-chips. Fuck the
> reader--we've dumbed them down so much they can't possible discern
> objectification from commodification. They need US to show them what
> to read, they need US to tell them how to act, how to feel, to
> distinguish pleasure from pain. If only there was some way to
> implant these qualities in their minds, in their genitals, before
> birth...by the time they show up in our classes at university it's
> almost too late....
> 
> In support of the fetish to oppress thought and the enjoyment
> vicarious pleasures, DYB cites the inestimable Gloria Steinum. But
> when it comes down to choosing between Flynt and Gloria S., I'd side
> with Larry any day. And I suspect P. would too. Gloria S. afterall
> is an admitted narc, a self-confessed asset of the Central
> Intelligence Agency, who through her involvement with the National
> Student Association--and other agency fronts--informed on student
> "radicals" and teachers with pacifist and socialist leanings. Who
> knows what the toll in real lives was? In P.'s world, there aren't
> many creatures lower than a snitch. And Gloria's betrayals make
> Frenesi Gates's look like misdemeanors by comparison.
> 
> Isn't it funny how the pieces fit together? For example, wasn't it
> DYB who recently--in the saddest song competition--invoked the
> lamentable memory of Cat Stevens, the man who has so
> enthusiastically endorsed the fatwah on TRP's friend--and the second
> most important living writer of English--Salman Rushdie for his
> supposedly blasphemous scribblings?
> 
> Hop on board the Peace Train, b-a-b-y and ride....
> 
> Steelhead
> 
> "A schoolmaster is a man employed to tell lies to little boys."
> Henry Adams in the education.
> 
> 
> 

Keep cool, but care. -- TRP
Moderation in moderation. -- Husky Mariner

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