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Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History
Unclean Lips: Obscenity, Jews, and American Culture
Jews have played an integral role in the history of obscenity in America. For most of the 20th century, Jewish entrepreneurs and editors led the charge against obscenity laws. Jewish lawyers battled literary censorship even when their non-Jewish counterparts refused to do so, and they won court decisions in favor of texts including Ulysses, A Howl, Lady Chatterley's Lover, and Tropic of Cancer. Jewish literary critics have provided some of the most influential courtroom testimony on behalf of freedom of expression.
The anti-Semitic stereotype of the lascivious Jew has made many historians hesitant to draw a direct link between Jewishness and obscenity. In Unclean Lips, Josh Lambert addresses the Jewishness of participants in obscenity controversies in the U.S. directly, exploring the transformative roles played by a host of neglected figures in the development of modern and postmodern American culture.
The diversity of American Jewry means that there is no single explanation for Jews' interventions in this field. Rejecting generalizations, this bookoffers case studies that pair cultural histories with close readings of both contested texts and trial transcripts to reveal the ways in which specific engagements with obscenity mattered to particular American Jews at discrete historical moments.
Reading American culture from Theodore Dreiser and Henry Miller to Curb Your Enthusiasm and FCC v. Fox, Unclean Lips analyzes the variable historical and cultural factors that account for the central role Jews have played in the struggles over obscenity and censorship in the modern United States.
Josh Lambert is Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In The Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History
"Josh Lambert undermines many cliches about Jews, obscenity, and even 'sexual anti-Semitism' in this engrossing book. He brilliantly navigates us through many episodes of sexual representation, some familiar, some quite unexpected, along with the social and legal conflicts that surrounded them. Lucidly written and arduously researched, this is an exceptional work of cultural history."
-Morris Dickstein, author of Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
The anti-Semitic stereotype of the lascivious Jew has made many historians hesitant to draw a direct link between Jewishness and obscenity. In Unclean Lips, Josh Lambert addresses the Jewishness of participants in obscenity controversies in the U.S. directly, exploring the transformative roles played by a host of neglected figures in the development of modern and postmodern American culture.
The diversity of American Jewry means that there is no single explanation for Jews' interventions in this field. Rejecting generalizations, this bookoffers case studies that pair cultural histories with close readings of both contested texts and trial transcripts to reveal the ways in which specific engagements with obscenity mattered to particular American Jews at discrete historical moments.
Reading American culture from Theodore Dreiser and Henry Miller to Curb Your Enthusiasm and FCC v. Fox, Unclean Lips analyzes the variable historical and cultural factors that account for the central role Jews have played in the struggles over obscenity and censorship in the modern United States.
Josh Lambert is Academic Director of the Yiddish Book Center and Visiting Assistant Professor of English at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. In The Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History
"Josh Lambert undermines many cliches about Jews, obscenity, and even 'sexual anti-Semitism' in this engrossing book. He brilliantly navigates us through many episodes of sexual representation, some familiar, some quite unexpected, along with the social and legal conflicts that surrounded them. Lucidly written and arduously researched, this is an exceptional work of cultural history."
-Morris Dickstein, author of Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression
276 pages, Hardcover
First published November 25, 2013
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Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review
November 14, 2024
---The Lede---
Now more than ever as USA shifts—or as some have more dramatically noted—“lurches” (or by others with an almost equal amount of controversy, “is restored”)—to the right, the question of how certain more “unsavory” elements of freedom of expression will be handled. While there are many a book and a Nile’s worth of spilled ink on obscenity out in the wild, Unclean Lips may be the only one that zeroes in specifically on the Jewish contribution to “obscenity” (heavy emphasis on quotes due to what is and isn’t obscene throughout the decades) and how, like it or not, some of the prime movers in shifting/lurching/restoring the Overton Window of “I’ll know it when I see it” may be in fact the original People of the Book.
---Interesting Highlights---
“Miller’s autobiographical narrator almost prophesizes the events of the Chicago trial when he notes that “the first people to turn to when you’re down and out are the Jews.””
“Comstock’s speeches regularly emphasized a commitment to Christian virtue, at times in contrast, at least symbolically, to Jewish sinfulness. In an address to a gathering of evangelical Christians at the 1893 Chicago World Exposition, Comstock declared, “as we contemplate the foes of moral purity and the harvest of their seed-sowing, we cry out in the words of the prophet of old in his lamentation over the sins of the Jews,” and then he cited a verse from Jeremiah.”
(Quoting David Goines:) “all forms of speech become political when they are restricted or forbidden.”
