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Speaker 1: Brought to you by the reinvented two thousand twelve camera.

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Speaker 1: It's ready. Are you welcome to stuff Mom Never told you?

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Speaker 1: From house stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to

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Speaker 1: the podcast. I'm Kristen and I'm Caroline. And today, by

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Speaker 1: listener requests, we are kicking off a two part Summer

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Speaker 1: book Club two thousand twelve series, and we're talking about

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Speaker 1: saucy books, books, books. We've discussed romance novels before, the

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Speaker 1: genre unfortunately termed chick lit before um and I would

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Speaker 1: say that for women's literature, popular fiction this summer, the

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Speaker 1: title that ever everybody's talking about is we gotta say it, Caroline,

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Speaker 1: it's fifty Shades of Gray. Yeah. And as I was

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Speaker 1: just telling us, and I didn't even really know what

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Speaker 1: this book was until about a month ago. Yeah, And

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Speaker 1: there was a specific request also for our summer book

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Speaker 1: Club series, do not be about fifty shades of Gray.

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Speaker 1: So don't worry, we're not about to talk about you

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Speaker 1: know what some might not really appreciate in terms of

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Speaker 1: erotic fiction, that is fifty shades of gray. But all

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Speaker 1: this fifty Shades of Gray buzz got us thinking about

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Speaker 1: books that are hard to get your hands on and

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Speaker 1: specifically book banning in the US, because I think today

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Speaker 1: in the information age, with the Internet, you know, we

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Speaker 1: can it seems like we can read whatever we want.

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Speaker 1: But that was certainly not the case for a long

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Speaker 1: time here in the US, and going back in history too,

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Speaker 1: as far back as oh, I don't know for fifty

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Speaker 1: b C. What happened in four fifty BC? Well, Caroline, Uh,

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Speaker 1: a guy named an axe like Corris, an axa Corris,

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Speaker 1: thank you. We'll just run with that guy with it

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Speaker 1: not easily to roll off the tongue name an Axagoras.

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Speaker 1: He wrote some stuff and people did not like it. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: he was a Greek philosopher who ended up getting forced

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Speaker 1: out of Athens and had his writings burned after claiming

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Speaker 1: that this crazy notion that the sun was actually a

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Speaker 1: white hot stone and the moon reflected the Sun's rays.

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Speaker 1: So everybody's like, get out out of town. We hate you,

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Speaker 1: you're stupid um. And then in three Socrates was required

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Speaker 1: to drink poison for supposedly corrupting youth, leading them to

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Speaker 1: criticize Athens again, what's going on with you Greeks? But

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Speaker 1: I mean, seriously, like, as long as there have been

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Speaker 1: ideas or thoughts happening, there's been some form of censorship. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: and people, humans, human animals seemed to really enjoy just

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Speaker 1: having things on paper, other people's ideas on paper that

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Speaker 1: they can then rip up or ban um all In

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Speaker 1: Axagoras Scott got so much guff because he they thought

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Speaker 1: that he was being derogatory to the gods. And that

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Speaker 1: kind of theme of offending people's religious sensibilities is certainly

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Speaker 1: something that we still see with book banning today, and

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Speaker 1: it was something when we go look at the history

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Speaker 1: of book banning in the US, Christianity does play a

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Speaker 1: pretty big role, starting in eighteen seventy three with US

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Speaker 1: Post Service inspector and politician Anthony Comstock, who was a

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Speaker 1: devout Christian and founder of the New York Society for

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Speaker 1: the Suppression of Vice right, And this whole society's goal

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Speaker 1: was to prevent obscene materials from polluting the minds of

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Speaker 1: the American people. And he really targeted erotica and crime stories,

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Speaker 1: which I think is funny, so it's not just sexy

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Speaker 1: times that he doesn't want people to read about its

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Speaker 1: crime too, And he considered dime novels to be pornography

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Speaker 1: for children. Yeah, and this kind of puritanical intrusion on

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Speaker 1: literature and printing was It seemed like it was pretty

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Speaker 1: widely accepted at the time, because Congress did pass the

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Speaker 1: Comstock Acts, which were an anti obscenity bill that Comstock

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Speaker 1: had drafted, which included a ban on contraceptives and also

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Speaker 1: barred obscene literature from interstate commerce. And this kind of

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Speaker 1: puritanical intrusion on literature and what people were and weren't

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Speaker 1: allowed to read legally was I mean, I guess fairly

