Globe & Mail on Howl/Pacifica
Would it howl at Howl?
Globe & Mail
October 10, 2007
In his 1957 ruling throwing out obscenity charges against the publisher of Allen Ginsberg’s epic poem Howl, San Francisco Municipal Court Judge Clayton Horn asked, “Would there be any freedom of press or speech if one must reduce his vocabulary to vapid innocuous euphemism?” The answer - that there could not - was obvious to thinking Americans even then. So how is it that,
50 years on, the U.S. Federal Communications Commission can continue to defy constitutionally protected rights in its untiring effort to expunge vulgarity, apprehended or real, from the nation’s airwaves?
The San Francisco Chronicle reported last week that a public radio station in the United States had decided against airing an archival recording of Mr. Ginsberg reading Howl for fear it would be crippled by fines levied by the custodians of public decency. Instead, the recording was posted on a website, since the FCC has no jurisdiction over Internet profanity. The fears of the listener-supported radio station over the potential consequences of broadcasting Howl are understandable, even if its self-censorship is regrettable.
From its famous opening “I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness, starving hysterical naked,” Howl is an astonishing poem, a rage against the stifling conformism of the 1950s. But as Judge Horn wrote, “the theme presents unorthodox and controversial ideas. Coarse and vulgar language is used in treatment and sex acts are mentioned.”
As the Chronicle also reported, the Fox network recently censored “screwing” during its broadcast of the Emmy Awards, and even deleted an instance of a performer mouthing a four-letter word, apparently over concerns that the FCC might employ lip readers among its staff of professional busybodies. If these relatively minor obscenities invited the wrath of the FCC, what would the censors have made of Howl? Americans deserve an answer to that question. Let’s hope a broadcaster in the U.S. with the financial means will challenge the FCC and end its reign of prudery.
