"Pigs Ate My Roses": Media moralities, comedic inversions, and the First Amendment Anna Lisa ...

309 Pages·2017·2.02 MB·English

"Pigs Ate My Roses": Media moralities, comedic inversions, and the First Amendment

Anna Lisa Candido
Department of Art History and Communication Studies
McGill University
Montreal, Quebec

March 2018

A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies.

© Anna Candido, 2018
ABSTRACT

This dissertation examines the politics of morality that structured the moral development
of mass and niche media forms in America between the 1930s and late 1970s. In order to
understand how media became entangled in moral struggles, this work begins by tracing
the rise of moral regulation in film and broadcasting in the 1930s and 40s, and the ways
that live performance, narrowcast recording, and listener-sponsored radio enabled forms of
expression around gender, sexuality, race, crime, and vice that had been unconstitutionally
prohibited in mass media. To do this, this dissertation examines a number of critical
moments at which community and religious groups charged performers or media players
with the loosely-defined concepts of “obscenity” or “indecency” as a way of establishing
moral boundaries in mediated culture. By charging Mae West, Lenny Bruce, George
Carlin, and listener-sponsored radio stations with obscenity or indecency, groups like the
Legion of Decency and Morality in Media (in concert with other state and industry players)
exerted significant control over forms of expression that may have otherwise circulated
freely under the protection of the First Amendment. Although these groups succeeded in
producing discursive and representational limits in film and broadcasting between the
1930s and 1970s, the semi-hiddenness of live performance spaces, niche recordings, and
listener-sponsored radio partially or temporarily sheltered controversial performers and
allowed like-minded people to convene over unorthodox expressions that more adequately
reflected the depth and complexity of their affective states, experiences, or social positions.
In presenting this cultural history of media moralities, this dissertation offers Media and
Communication scholars a model of historicizing media in relation to ethical-cultural
formations, while also intervening in remediation theory by illustrating how the movement
of content across media not only has aesthetic, phenomenological, and economic impacts,
but moral ones as well.

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RÉSUMÉ

Cette dissertation examine les politiques de moralité qui ont structuré le développement
moral de formes médiatiques de masse et spécialisées entre les années 1930 et la fin des
années 1970 aux États-Unis. Dans le but de comprendre comment les médias sont devenus
enchevêtrés dans des luttes morales, ce travail s’amorce en localisant la croissance de la
régulation morale dans le cinéma, la télévision et la radiodiffusion des années 1930 et 1940,
et les façons dont la performance en direct, l’enregistrement ciblé, et les radios parrainées
par des auditeurs ont autorisé des formes d’expression gravitant autour du genre, de la
sexualité, de la race, du crime, et du vice. Ces formes d’expression avaient été
inconstitutionnellement prohibées dans les médias de masse. Pour les approcher, cette
dissertation examine des moments critiques où des groupes religieux et communautaires
usaient de concepts faiblement définis comme « indécence » et « obscénité » pour accuser
les artistes ou les acteurs médiatiques dans l’objectif d’établir des barrières morales au sein
de la culture médiatisée. En utilisant ces termes pour juger de Mae West, Lenny Bruce,
George Carlin, et de stations de radio parrainées par les auditeurs, des groupes comme
Legion of Decency et Morality in Media (de concert avec d’autres acteurs de l’industrie et
étatiques) ont exercé un contrôle considérable sur des formes d’expression qui auraient
sinon pu circuler librement sous la protection du Premier amendement. Bien que ces
groupes aient réussi à produire des limites discursives et représentationnelles dans le
cinéma, la télévision, et la radiodiffusion entre les années 1930 et 1970, le caractère semi-
caché des espaces de performance, des enregistrements spécialisés, et des radios parrainées
par les auditeurs ont partiellement ou temporairement abrité les artistes controversés. Ces
espaces ont permis aux personnes aux vues similaires de se réunir autour d’expressions
non-orthodoxes qui reflétaient la profondeur et la complexité de leurs états affectifs,
expériences, ou positions sociales. En présentant cette histoire culturelle des moralités
médiatiques, cette dissertation offre aux chercheurs en médias et communication un
modèle pour historiciser les médias en relation aux formations ethnoculturelles, tout en
intervenant dans la théorie de la remédiation, puisque ce travail doctoral illustre comment
le mouvement du contenu via différents médias n’a pas seulement des impacts esthétiques,
phénoménologiques et économiques, mais aussi des impacts moraux.

