SEXIS WRONG

tus with which an elite must identify itself. Therefore, the
latter will remove it from an urban neighborhood in which it
plans to invest its power. Ironically, that same elite includes
the entertainment, clothing, and publishing empires that exploit
prurience to contribute to our most powerful economic
institutions and political officeholders. Thus the Marky/Calvin
Klein billboard, as well as the Janet Jackson Super Bowl
show and the revenue Fox and other media giants garner
from cable and hotel-room porno. 15
Also ironically, in the case of Times Square, its re-creation
as a city center with corporate towers and chain restaurants
and upscale stores meant the renewal of creative vitality
in architecture, theater, and music. Even a progressive social
observer like Frank Rich acknowledged this. 16 The Business
Improvement District was fortunate to have talented
administrators such as William Daly, Gretchen Dykstra, and
the aforementioned Rebecca Robinson. New Yorkers have
learned never to underestimate the dynamic duo of Rudy G.
and Micky M.
II
How far have we come? Rich’s essay on the 2004 Super Bowl
is a reality check to those who feel “the censorship is over.”
He finds an antecedent to the “healthy family initiative” in
the mid-1950s agitation over comic books that—energized by
a congressional committee and an influential study of mass
culture called Seduction of the Innocent which helped develop
its agenda—asserted that rape, gang violence, and latent
homosexuality were generated by depictions of bloodthirsty
gangsters and their busty molls in crime comics. 17 Their opportunistic
publishers, it was widely believed, had the morality
of gutter rats.
Apparently, the remedy for troubled youth fascinated by sex
and violence did not require that parents, teachers, and religious
advisors reassess why they were being ignored, or
that they consider how popular entertainment reflected what
young people learned about power and violence from looking
around them as the Korean War ended. People were being
dismissed from their jobs through blacklisting; alcoholism and
divorce were increasing; school students were taught how
to “duck and cover” in case of atomic attack; and hydrogen
bombs were being tested in the Western deserts. Politicians,
clergy, teachers, and businessmen too seldom discussed core
reasons for such events or their effects on young people’s attitudes.
Instead, parents were advised to be more insistent in
teaching right from wrong, to go to church more often, and
to condone more censoring of what did not accord with their
tastes and values since, as J. Edgar Hoover preached, obscenity
and indecency might be “pinko”‐inspired. 18 The coarseness
of our culture, then as now, might be the enemy within.
Coarseness in this context means indecency and obscenity.
The qualifying adjective was, and is, insidious. Coarse, or the
earlier words dirty, lewd, smutty, and filthy, refer to the pariah
middlemen, those “polluters of our culture,” who distribute
it. Behind them were thought to be the malcontents, anarchists,
communists, or America-haters.
The investigation of crime comics was typical, as was the response
by the publishers. 19 That response was not to deplore
the snarl words authorities used or the humiliation suffered
by subpoenaed publishers. Rather, the industry addressed
the fact that the criticism could not be good for business.
The remedy was a draconian exercise in self-censorship, the
Comic Book Code. It outlawed nudity, any form of indecent
words or phrases “which have acquired undesirable meanings,”
stories involving “illicit sex” and “sexual abnormalities,”
and female costuming that “exaggerat[es] any physical
qualities” or is not “reasonably acceptable to society.” In addition,
“respect for parents, the moral code, and for honorable
behavior shall be fostered.” Profanity, obscenity, smut,
and vulgarity were forbidden. Finally, “policemen, judges,
government officials, and respected institutions shall never
be presented in such a way as to create disrespect for established
authority.”
One comic book that couldn’t pass muster with the enforcement
agency, the Comic Code Authority, was the fledgling
Mad, since it dedicated each issue to satirizing injustice.
Therefore, it could not be handled by the industry’s distributors.
The solution was for it to avoid the standards for publications
aimed at a readership under age fifteen by becoming
a magazine. 20 Apparently publishers of comic books did not
share Mad’s desire to teach or inform, if it got them bad press
and parental disapproval. They might, if they wished, show
that they could enlighten readers by pointing to the “Classics
Illustrated” series. However, that publisher took advantage of
the fascination with the dark and violent side of human nature
by putting out another edition of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein.
Equally hard to defend, and good for business, was the program
of Dell comics. Exempted from the Code because they
published the Walt Disney line, Dell took advantage by doing
horror comics, including Tales From the Tomb in 1962. 21 Avidity
for profit trumped all other goals.
For several years, Wal-Mart, K-Mart, and Blockbuster have
been no less vigilant than the Kefauver Committee and its
supporters. Rock and rap musicians can’t afford not to comply
with the decency standards of the giant store chains, so
they have albums specially edited for these outlets. The revised
lyrics and album covers exclude the erotic and scatological
words and images in packages distributed elsewhere.
This means that their fans in many rural areas of the country
THERE HAS BEEN NO SEXUAL REVOLUTION 311