4
Tuesday, June 26, 1973
University Dally Kansan
Pornography Supreme Court's Obscenity Ruling Arouses Widespread Dismav
The Washington Post
WASHINGTON—Predictions of what could happen to America's books, movies and television were made by Supreme Court decision on obceancy, ranged from "no effect" to "chaos" Thursday as spokesmen for the publishing and motion picture industries reacted to the ruling.
Some predicted a reactionary return to the "dark ages" of Prohibition (with sexual matter widely banned instead of alcohol) as a result of the Court's 5-4 decision returning many responsibility for defining obscene matter to individual states and municipalities.
The decision set a new standard that could give state and local law enforcement agencies more leeway in prosecuting allegedly obscene material. A work need no longer be found "utterly without redeeming social values," a 1967 guideline of the court, but would only have to be shown to lack "serious literary, artistic, political, or
scientific value" to be judged obscene.
According to the decision, a book or movie could be found not obscene in one city, while being banned in another. The court ruled that "community standards" used to determine obscenity will be those of the local, not the national, community.
Jack Valenti, president of the Motion Picture Association of America, which represents the major film companies, said Thursday evening that the ruling would have no effect on the responsible motion picture industry.
"The (the Court) are talking about the obviously, patently and gratuously pornographic material that comes out; the films that make a feeble attempt to redeem themselves by ininserting 'art,''enlivening and植入 an obviously pornographic context.
"Of course, the real problem is this: what happens if you send what you think is a serious work of art into the marketplace or local law enforcement officials harass it?"
"The only picture from a major studio I can think of that people might wonder about 'Is Last Tangy in Paris' because of its so-called 'fourth wave.' It isn't tittatul. It's a work of art. I think the
"You may win in court, but then you may have to spend so much money that you've doomed your picture to economic disaster. And a jury may say 'You think that's serious but we think that's obscene.' We're sure we have to examine this very carefully."
saving thing in the Supreme Court decision is that Serious works of art are not within reach.
LAST TANGO IN AMERICA
Adventures Dominate New Paperbacks
It is the "community standards" aspect of the decision that will most affect film.
Some interesting fiction is on the racks for summer paperback reading. One of the new titles is a Japanese novel by Yukihisa Mishima, SPRING SNOW (Pocket, $1.50). The book, a love story set in 1912, is about Kiyoaki and Satoko, the latter betrothed to the violence of the imperial family, and the tragic violence in which they become involved.
Harry Crews' THE GOSPEL SINGER
(Pocket, 59 cents) is on the trashy side. It's about a southern singer—handsome, virile, and treasly. Much more and more chickens.
Lloyd Zimperl's MEETING THE BEAR:
JOURNAL OF THE BLACK WARS (1984)
fiction though it superficially reads like
nonfiction. It is a prophetic and scary tale
that offers the reader terrorism in Chicago,
through the brainwashing, and concentration cannies.
Donald E. Westlake's BANK SHOT (Pocket, 95 cents) will recall the author's earlier "The Hot Rock." The people from that book are reunited in this one-a-criminal now selling encyclopedias, an exon who steals cars with doctors' license who lives with his caby mother. The thieves in this suburban their target a suburban bank, using a mobile trailer home as temporary headquarters.
NDSL Fund Boost Could Benefit Many In Upcoming Year
"This estimation is based on the average of individual loans of $800." Roegs said.
KU will receive **782,742** for its program. This represents an increase over the 1972-73 budget of $500 million.
Jerry Rogers, director of student financial aid at the University of Kansas, said Monday that from 1,700 to 1,800 students could benefit from the recently increased National Direct Student Loan Program in the 1973-74 academic year.
Rogers said the maximum amount a graduate student could receive was $2,500 and the maximum amount for undergraduate students was $1,000.
Rogers said that he was not certain why the graduate students had a higher maximum amount than undergraduates, and that this made it difficult to graduate students had families to support.
Rogers said that to be eligible for a loan, students must have good academic financial need based on the College Scholarship Need Analysis, be progressing toward graduation and be enrolled at least two years before taking the loan.
Rogers noted, however, that there were provisions for students to receive more credit.
When the demand for funds exceeded the supply, Rogers said that academic criteria were important. He said that a 2.0 grade point average was generally expected.