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Acknowledgments

This dissertation was made possible by a pretty unlikely confluence of forces that I am
eternally grateful for. Nicholas Johnson, Paul Krassner, and Larry Josephson generously
took the time to conduct interviews about satire, listener-sponsored radio, censorship, and
the counterculture. Chuck Reinsch provided early assistance navigating the KRAB archive
and connected me to Nicholas.

Grants from the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, Media@McGill, and the
Faculty of Arts at McGill supported the research and writing of this dissertation. The
Communication Studies department at McGill in general has been an incredible intellectual
home over the years. A lifelong thank you goes out to Carrie Rentschler who has been a
guiding light through this PhD. Your no-nonsense approach to scholarship, coupled with
your deep understanding of the complex intersection of law, culture, subjectivity, and
knowledge, provided a model of inquiry that I have worked from over the years. Further,
your particular form of support—your ability to jump into the work when it was most
needed and to give space when ideas (or life) needed to breathe—was integral to the
completion of this dissertation. An enormous thanks to Jonathan Sterne for helping me
navigate the world of Media Studies and for introducing me to the many thinkers and texts
that provided a foundation for this dissertation. Thank you as well to Will Straw for your
thoughtful and encouraging feedback as a member of my dissertation and dissertation
proposal committees. Your attention to traditionally undervalued cultural figures and
objects (I’m thinking of your impeccable presentation on Bess Flowers and your work on
second-hand cultural commodities) influenced how I approached the writing of this cultural
history. Kembrew McLeod, I am deeply grateful to you for coming on-board the
dissertation committee and lending your expertise to this study of free expression. Thank
you to Darin Barney and Charles Acland for carefully reading and reflecting upon the work,
and for your thoughtful comments during the oral defence.

Sarah Shoemaker, Anne Woodrum, and Chloe Morse-Harding were gracious hosts at the
Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections at Brandeis University. Thank
you, Chloe, for your warm and detailed correspondences. Sarah—generations of scholars
are indebted to you for making the Lenny Bruce archive a reality. Thank you for seeing the
importance of such an archive, for allowing me to access materials in advance of its formal
opening, and for hosting a truly unique and incredible conference on Lenny Bruce.

I’ve benefited enormously in my work and life from the brilliance of my colleagues in the
AHCS community. Thank you to Jonathan Rouleau for providing translation assistance for
my abstract. And a very special thanks goes out to my closest friends and allies over the
years: François Mouillot, the great instigator of many heartfelt and philosophically-
inflected late-night conversations on the steps of Casa and all over Mile End; Paul Fontaine
who was (and continues to be) the source of countless hours of laughter; and to my partner
in everything PhD, from feminist interventions to KemCoBa, Abi Shapiro. Abi, I’m not
sure where I (or this dissertation) would be today if it weren’t for your encouragement,
good example, and great company. I hope one day to adequately express how important
you’ve been to me.
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Finally, thank you to my given and chosen family for feeding my curiosity and love of
knowledge. Thank you to Kate Eichhorn for seeing something in me when I was a
constantly devastated 22-year-old with nothing to my name. Thank you for going over my
first SSHRC application many times until I got it right, and for checking in with me all
these years, providing guidance, opportunities, and encouragement for over a decade.
Thanks to George Blott for deepening my love of comedy and for being our anchor in
Montreal. Thanks to my brother and sister, RJ and Trina, Caroline, Rizal, my dad, and the
Burke family for your lifelong support. Mark Burke—your name should appear with mine
on this dissertation. So many of the questions and ideas were generated in conversation
with you. You were there at every step of the way, at just about every conference and
research trip, beside me while I grappled with dozens of books, articles, recordings, and
considered each problem or revelation with me. The strongest parts of this work were
fortified by your clear eye and bottomless heart. I’m so grateful for your loving support,
good humor, intellect, and homemade kimchi. Lydia, you are the light of my life, my hope
and my inspiration. I will try to do right by you. Finally, my mom, Patty Candido, taught
me the value of questions, education, curiosity, culture, laughter, and love. This dissertation
is dedicated to her.

