Re: pedo in a speedo

At 6:28 PM +0000 12/31/05, Guy_Fawkes99 wrote:
>I could be wrong, but I recall that at the beginning of Equinox, in
>the Rhinoceros edition, there's a note from the publishers saying
>that they were not comfortable with publishing a novel with
>pedophilic overtones so they (perhaps at Delany's suggestion?) added
>a hundred years to ever character under 18.  So at least by their
>own words they weren't just kowtowing to the Meese commission, and
>that would seem to be supported by the fact that the book was
>published two presidents after Reagan.
>
>Incidentally, a 2002 Supreme Court case established that there's an
>absolute constitutional prohibition on banning/criminalizing
>*depictions* of underage sex--at least until computer technology
>gets so good that the virtual pornography can be used as a cover for
>people using actual children in their photos/movies.  But at least
>until a few more Justices die, there's no way Delany's work could
>get him or his publisher in legal trouble.

Let's look for a moment at the historical moment:

The Rhinoceros edition of Equinox is dated January 1994.

The Meese Commission on Pornography came out in 1986.

In the wake of the Meese report, obscenity, and especially anything 
that could be construed as child pornography, was heavily prosecuted. 
<http://www.usdoj.gov/oig/reports/plus/e0107/results.htm>

The Cincinnati Contemporary Arts Center was charged with obscenity 
over a Robert Mapplethorpe exhibit of 175 photographs in 1990. (Art 
under attack)

In June 1990, 2 Live Crew's album "As Nasty as They Wanna Be" was 
ruled obscene in a federal court. The group and album were not 
exonerated until April 1993--by which point Equinox would probably 
already have been set in type. Surely the decision to amend the 
characters' ages was made while litigation was still continuing over 
this album. (No images there--just explicit lyrics)

The Supreme Court case you cite wasn't decided until 2002.

So in 1993, when this book was being prepared for republication, the 
legal situation was murky.

---------

Having just returned home to my book collection, I reread the 
publisher's note in the Rhinoceros edition. Here it is (the passages 
I elide refer to their bibliography and discuss the history of the 
title changes of the book):

"NOTE OF MORAL INTENT

"First finished by Delany in Autumn 1968, Equinox contained a number 
of (fortunately secondary) characters below the age of consent. Need 
we say that the sixties and even the seventies were more morally lax 
decades than our current one? Certainly they were times of greater 
license--if not looser sexual ethics. Delany's novel has sustained 
considerable intellectual attention since its appearance in March 
1973 and has been the subject of praiseful analysis in various 
journals and books--one reason, clearly, for republishing it today. 
[...] We are torn, then, between faithfulness to the verbal artifact 
we would herewith reproduce [...] and the dictates of the present's 
greater sense of moral responsibility. To that end we have added an 
even hundred years to the direct mention of the age of any character 
in the original version clearly presented as a minor associated with 
licentiousness. Bethy, Benny, Marny, Pietro...We remind you how 
powerful such a strategy is: a six year old in a context such as this 
invites unspeakable possibilities; a 106 year old we just assume the 
homme moyen sensual, much less the pedophile, finds anaphrodisiacal 
if not--in such a context--ludicrous. We hope  the disruption of the 
image will prevent the age of these characters (now emended 
throughout the text) from functioning as a node of libidinal 
exploitation, as all directly stated ages in the novel are now 
eighteen or significantly above."


When I read the above, much turns on the word "ludicrous." To my ear, 
everything after that word comes across as having tongue firmly 
planted in, well, Edwin Meese's left cheek.

Sure, it reminds you, they could have added just enough years to the 
minor characters' ages to bring them over the age of consent, making 
the change escape the attention of the reader. Benny's first 
appearance might read: "From a doorway, hung with paisley drape, came 
a sleepy boy, 18 or 19."--and even the attentive reader might accept 
that age assessment at face value. Instead it reads "From a doorway, 
hung with paisley drape, came a sleepy boy, 115 or 116." The very 
ludicrousness of the resulting image might lead the attentive but 
devious reader to brush up on his or her arithmetic skills.

Even the reference to praiseful analysis is just a way of saying: 
"Hey, we've got serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific 
value here"

I certainly don't sense any sense of personal discomfort on the part 
of the publishers anywhere within their statement--rather a 
concession to parlous times, legally.


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