“But her (Harriet F. Pilpel) remarks on the subject emphasize the way that prosecutors use “obscenity charges as a means of suppressing views which are dissident, satirical, irreverent, or merely unpopular” and that “censorship of obscenity … sets the stage for a censorship or censorious mentality which can pour over from obscenity to other things we may not like”
---The Review---
It’s always a delight to dive into a book thinking it’s going to be one thing and it turns out to be something else, but then looking back at the book’s sub-title, everything starts to make sense. And no, this is not a jab at the book itself. Unclean Lips was a joy to read and introduced me to parts of Jewish American history until now I never knew about. It also confirmed some beliefs about modern ‘traditional Jewish’ modesty as being mostly nothing but modern self-censorship (not a huge deal if it’s voluntary) and historical revisionism (yes, a big deal voluntary or not).
What we get in a packed intro, four thick chapters, and an epilogue that segues into modern day cases that could have been seen as “obscene” back in the day (such as an unexpected Curb Your Enthusiasm reference) is both a historical survey of what is and isn’t legally “obscene” in the USA and also the surprisingly high amount of Jewish movers and shakers who helped in their own unique ways to promote over most anything the importance it is to be able to freely express oneself.
Yes, books like Crackpot and Portroy’s Complaint even though written by people who may associate themselves as “traditionally Jewish” would surely never make it past Artscroll’s highly sanitized manuscript culling process, but they are Jewish books through and through with all the warts of reality on full display. While those looking for a book about supposed obscenity from a biblically Jewish perspective may feel a bit short-changed, Unclean Lips paints a lush picture of what was really going on throughout the 20th century that in spite of some modern critics has led to a near utopia in freedom of expression.
Now more than ever as USA shifts—or as some have more dramatically noted—“lurches” (or by others with an almost equal amount of controversy, “is restored”)—to the right, the question of how certain more “unsavory” elements of freedom of expression will be handled. While there are many a book and a Nile’s worth of spilled ink on obscenity out in the wild, Unclean Lips may be the only one that zeroes in specifically on the Jewish contribution to “obscenity” (heavy emphasis on quotes due to what is and isn’t obscene throughout the decades) and how, like it or not, some of the prime movers in shifting/lurching/restoring the Overton Window of “I’ll know it when I see it” may be in fact the original People of the Book.
---Interesting Highlights---
“Miller’s autobiographical narrator almost prophesizes the events of the Chicago trial when he notes that “the first people to turn to when you’re down and out are the Jews.””
“Comstock’s speeches regularly emphasized a commitment to Christian virtue, at times in contrast, at least symbolically, to Jewish sinfulness. In an address to a gathering of evangelical Christians at the 1893 Chicago World Exposition, Comstock declared, “as we contemplate the foes of moral purity and the harvest of their seed-sowing, we cry out in the words of the prophet of old in his lamentation over the sins of the Jews,” and then he cited a verse from Jeremiah.”
(Quoting David Goines:) “all forms of speech become political when they are restricted or forbidden.”
“But her (Harriet F. Pilpel) remarks on the subject emphasize the way that prosecutors use “obscenity charges as a means of suppressing views which are dissident, satirical, irreverent, or merely unpopular” and that “censorship of obscenity … sets the stage for a censorship or censorious mentality which can pour over from obscenity to other things we may not like”
---The Review---
It’s always a delight to dive into a book thinking it’s going to be one thing and it turns out to be something else, but then looking back at the book’s sub-title, everything starts to make sense. And no, this is not a jab at the book itself. Unclean Lips was a joy to read and introduced me to parts of Jewish American history until now I never knew about. It also confirmed some beliefs about modern ‘traditional Jewish’ modesty as being mostly nothing but modern self-censorship (not a huge deal if it’s voluntary) and historical revisionism (yes, a big deal voluntary or not).
What we get in a packed intro, four thick chapters, and an epilogue that segues into modern day cases that could have been seen as “obscene” back in the day (such as an unexpected Curb Your Enthusiasm reference) is both a historical survey of what is and isn’t legally “obscene” in the USA and also the surprisingly high amount of Jewish movers and shakers who helped in their own unique ways to promote over most anything the importance it is to be able to freely express oneself.
Yes, books like Crackpot and Portroy’s Complaint even though written by people who may associate themselves as “traditionally Jewish” would surely never make it past Artscroll’s highly sanitized manuscript culling process, but they are Jewish books through and through with all the warts of reality on full display. While those looking for a book about supposed obscenity from a biblically Jewish perspective may feel a bit short-changed, Unclean Lips paints a lush picture of what was really going on throughout the 20th century that in spite of some modern critics has led to a near utopia in freedom of expression.
Displaying 1 - 1 of 1 review