Science and the Smut Glut

A police chief, a minister, a small-town publisher, a priest, a high school principal, and a social worker--in short, the Massachusetts Obscene Literature Control Commission--have provoked the intellectuals, students, and reading public of the Commonwealth into justifiable outrage. The Commission has declared Fanny Hill; Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure "obscene, indecent, and impure" without offering any scientific proof of the allegation.

The reason for the absence of proof is obvious: proof is impossible because the Commission has acted arbitrarily. Fanny Hill's rights under various natural laws and Constitutional Amendments have been flagrantly violated, while other works with much higher obscenity densities are left unmolested by the Commssion.

Obscenity density, as a jurisprudential principle of the Commonwealth, was porchulgated most recently, if imprecisely, in 1961 Tropic of Cancer case. Although that book had definitely offended the sensibilities of the Commissioners, the judge accepted the publisher's contention that Cancer contained passages of literary and historical interest. These mitigated the more erotic passages enough to leave the work still piquant, perhaps, but not obscene, indecent, and impure when read as a whole.

This principle of obscenity density can easily be quantified by forming a ratio of the number of obscenities, etc., over the number of literary or historically significant items in any particular publication. The quotient of this ratio can be considered the precise obscenity density of the work. If the Commission based its suppressions solely on the computed obscenity density of all publications sold in the Commonwealth, its efforts would be of greater value to the community. A scientific study of the obscenity densities of publications currently selling in Harvard Square alone has shown a glut of smut with obscenity densities far exceeding Fanny Hill's.

The full study cannot be reproduced here because it was conducted on a limited budget that did not permit printing--the one existing copy has been seized by the authorities. Nevertheless, a partial summary is availablbe: Fanny Hill, with 26 seductions and submissions plus 11 titillations, over 47 incidents of literary or historical interest, yields a density of only 79. Wall Street Wanton, "an original Nightstand Book," sports 16 erogenous incidents. These produce a density of 16.00, since the volume has only one mitigating feature, the historical comparison it suggests between the wholesome perserverance of Horatio Alger's heroes and Cindy Smith's way of making it to the top today. Sin on the Continent featuring a "Revealing Fold Out Cover," chronicles choice episodes in the adventures of Art Romer, a systems engineer from Furitvale, Idaho, who specializes in the bored wives of traveling businessmen. With 18 prurient passages and none of any other kind, it achieves an obscenity density of infinity.

The Song of Solomon raises methodological issues. If read as an allegory of the love of Christ for His Church on earth, the density is 0. If read as it reads, it scores no less than 1.17. A similar ambiguity is encountered in assessing that local classic, Love With a Harvard Accent. Many observers, attempting to explain its great success here, have insisted that it must be an allegory, for it obviously lacks literary or historical interest otherwise. Considering the strict scientific equity of the obscenity density method for assessing most types of literature, the Commission could properly be arbitrarily wary of all allegories.

Obscenity density is such a simple guide to justice that the Commission's preference for arbitrary suppressions seems unaccountable. There are, however, two possible explanations.

The Commission, and cohorts in other states, may be attempting to insulate the better classes from life and to keep the lower classes groveling in it. In support of this view, the following data can be added to the summary of the Square study: "Playboy" magazine, lately the recognized journal of high-brow and middle-brow culture, is how under prosecution in New York for a photo feature on the export version of a recent Jayne Mansfield movie. Freely for sale, cheap in the Square is Jayne Mansfield's Wild, Wild World, with an obscenity density of 27.60 and the same pictures "Playboy" dared to run. "Playboy," in attempting to broaden the sexual experience of its audience, reached too far down and has to be slapped back up again. Fanny Hill's malefaction is both to broaden and to elevate. The book succeeds in showing that sex need be neither an indecorous procreative necessity, as the better people ought to believe, nor a merely bestial gratification or exploitation, as the others are supposed to believe and prefer. It reaches too far in every direction and, therefore, has to be quashed.

On the other hand, the Obscene Literature Control Commission may intend no benefit for community morality. To judge from all the facts of the Fanny Hill case and its immediate predecessor, Tropic of Cancer, the commission may be more concerned with the emaciated treasury of the Commonwealth. The voracious demand for both books immediately after the Commission announced its opinions has certainly not gone unnoticed at the nation's publishing houses. If these two threatened suppressions have been a test for a new revenue-raising scheme that might save Massachusetts yet from a higher income tax on the lottery, the test has succeeded. In the future, the Commission should be able to extract from myriad publishers and authors handsome fees for declaring their books obscene, indecent, and impure.