Fletcher Knebel's TRESPASS (Pocket, $1.50) is a reprint of a successful novel that tells what happens when militant blacks take over suburban homes, which they demand as retribution for all the past blacks have undergone. This is a good one.
Jack Pearl's VICTIMS (Pocket, 95 cents), a book that is headed for the movies, is available in both print and e-book formats.
Of some interest are two new volumes that may be described, briefly, as "relevant." R. A. Lafferty's OKLA HAN-ANLI (Pocket, $1.25) is about an American Indian, a Chook giant, who is farmer, blacksmith, boatbuilder, ferryman, distiller, tanner, and founder of a town. Phil D. Ortego's WE ARE CHICANOS (Pocket, $1.25) is about an American literature, with a historical introduction, background material and photographs. Ortego is director of Chicoa affairs at the University of Texas, El Paso.
review
war against the early establishment and a war police officer who is out to arrest him.
Max Brand's AMBUSH AT TORTURE CANYON (Pocket, 75 cents) is one by the late great western story writer. An ex-Texas Ranger pursues a cold and cunning woman, and she learns that John Whitchatz, whose formula is adventure, sex, and assortedillness. These are wild ones—STUNTMAN'S HOLIDAY, CORYS' LOSEERS (Pocket, 98 cents each), GANNON'S VENETTA and LAFTITE'S SAGACY (Pocket, 75 cents each).
There are two timey biographies—Peggy Maun's *GOLJA* (Washington Square, $1.25) and *NANCY* (Stanford, $1.75) on ASSISK! *HIS LIFE AND LOVES* (*Pocket*, $1.25). "Golda" is about Golda Meir, of
Russell D'O'Neil's "THE ALCATRAZ INC. Young Americans who occupy the famous island as a protest against their society, who threaten to blow themselves up, and who then establish shapes up, and who then begin to attack them, they themselves have created on Alcatraz.
Two new mystery thrillers are Don Tracy's A CORPSE CAN SURE LOUSE UP A WEEKEND! (Pocket, 95 cents) and Chris DUNN'S COMING (Pocket, 75 cents). Both are originals. The hero of the first of these is a painter who comes home and finds a dead body sprawled on his living room floor. His wife is in danger from many complications. Chase is a writer whose books are very popular in Europe. The guy in his new book is an ex-ploit who has a plan for hijacking a plane and hestling it into disaster. But his big plan turns into disaster.
course, from the Russian Ukraine, to Milwaukee, to Denver, and to Israel, where she became premier. Remarkable woman. The Onassis book has been featured already in several magazines. The author, once man Friday to Onassis, describes the long affair between her and the courthouse of Jacket the marriage, the marriage contract. Breathless gossip.
Marco Vass's THE STONED APOCALYPSE (Pocket, $1.25) is a recollection of Vass's years among the spiritual avant-garde, where he was a head, scientistologist, pornographer, mystic, psychotherapist, experimental artist. Hans Holzer's BORN AGAIN: THE TRUTH BEHIND REINCARNATION (Pocket, 95 cents) will reach a similar audience. Holzer also has written about Gothic ghosts and witchcraft. A parapsychologist, he says he has discovered and several "authentic" cases of reincarnation.
There's a new, relevant volume edited by Laura Chester and Sharon Barba, RISING TIDES: 20TH CENTURY AMERICAN WOMEN POETS. It includes people like Edna St. Vincent Millay and Marianne Moore, as well as lesser-knowns, and it's quite attuned to feminine consciousness movements.
makers, according to producer-director Stanley Khaner, now in Houston to promote the movie.
"On the surface, this has very tragic overtones," he said. "I can't imagine 50 different places to stand judgment on whatever."
Kramer said the decision could be "chaotic" to movie companies.
—Calder M. Pickett
No major motion picture companies would comment. Some observers theorized that the heavy financial stake the company held in its production accounted for their silence. But some industry spokesman said they were simply unclear as to what the implications of the new decision were; "Our legal department was fine," said a spokesman for United Artists.
Members of the porno film subculture predicted doom for themselves.
"The hard-core industry is going to dry up," said Dave Friedman, president of the Adult Film Association of America, an organization of the makers of so-called X-rated films. "The court rulings is a lot more far-reaching than any of us expected."