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Table of Contents
Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 8
Aim ........................................................................................................................................... 10
Why Comedy? ........................................................................................................................... 12
Chapter Outline and Methods ................................................................................................... 15
Literature Review ...................................................................................................................... 24
Chapter one: A Genealogy of “Good” and “Evil” Mass Media ................................. 33
The Spatialization of Morality in 19th Century Cities ............................................................... 34
Creating Moral Order: Ineffective Police and the Social Purity Movement ............................. 38
Censorship in the Name of Childhood Innocence ..................................................................... 42
The Suppression of Vice Through the Category of Obscenity ................................................. 44
Indirect Censorship Through Self-Regulation .......................................................................... 49
The Ten Commandments of Film ............................................................................................. 51
Vice, Crime, and Sexuality in Pre-Code Film ........................................................................... 53
The Indirect Censorship of Radio ............................................................................................. 54
Mitigating Musical Values ........................................................................................................ 60
Chapter Two: The Threat of Comedy and the Suppression of Mae West ................ 69
Mae West, the Hays Code, and the Legion of Decency ............................................................ 73
Imperfect Capture: The Shades of Mae West ........................................................................... 86
The Transmission of Media Codes: Televisual Restrictions ..................................................... 95
Chapter Three: Live Performance, Lenny Bruce, and the Rise of New Wave
Comedy .......................................................................................................................... 100
Nightclubs: The social and cultural contamination of urban life ............................................ 103
The Chaos and Mimicry of Leonard Alfred Schneider ........................................................... 105
Jazz, and the New Wave of Comedy ...................................................................................... 108
Contagion: Impresarios, Wally Heider’s tapes, and the jazz columnists ................................ 116
Fantasy Records ...................................................................................................................... 121
Interviews of Our Times .......................................................................................................... 125
The Sick Humor of Lenny Bruce ............................................................................................ 130
Frank Offender: Private words in public places ...................................................................... 139
The Politics of Offense ........................................................................................................... 145
Mitigating Televisual Harm: Caution and Censorship on the Steve Allen Show .................... 150
Playboy’s Penthouse and the Promise of Narrowcast TV ...................................................... 155
Chapter Four: Remediation In and Out of the Courtroom ...................................... 160
Police as Arbiters of Culture ................................................................................................... 161
Selective Hearing and Truncated Notes .................................................................................. 166
Audience Testimonies and the Reworking of “Community Standards” ................................. 171
Lenny Bruce, In Substance ..................................................................................................... 181
Obscene in New York ............................................................................................................. 186
Posthumous Reinterpretations ................................................................................................. 196
Chapter Five: How Listener-Sponsored Radio Bridged the Discursive Gap Between
the Live and the Mass Mediated .................................................................................. 199
Early Appeals for Free Expression on the Radio .................................................................... 203
The Pacifica Network and FM Experimentation..................................................................... 204
Supplementing the Spectrum .................................................................................................. 211
Free Speech at Berkeley .......................................................................................................... 214
Social Movement Media: Amplifying the ‘60s ....................................................................... 218
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Contesting Censorship by Interrogating Notions of “Obscenity” ........................................... 223
Broadcasting the Obscene Comic ........................................................................................... 226
Free Reign Over Dispensable Hours ....................................................................................... 230
The Free Speech Nebula ......................................................................................................... 243
Public Complaints and the FCC .............................................................................................. 246
George Carlin’s “Seven Dirty Words” .................................................................................... 248
Defining “Indecency”: Morality in Media, the FCC, and the Law of Nuisance ..................... 253
FCC v. Pacifica Foundation (1978) ........................................................................................ 263
Conclusion: Moral Remediation in the Internet Age ................................................ 271
The Politics of Offense in the Internet Age: Free Speech vs. Privacy .................................... 276
The Difficulty of Defining “Harm” Today ............................................................................. 283
Bibliography .................................................................................................................. 290