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Speaker 1: widespread at the time because the US Congress did pass

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Speaker 1: the Comstock Act, which was an anti obscenity bill that

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Speaker 1: Anthony Comstock had drafted, which included a ban on contraceptives

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Speaker 1: and also barred obscene literature from interstate commerce. And by

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Speaker 1: obscene literature, we are also talking about things like Margaret

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Speaker 1: Singer's early pamphlets on contraception. Oh my, I mean, even

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Speaker 1: even that like kind of biological reproductive information was considered,

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Speaker 1: you know, banned. Yeah, so funny. Everybody got their panties

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Speaker 1: on a twist about just learning about women's bodies, just

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Speaker 1: learning about contraception, family planning, anything like any any sexy

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Speaker 1: anything was just too much, and all because it had

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Speaker 1: to do with women's bodies. They were like, Nope, nope,

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Speaker 1: can't read it. It's going to pollute everybody's minds. We're

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Speaker 1: all going to be filthy afterward. And something that I

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Speaker 1: didn't know was that Boston was really the hotbed of

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Speaker 1: literary suppression. Bostonians out there, you guys, I mean, claim

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Speaker 1: to fame. One. Books were so often banned in Boston

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Speaker 1: that in the nineteen fifties, stolecious titles would be labeled

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Speaker 1: banned in Boston to help move them off the shelves. Oh,

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Speaker 1: it must be bad if it was banned in Boston. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: I don't. I don't get it. I mean, you guys

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Speaker 1: had the tea party, you know, you threw tea bags

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Speaker 1: in the water and stuff, and now here you are

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Speaker 1: banning books. I don't get it. But the efforts in

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Speaker 1: Boston were really led by the Watch and Words Society,

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Speaker 1: who kind of like Calm Stocks New York Society for

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Speaker 1: the suppression advice. Yeah, um, this was coming from the

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Speaker 1: Boston Globe. Just to give you a sense of how

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Speaker 1: much the Watching Words Society cracked down and also how

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Speaker 1: much people like I mean they jumped when the Watching

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Speaker 1: Words Society cracked its whip. For instance, in its heyday,

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Speaker 1: the Boston Public Library kept books which the Watching Words

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Speaker 1: Society found objectionable in a locked room. The Museum of

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Speaker 1: Fine Arts kept parts of its Asian collection behind doors.

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Speaker 1: And again the you know the label band in Boston

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Speaker 1: became a selling point for smutty literature. Yeah, well, they

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Speaker 1: weren't the only ones. The nineteen fifties were definitely, definitely

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Speaker 1: a stretch of time that is big on book banning. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: for sure. In in three, for instance, Senator Joseph McCarthy,

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Speaker 1: whose name should be very familiar, had his aids search

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Speaker 1: US Information Service libraries in Europe and Asia for subversive books,

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Speaker 1: and libraries were accused of circulating communist materials. Yeah. All

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Speaker 1: the McCarthy is um that was sweeping the nation at

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Speaker 1: the time seemed to kind of replace banning books on

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Speaker 1: the basis of immorality to banning books on the basis

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Speaker 1: of you know, subversive communist undertones, right, just making everybody scared, yeah,

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Speaker 1: and burning books and such. But then, thank goodness, in

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Speaker 1: the Supreme Court stepped in with the case Board of

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Speaker 1: Education Island Tree School, district versus Pico with a little

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Speaker 1: bit of a little bit of sensibility about this whole

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Speaker 1: book banning issue. Yeah, they ruled that public school boards

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Speaker 1: could not remove a book from the library quote simply

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Speaker 1: because they disliked the idea contained in those books. Basically

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Speaker 1: saying that there needs to be a balance between school's

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Speaker 1: role as an educator and student's right of access to

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Speaker 1: the material. So a book has to be pervasively vulgar

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Speaker 1: to be banned. Yeah, and um, this case spring out

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Speaker 1: of U nineteen seventies six issue where a bunch of

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Speaker 1: parents and school staff ordered that certain books be removed

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Speaker 1: from a junior high and high school library. And to

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Speaker 1: give you an idea of some of the books that

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Speaker 1: they wanted to ban, slaughter House five by Kurt Vonnegut,

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Speaker 1: a go ask Alice, which is a commonly banned book,

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Speaker 1: UM A Reader for Writers edited by Jero Walter Archer,

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Speaker 1: of The Naked Ape, The Best Short Stories by Negro

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Speaker 1: Writers edited by Langston Hughes, a lot of other um

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Speaker 1: race related titles as well. And they claimed that the

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Speaker 1: books were anti American, anti Christian, anti Semitic, and just

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Speaker 1: playing filthy and think thankfully, the Supreme Court stepped in

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Speaker 1: and said yeah, yeah. And there was another case in

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Speaker 1: nine Texas v. Johnson, where a Supreme Court Justice William J.

