|
||||
|
Saturday, Nov 21, 2009
|
||||
|
|||||||||||||
|
![[Valid RSS]](images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed"){kind=small}
|
|||||||||||||||
|
|||||||||||||||
Obscene a refresher course on artistic freedom
|
|
 |
|
| Obscene a refresher course on artistic freedom | |
|
by Scott Rice -
SGN Contributing Writer Obscene Opening November 21 I take freedom of speech and freedom of artistic expression for granted. I admit it. I am familiar with the principal 20th-Century figures that worked for and the events - the fairly recent events - that resulted in the liberties we enjoy today, the same liberties I take for granted. However, the documentary Obscene, a movie about the legendary Grove Press and its iconoclastic leader Barney Rosset, was still a nice refresher course on fighting for civil liberties and artistic freedom. I was just off the farm, literally, when I first picked up a copy of On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I was fascinated by Dean and Sal and all the stupid shit they did. I couldn't believe that folks who lived these lives could write it down or that folks who could write might imagine these lives. I read as a kid; I read everything I could lay my hands on. Unfortunately, this consisted mostly of hand-me-down Reader's Digests and National Geographic magazines that a mysterious great uncle sent every year - not the best literary foundation for the making of an iconoclast (I'm not claiming to be an iconoclast, just acknowledging my lofty aspirations). I even purloined copies of racy books from my sister by Erica Jong and Xaviera Hollander. These were books that read like fantasies, hot fantasies that left me with a tired hand, a sore Johnson, and little memory of the summer of '79. But I had never read anything like On the Road. These guys felt real. They felt dangerous. And they were unapologetic about who they were and how they lived. Keep in mind I had been raised on a strict grammar-only curriculum in public school in rural Oklahoma. They didn't teach us literature at all for fear they might have to answer a few difficult questions. We didn't even read Mark Twain or Jack London in school (though I did read both on my own), much less Allen Ginsberg and Henry Miller. On the bright side, my grammar is still excellent. I don't know where I might have ended up if it I hadn't happened upon Kerouac and, subsequently, controversial authors like Allen Ginsberg, Henry Miller, and William S. Burroughs, authors that Barney Rosset fought to publish and the same authors that opened the doors of the world to me. Rosset purchased Grove Press in 1951 and immediately started publishing work decidedly outside the mainstream world of 1950's America. Rosset published Nobel Prize winners Samuel Beckett (1969), Pablo Neruda (1971), Octavio Paz (1990), Kenzaburo Oe (1994), and Harold Pinter (2005). He, and Grove Press, also published D.H. Lawrence, Allen Ginsberg, Malcolm X, Jorge Luis Borges, Jean Genet, William S, Burroughs, and David Mamet. Rosset also went to bat legally for works like Lady Chatterley's Lover, Tropic of Cancer, and Howl and Other Poems when the authors or the booksellers were arrested on obscenity charges. Every time an artist creates a work that challenges prevailing morality and that forces us to reconsider what we think is socially intrinsic, a nod should go out to Barney Rosset and company. While I'm not going to tell you this is a finely crafted documentary, it is a great story. It will probably seem like homework to some. But that's just fine because we all need refreshers now and then. Consider this your assignment. Obscene plays the Northwest Film Forum Friday, November 21 through Wednesday, November 26 at 7 p.m. and 9 p.m. Contact the critic at scott@sgn.org. |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
 post your own information onthe Seattle Gay Blog |
|
 |
: http://sgn.org/rss.xml | what is RSS? | 
use Google to set up your RSS feed
copyright Seattle Gay News - DigitalTeamWorks 2008
USA Gay News American News American Gay News USA American Gay News United States American Lesbian News USA American Lesbian News United States USA News