But Stanley Fleischman, a California lawyer who has defended numerous free-running prosecutions, said
"There will initially be a lot of cases on these things," he said. "But now the American people accept them (sexual films), so we're going to take these cases to local legislature and locally legal legislation will be passed that will limit the amount of prosecution that's done."
Producer-director Otto Preminger said from his New York office that obscenity would be "worse than ever" under the new decision.
"It will open the doors to real porn—but in secret. It will be like a Prohibition. We'll have speakeasies where people can get porn. The quick buck people who make porno will not give up, and the more you forbid it, the worse it will be."
Spokesmen for the book industry said the decision would lead to, at the least, complications over what could and could not be printed and sold.
"It makes the job of a bookslayer much more difficult," said G. Royce Smith, executive director of the American Bookslayers Association, the industry's largest publisher, in a definition of what is legally obscene is more of an emotional than a legal basis."
Irwkarp, an attorney for the Authors League of America, said that the Court's emphasis on state standards would lead to "real restraints" and "real restraints" on publishers.
Publisher Ralph Ginzburg, whose appeal of a three-year obscurity sentence conviction was rejected last year by the Supreme Court, called the decision a "supreme blunder" and said it would be a "bonanza" for pornographers.
"These people aren't 'creative, they're businessman,' said Ginzburg, who served eight months of the sentence last year. He said he would be the aura of forbidden fruit that their business depends on. The decision will achieve exactly the opposite of what those pathetic old men on the Court want; it will allow very publications they want to sunnées."
Author Henry Miller, who wrote "Tropic o. Cancer" and other once-banned novels, expressed surprise at the decision when reached at his California home.
"The tenor of the times is totally against it," said Miller. "Never have we had such freedom of expression; I don't see how we are unwieldy. The Court is being very unrealistic."
Barnary Rosset, of Grove Press, which has been a pioneer in publishing such erotic literature as the first American novel by James Patterson, "Insecure," denounced the decision as "insane."
"The American people aren't shocked by sex and politics as the Supreme Court is," he said. "This idea that a closed group at the top should tell people what they can see and read is purely in line with the whole Watergate syndrome. It doesn't represent thinking today. As for me, this decision won't stop me. The whole thing is a pitiful
attempt to turn the clock backward."
Sol Stein, president of Stein and Day Publishers, called the decision "reckless" and "nearderthal" and said that "instead of settling this issue, the Court has made it more incendiary. Local jurisdiction is equivalent to abandoning federal law. It
Despite the far-reaching aspects of the new Supreme Court ruling on pornography, there was little initial local reaction among those potentially affected.
"I think it's too early to comment, said Eldon Herman, manager of Granada Theatre. "It depends on how the local police can in a county attorney, the Attorney General."
Mild Local Reaction To Supreme Court Pornography Ruling
"We don't plan any radical changes in our bookings. We haven't run any hard-core pornography, so we shouldn't have any trouble."
John Shepard, police community relations director, did not foresee any local
"A court test case is necessary to determine the standard for obscenity." Shephard said. "The Supreme Court left open what would be defined as obscenity."
He said that enforcement, once the standard had been determined, would provide a better chance.
A spokesman for the Attorney General's office in Topeka said, the office had not yet filed a complaint.
"The opinion was only handed down last week," he said. "We have no copy of the ruling and haven't seen the darn thing, except in the press."
Anron Aher, a vice president of Holt, Rinehart and Winston, label the decision iteratively regressive" but John Willey, a former New York attorney, said the decision wasn't restricting.
means returning certain parts of the country to the dark ages" (Stain didn't specify which parts of the country he was referring to.)
Fringed chided the Supreme Court for seeming to retreat from the issue of objection.
He pledged to devote all his energies toward getting the decision reversed.
"The Court does not give you any guidance on what you can do and what you cannot do," he said. "This is the most detestable thing. How will we know what is obscene? Someone could go into the woods and maybe half of the haintings on the walls."
Although the decision did not directly touch on the broadcasting industry, alleged obscurity has been an issue there as well. The FCC has been investigating "topless radio" broadcasts and the "blue movie" stations; that is, stations where the broadcasters stations. What the implications, if any, are for broadcasting as a result of the decision, remain a mystery.
LAWRENCE ICE CO.
Fresh
Ripe
Watermelons
OPEN DAILY
7 a.m. to 10 p.m.
616 Vermont 843-0350
616 Vermont 843-0350
---
...