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Speaker 1: Brennan Jr. Said that if there is a bedrock principle

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Speaker 1: underlying the First Amendment, it is that the government may

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Speaker 1: not prohibit the expression of an idea simply because society

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Speaker 1: finds the idea itself offensive or disagreeable. So we have

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Speaker 1: people like this saying things like this, which are wonderful

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Speaker 1: and supportive of knowledge and access to knowledge. But book

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Speaker 1: banning efforts to banned books are not going away, basically no.

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Speaker 1: And the thing is, even though we have Supreme Court

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Speaker 1: justices like William J. Brenner who have in the past

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Speaker 1: supported UH First Amendment rights and the freedom of expression,

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Speaker 1: that is not to say that obscene literature is legally

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Speaker 1: protected in the US. So a case that Christ and

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Speaker 1: I actually learned about in our journalism days at college

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Speaker 1: and our and our legal ethics course exactly we had

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Speaker 1: a very dynamic professor. I really like that class um.

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Speaker 1: This case is called Miller v. California, and it basically

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Speaker 1: established a three point test for obscenity UH. And those

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Speaker 1: points are one the text must appeal to prurient interests

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Speaker 1: when taken as a whole, it must involve patently offensive

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Speaker 1: sexual conduct. And it must contain no literary, artistic, political,

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Speaker 1: or scientific value. And these are points that have come

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Speaker 1: up again and again in various cases, because there is

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Speaker 1: a desire to protect literature that is actually out there

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Speaker 1: to inform and to educate it. This will prevent people

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Speaker 1: from this willy nilly being like, well, that's against my

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Speaker 1: religious beliefs or my moral beliefs, and I don't want

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Speaker 1: anybody else to read it. Yeah. And in the in

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Speaker 1: the past, the way that the law approached obscenity was

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Speaker 1: more narrowly focused on whether or not there was a

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Speaker 1: particular obscene scene in the book. Um. For instance, in Ulysses,

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Speaker 1: which will get to it also bring out of one

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Speaker 1: episode where the protagonists masturbates, rather than the entire work,

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Speaker 1: and the law used to focus just on how it

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Speaker 1: might affect vulnerable populations, particularly to minors. So in nineteen

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Speaker 1: thirty three, in the wonderfully named case United States versus

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Speaker 1: one book called Ulysses as opposed to what I don't know, um,

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Speaker 1: the judge ruled that Ulysses was not obscene and he

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Speaker 1: didn't use the Hicklin test as it had been recognized prior,

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Speaker 1: which was just focusing on the vulnerable population and how

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Speaker 1: obscenity affected them. The judge ended up saying that it

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Speaker 1: should be judged by its effects on the average person. Right,

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Speaker 1: because all of this that was in nineteen thirty three,

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Speaker 1: as you mentioned, and up until that time, the sale

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Speaker 1: of Ulysses in the US, or mailing it through the mail.

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Speaker 1: That's that's really descriptive, right, that's email it through the mail,

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Speaker 1: UM had been banned since nineteen two because of the

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Speaker 1: masturbation scene that a younger girl had read. Freaked out,

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Speaker 1: her parents freaked out. And then you know, we have

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Speaker 1: a legal case spring up from that, and the N

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Speaker 1: three case US v. One book called Ulysses was a

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Speaker 1: test case brought on by Random House actually that wanted

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Speaker 1: to publish Ulysses. So they were testing the waters with that,

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Speaker 1: and like you said, the judge ruled that it's not obscene.

