Ah, the joys of studying sexuality! I'm interested in addressing the taboos surrounding the use of explicit primary sources in "respectable" historical scholarship. What connotations do words like explicit, erotic, inappropriate, adult or pornographic carry? In what contexts are they (mis)applied? How do our personal politics and social mores obscure and marginalize subversive narratives?
In my recent American Archivist article (shameless self-promotion), I dealt with these issues as they related to issues of processing at historical institutions and, specifically, the rise of cyberporn. But let's broaden our scope. Think of the plethora of sexual mediums and materials being circulated today – film, photo, audio, and text. How did these different kinds of "public-facing," preservable records of sexuality come into being? Have some of them always existed? What drives us to communicate our sexual experiences and desires in these different formats? With whom? For whom?
My latest research centers on The Surprise of a Knight, the first known American homosexual stag film (produced circa 1929), and a small corpus of other early homosexual porn flicks. This project serves as a case study of (sub)cultural sexual imaginaries in a pre-Stonewall context. I'll be arguing that the advent of film and the subsequent proliferation of readily available multimedia technologies fostered a budding sense of communal consciousness in the first part of the twentieth century. Nascent queer identity construction moved from the private to the public sphere as film technology advanced possibilities for communication and consumption of sexual experience.
The other week, I wrote a post about lesbian pulp fiction. But let's reach further back to get at the nature of erotic literature in the western world. For instance, Fanny Hill (written by John Cleland and published in 1748) is considered the first porn novel. According to Encyclopaedia Britannica –
An expurgated version published in 1750 chronicles the life of a London prostitute, describing with scatological and clinical precision many varieties of sexual behaviour. Although elegantly written, the novel was condemned as pornography and was suppressed from its initial publication, almost never being mentioned in literary circles. It was kept in print surreptitiously, however, and for almost two centuries Fanny Hill enjoyed a salacious reputation. The book was not published legally until 1963 in the United States and 1970 in England.
Indeed, the book was banned in Massachusetts in 1821. The publisher was arrested for circulating obscenity, accused of being "a scandalous and evil disposed person" who had contrived to "debauch and corrupt" the citizens of Massachusetts and "to raise and create in their minds inordinate and lustful desires." Oh no! But that’s not all. In the past year, Fanny Hill was banned by a university in London.
Questions:
- Why are people so upset? Why are these topics uncomfortable?
- What role does (sexual) propriety and morality play in our everyday lives? How is it regulated?
- What can we learn from these taboo works, both past and present?
Check out some excerpts and images from Fanny Hill here! Let me know what you think in the comments!
100% of the SBD rewards from this #explore1918 post will support the Philadelphia History Initiative 