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Introduction

Who can compute what the world loses in the multitude of promising
intellects combined with timid characters, who dare not follow out any bold,
vigorous, independent train of thought, lest it should land them in something
which would admit of being considered irreligious or immoral? Among
them we may occasionally see some man of deep conscientiousness and
subtle and refined understanding, who spends a life in sophisticating with
an intellect which he cannot silence, and exhausts the resources of ingenuity
in attempting to reconcile the promptings of his conscience and reason with
orthodoxy, which yet he does not, perhaps, to the end succeed in doing. No
one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his
first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth
gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study and preparation,
thinks for himself than by the true opinions of those who only hold them
because they do not suffer themselves to think.1

When John Stuart Mill wrote his resounding arguments for the freedom of consciousness
and expression in On Liberty, perhaps the most difficult challenge he faced was in defining
what the absolute limit to expression should be. For Mill, “the sole end for which mankind
are warranted, individually or collectively, in interfering with the liberty of action of any
of their number is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully
exercised over any members of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm

1 John Stuart Mill, On Liberty (Indianapolis, In.: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 1978), 32.
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to others.”2 In spite of widespread support for his idea that the principle of harm should
guide judgment around state intervention, a clear consensus on exactly what constituted
“harm” was not reached in his lifetime or since. Over a century after the publication of
Mill’s work, the question of acceptable speech erupted during the 1960s Free Speech
Movement, and decades later the limits to allowable expression continue to riddle us. Part
of what contributed to the on-going problem of acceptable expression in the 20th century
were the challenges to social life precipitated by urban industrialization and the ways that
cities brought previously disparate social groups together. The cauldron of early 20th
century urban America inevitably produced forms of social organization and cultural
innovation that simultaneously worked to articulate the inner lives of those living, or
caught, in this new socio-spatial situation, as well as offended the sensibilities of groups
who’d been invested in previously established ways of being. Compounding the problem
of immoral urban expression was the proliferation of communications technologies that
unearthed novel and momentarily unregulated modes of amplifying and representing
subjects that had previously been deemed unfit for the public domain.

When new modes of communication present alternative ways of articulating bold,
vigorous, and independent trains of thought, they recast centuries-old debates about how
expression and representation are to be used for the improvement of self and society, and
how they must be ruled to mitigate harm. As artists, enthusiasts, and entrepreneurs in the
20th century experimented with what media could do, they pushed amorphous media forms

2 Mill, On Liberty, 9.
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clumsily into matrices of legal, social, and moral regulation, begging the question: what
are or should be the representational and discursive limits of mediated culture?

Aim

My dissertation demonstrates the ways that mass media institutions acted as sites and
mechanisms of moral regulation in the United States in the first half of the 20th century,
and, more specifically, the ways that the concepts of obscenity, indecency, and profanity
functioned as catch-all terms that were used to impose arguably unconstitutional limits to
expression for decades in mass mediated film and broadcasting. I argue that it was through
the work of performers and cultural figures working in or alongside small-scale and niche
media that the unconstitutionality of discursive regulation in mass media was challenged
and transformed.

This dissertation further illustrates how channeling became a principle way that competing
cultural values could exist in the same media ecology, here treated as a method of spatially
or temporally separating kinds of content. I approach channeling3 as the act of prescribing
certain routes or avenues for content over others based on ideas of appropriateness. Certain
types of live performance venues, limited recordings, urban radio, late night television, and

3 The term “channel,” derived from the Latin “canalis” meaning “groove” or “waterpipe,” designates the
idea of a route. The Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies defines a channel by stating: “Each
message-carrying signal requires a route along which it is transmitted from the sender to the receiver and
along which feedback may be obtained. Channels may be physical (our voices or bodies), technical (the
telephone) or social (our schools, media, etc.).” From this definition, we can understand channeling, as the
process by which content (or, a “message-carrying signal”) is designated to move through a particular
channel. Here, I am focusing on channeling as a practice shaped not just by physical, technical, and social
considerations, but by moral-institutional considerations as well.
"Channel," Dictionary of Media and Communication Studies, by James Watson, and Anne Hill. 9th ed.
Bloomsbury, 2015.

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