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Speaker 1: Let's move on from there. But some other controversial publishers

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Speaker 1: and writers who have rankled conservatives throughout the twentieth century. UM,

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Speaker 1: going back a little bit before that Ulysses case, we

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Speaker 1: have hl Mancon a k a. The Sage of Baltimore,

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Speaker 1: who seemed to love just making conservatives really mad with

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Speaker 1: his writing. Right. He was actually arrested in ninety six

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Speaker 1: in Boston for distributing copies of American Mercury, which was

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Speaker 1: a publication that he put out Um. The publication had

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Speaker 1: been banned by, as we mentioned earlier, the Watching Words Society,

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Speaker 1: who contended that the periodical was obscene, and the judge

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Speaker 1: disagreed with them. Lincoln turned around and ended up suing

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Speaker 1: the society. He was basically kind of lawsuit happy because

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Speaker 1: he thought, here I am, I'm going to prove that

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Speaker 1: this stuff is not bad for the public, that society

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Speaker 1: is not being affected for the worst, and I just

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Speaker 1: want my voice heard. Yeah. And he used a satirical

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Speaker 1: style that allowed him to poke fun at the thoughts,

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Speaker 1: words actions of the US and it's more conservative citizens,

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Speaker 1: and he often spoke out directly against religious fundamentalists and

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Speaker 1: fun fact, hl mancon first to use the term Bible belt. Right.

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Speaker 1: He also coined the term monkey trial at the Scopes trial.

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Speaker 1: So moving on from Mancon one guy Um, who we

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Speaker 1: can thank for some of our smuttiest books in our

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Speaker 1: Home libraries. Barney ross It who founded the publishing company

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Speaker 1: Grove Press, and essentially the aim of Growth Press was

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Speaker 1: to breach the damn of American Puritanism, as he called it.

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Speaker 1: He brought a bunch of writers to Americans attention, including

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Speaker 1: Samuel Beckett. He published che guevara Um, and in the

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixties he published D. H. Lawrence's Lady Chatterley's Lover,

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Speaker 1: which originally appeared in Italy and nine and Henry Miller's

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Speaker 1: Tropic of Cancer, which was a very controversial sexually explicit

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Speaker 1: autobiographical novel that had been published in Paris in ninety

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Speaker 1: four and banned since then in the US. Yeah. And

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Speaker 1: I gotta say that Traffic of Cancer is in fact

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Speaker 1: so sexually explicit it is almost I find difficult to read. Really. Yes,

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Speaker 1: there's just so much penis interesting. Um. Yeah, But Lady

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Speaker 1: Chatterley's Lover was a really important book because the case

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Speaker 1: started out the abscenity case started out in England in

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Speaker 1: nineteen sixty with the case of Crown v. Penguin Books

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Speaker 1: and essentially Penguin one, and they were allowed to sell

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Speaker 1: the books, but in the US you still couldn't get

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Speaker 1: your hands on the copy until Barney ross It fought

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Speaker 1: the legal battle in the United States and Lady Chatterley's

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Speaker 1: Lover got into our hands here. And there's a great

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Speaker 1: scene in I believe it's the first season of Madmen

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Speaker 1: when they pay to the secretaries break room or something

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Speaker 1: and they're all passing around a copy of the unabridged

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Speaker 1: version of Lady Chatterley's Lover, which because initially the publishers said, hey,

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Speaker 1: if you cut out all of the dirty stuff, then

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Speaker 1: we can publish it, and uh d H. Lawrence was like, no, no,

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Speaker 1: my woodsman's sex scenes will remain, and he did a

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Speaker 1: little d snap in formation with his fingers. But actually

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Speaker 1: uh Rossa had to fight several battles over Lady Chatterley's

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Speaker 1: Lover um because, like the earlier book we mentioned, the

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Speaker 1: main distribution method was through the mail. The Postmaster General

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Speaker 1: actually barred the book from the mail, but a federal

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Speaker 1: judge ended up overturning the band, ruling that the book

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Speaker 1: had redeeming merit, and that is the key. Does the

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Speaker 1: piece of literature have redeeming merit? And tropic of cancer,

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Speaker 1: as anyone who has read it can imagine, uh was

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Speaker 1: a whole lot of trouble for Barney ross It um.

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Speaker 1: He faced more than sixty legal cases seeking to ban

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Speaker 1: it in twenty one states and even lead to Rosset's arrest,

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Speaker 1: although the grand jury decided against an indictment. But it

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Speaker 1: was it's interesting to hear UM or read interviews with

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Speaker 1: Rossett because he was so just persistent and really didn't

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Speaker 1: care whether what it took to bring um racier titles

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Speaker 1: to the US exactly. Well, some of these people who

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Speaker 1: are out to ban books for whatever reason. You can't

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Speaker 1: just get a book band willy nilly out of the

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Speaker 1: gate right away. You have to actually raise a challenge,

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Speaker 1: and so that's an attempt to remove restrict materials based

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Speaker 1: on the objections of a person or group. Most challenges

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Speaker 1: are unsuccessful, and libraries and schools are typically able to

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Speaker 1: retain the challenge materials UM. But between two thousand, according

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Speaker 1: to the American Library Association, there were six thousand, three

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Speaker 1: d and sixty four challenges raised against books. And that

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Speaker 1: number for ten years. I feel like that's pretty high.

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Speaker 1: I feel like that's a lot of challenged books. Well,

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Speaker 1: especially when you consider it in the contemporary context of

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Speaker 1: all of the more sexually explicit or racy stuff, racy

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Speaker 1: stuff that we see on television, on the internet. You know,

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Speaker 1: the fact that we're still so concerned about books I

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Speaker 1: find I mean, do kids even go to libraries anymore?

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Speaker 1: I hope I won't up too, But I'm just saying, like,

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Speaker 1: is really these books are the thing that you're worried

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Speaker 1: about the most, Like, shouldn't you maybe take the internet

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Speaker 1: away first? But the two top challenged topics basically are

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Speaker 1: sexually explicit material and offensive length, which followed by things

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Speaker 1: with occult themes, violence, anything that seems to be perceived

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Speaker 1: to promote homosexuality, as well as religious viewpoints. Yeah, and

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Speaker 1: speaking of occult themes. Between two thousand and two thousand nine,

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Speaker 1: the Harry Potter series the number one most banned books

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Speaker 1: in the United States because of the wizardry. It's teaching

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Speaker 1: out children to be wizards. It makes people very upset.

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Speaker 1: My my French professor in college went on a rant

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Speaker 1: about how you know you see these people wearing black

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Speaker 1: around campus. They're not they're not God, their witches and

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Speaker 1: they're doing voodoo when they're evil because of Harry Potter. Yeah,

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Speaker 1: because one of my classmates had given a presentation in

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Speaker 1: French on Airy Potter so well with the offensive language

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Speaker 1: stuff as well. They're still issues over Huckleberry Finn because

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Speaker 1: he refers to Jim as the in word. It's like, well,

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Speaker 1: what do we do? What do we do with that?

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Speaker 1: Because that was you know, writing in the time. How

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Speaker 1: does it apply now? And again, if you apply that

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Speaker 1: Miller test and look at the body, the entire body

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Speaker 1: of the work and whether or not it has literary merit,

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Speaker 1: usually things shake out in favor of the book. Right. Well,

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Speaker 1: there there are people, don't worry, there are people supporting

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Speaker 1: books out there. Uh, there's this whole Banned Books Week,

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Speaker 1: which I believe this year is in September and of September. Yes,

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Speaker 1: it is from September to October six, So that gives

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Speaker 1: listeners plenty of time to get a lot of a

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Speaker 1: lot of books to read openly. Yeah, and not burn

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Speaker 1: and not burn them. Well, yeah, it's definitely. It's not

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Speaker 1: only to kind of feature the band books to get

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Speaker 1: more people to read them, but it also the whole

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Speaker 1: point of it is to celebrate the freedom to read

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Speaker 1: and the importance of the First Amendment. Yeah, because we've

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Speaker 1: talked a lot about racier literature, but a lot of

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Speaker 1: common books that have been banned over the years include

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Speaker 1: titles like The Great God Speak, Catcher in the Rye,

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Speaker 1: Grapes of Wrath, to Kill a Mockingbird, the Color Purple,

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Speaker 1: all of which deal with difficult themes. But I couldn't

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Speaker 1: imagine not having them to read, and you know, all

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Speaker 1: of the the rich imagery that they bestill upon us,

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Speaker 1: well exactly, I mean, except for the Grapes of Wrath.

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Speaker 1: I don't know what happened to me. Why I didn't

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Speaker 1: read that in high school, but I read I read

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Speaker 1: these other ones in I guess in high school. So

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Speaker 1: next up in our Summer Book Club two parter, we

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Speaker 1: are going to dive deeper into rac or material and

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Speaker 1: talk specifically about erotica, warning to those who have younger

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Speaker 1: listeners into But in the meantime, we want to hear

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Speaker 1: from listeners. UM. Curious to know if your library has

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Speaker 1: ever tried to ban books? Um, have you ever challenged

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Speaker 1: a book? Have you read banned books? I don't know,

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Speaker 1: what do you What do you think about censorship and

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Speaker 1: all that? International listeners are what are the state of

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Speaker 1: book banning and censorship in your countries? As well. Let

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Speaker 1: us know, mom stuff at Discovery dot com is where

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Speaker 1: you can send all of your letters that we love

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Speaker 1: to read. And speaking of which, we have two letters here,

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Speaker 1: both about manic pixie dream guys. So Brandon wrote in

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Speaker 1: with a couple of suggestions about manic pixie dream guys,

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Speaker 1: and he says, there are two candidates that I can guess.

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Speaker 1: The sort of prince charming archetype that pops up sometimes

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Speaker 1: in movies to be the object of his affection, and

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Speaker 1: it's all glamour and gentleman venus and just so perfect

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Speaker 1: who usually sort of convinces the heroine that there's more

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Speaker 1: to love than all that. He's almost never given any

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Speaker 1: real sort of dimension and is defined only by his

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Speaker 1: interactions with the female main character and sometimes by her friends.

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Speaker 1: He may not have pixie dust, but his smile is

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Speaker 1: usually slightly blinding because of how white his teeth are.

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Speaker 1: The other option maybe fits less well. He is the

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Speaker 1: male character who is in the perfect on paper life

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Speaker 1: the female protagonist has at the beginning of a movie,

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Speaker 1: but ends up being kind of Sometimes he's an outright jerk,

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Speaker 1: other times he's just dull. He pops up in those

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Speaker 1: kind of movies, Reese Witherspoon stars in a lot where

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Speaker 1: she's dating him or engaged to him or something, and

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Speaker 1: then goes off on some kind of adventure and ends

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Speaker 1: up leaving him triumphantly at the end of the movie. True,

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Speaker 1: it's often for a true love interest of some kind,

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Speaker 1: but occasionally we also see this happen when she decides

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Speaker 1: she doesn't need to define herself by the man she's with.

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Speaker 1: So too excellent candidates, Thank you, Brandon. Okay, this one's

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Speaker 1: from Amber. She says that she loved the Manic Pixie

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Speaker 1: dream Girl episode and that it raised such paradoxical views

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Speaker 1: that we in the US have about women. However, when

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Speaker 1: you asked about male equivalence to this female caricature, my

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Speaker 1: brain instantly jumped to Matthew McConaughey. If Zoe Deschanel is

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Speaker 1: the girl's girl, he is the guy's guy. With the

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Speaker 1: exception of a few dramatic roles time to Kill, Cadillac

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Speaker 1: lawyer and amis Dad. He has played roles to portray

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Speaker 1: very happy male qualities, travel to exotic places, expense of cars,

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Speaker 1: great figure, I agree, power of freedom, and he always

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Speaker 1: gets the girl. Another celebrity that fits would be Christopher

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Speaker 1: Pine for the same reasons. I do wonder why the

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Speaker 1: social discourse is not addressed in male counterparts but has

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Speaker 1: only focused on the female pixies. Hopefully the uproar over

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Speaker 1: this will die down and we can just enjoy people

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Speaker 1: for who they are. I guess my response to this

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Speaker 1: would be I don't know if there is a total

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Speaker 1: male equivalent to a Manic Pixie dream girl. I think

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Speaker 1: that a lot of I was thinking about this a

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Speaker 1: lot of Jason Siegel's characters, like in I Love You

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Speaker 1: Many Manic Pixie dream because he's the catalyst, for instance,

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Speaker 1: for Paul Rudd's transformation, and while it may not be romantic,

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Speaker 1: and he kind of goes through his own transformation as well,

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Speaker 1: I don't know. He tends to kind of play sort

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Speaker 1: of hippy drippy dudes and I love him. In case

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Speaker 1: you're listening to Jason Siegel, that's true. So if you

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Speaker 1: are a Jason Siegel would like to get in touch

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Speaker 1: with me, or if you have any and he thoughts

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Speaker 1: you'd like to share mom Stuff at Discovery dot Com

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00:24:02,119 --> 00:24:03,479
Speaker 1: is where you can send your letters, and you can

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Speaker 1: also find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter at

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Speaker 1: mom Stuff podcast, and if you would like to learn

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Speaker 1: more about the history of banning books and how people

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Speaker 1: go about getting those books off of the library shelves,

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Speaker 1: you can read the article how Our Books ban by

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Speaker 1: Kristen Conger at how stuff works dot com for more

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Speaker 1: on this and thousands of other topics. Is it how

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Speaker 1: stuff works dot com brought to you by the reinvented

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