Banned in Boston

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With " Banned in Boston " (prohibited in Boston) a censorship requirement was described from the second half of the 19th century to the 1950s, which excluded a book, play or film from sale or performance in Boston . During this time, American city administrations had considerable leeway to ban works with dubious content.

background

Boston was a Puritan founding in the early 17th century. The second wave of Irish-born Catholics, like the Puritans, had restrictive views on profanity and sexuality. In Philadelphia, on the other hand, there was never such strict local censorship, although similar conditions existed there. At the end of the 19th century, Anthony Comstock's campaign and its originally New York association against moral vices had considerable success , especially in Boston . As the head of the United States Postal Inspection Service, Comstock had extensive control powers and initiated the so-called Comstock laws . This excluded "obscene" material from being sent by post. According to some critics, if the code had been interpreted strictly, even the King James Bible would no longer have been able to be sent.

Boston city politics followed Comstock's guidelines and banned anything that was perceived as slippery, inappropriate or offensive. An influential private company, the Boston Watch and Ward Society , supported the process. Most of the members were among the richest and most respected citizens of the city. Plays have been banned, books confiscated and films banned. Some premieres were canceled after officials had "seen enough".

The practice damaged Boston's role as a cultural center. The expression "Banned in Boston" became a kind of trademark for not entirely youth-free cultural creation. Sometimes commercial traders issued works as banned in Boston , although this was not the case at all.

Change in the 20th century

Many publishers took action to get their books banned in Boston. “ During the 1920s the phrase banned in Boston became famous because the long-established Watch and Ward Society of the so-called Hub of the Universe was forever getting the city censor to ban books from sale. Many publishers actively sought to have their books banned in Boston because they knew the label would increase their sales in the rest of the country ... ”(German:“ In the course of the 1920s, the phrase banned became famous in Boston because the long-established Watch and Ward Society of the Navel of the Universe persisted in getting the city censor to ban books from sale, and many publishers actively sought to get their books banned in Boston because they recognized that the books were labeled sold very well in the rest of the country ... ")

Publicist Henry L. Mencken was arrested in Boston in 1926 after ostentatiously selling a copy of his locally banned literary magazine The American Mercury . Although the case was denied by the court and Mencken later won a lawsuit against the Watch and Ward Society for illegal trade restrictions, little changed in the practice of censorship . Even the novel Strange Fruit by Lillian Smith was from the Watch and Ward Society prohibited.

In the context of the supreme court case law, which was significantly changed by Earl Warren ( Warren Court ) 1953-1969, among other things, in the case of Memoirs v. Massachusetts considerably curtailed the freedom of American municipalities in terms of censorship. The question was whether the erotic novel Fanny Hill , published in the 18th century, could find recognition as a literary work.

The last such major legal battle in the United States was over naked lunch . The background was a 1965 banned in Boston . The Watch and Ward Society renamed itself the New England Citizens Crime Commission and moved among other things to the fight against gambling .

In the early 1970s, a red light district developed in Boston, the so-called Combat Zone . In the mid to late 1970s, this was fought with planning requirements and increased investigation pressure. For example, the murder of the football player and Harvard graduate Andrew Puopolo in 1976 and the scandal over the MP Wilbur Daigh Mills and the stripper Fanne Foxe in 1974 caused a sensation . In addition to the gentrification of the area close to the city center, the easier accessibility of the Internet and mail order business favored the change back to a normal city district. These two had the effect that erotic material was or is being consumed more at home.

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b Nicola Kay Beisel: Imperiled Innocents: Anthony Comstock and Family Reproduction in Victorian America. Princeton Univ Press, Princeton 1998, ISBN 0-691-02778-1 .
  2. ^ William Robert Reardon: Banned in Boston. A study of theatrical censorship in Boston from 1630 to 1950. Stanford University, 1952.
  3. ^ Banned in Boston. The development of literary censorship in Massachusetts. Publisher University of Illinois., 1956, University of Michigan.
  4. ^ Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins. 2d ed, 1988. Quoted from Boston University Libraries; Research Guides ( Memento from April 14, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (about 100 relevant books there).
  5. ^ A b Mass Moments: HL Mencken Arrested in Boston . Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. Retrieved November 13, 2010.
  6. ↑ Michael J. Dittman: Masterpieces of Beat Literature . Greenwood Publishing Group, 2007, ISBN 978-0-313-33283-8 , p. 94.
  7. ↑ Tom Ashbrook: Red lights going out on Boston's sin strip . In: The Gazette . CanWest Global Communications (column from The Boston Globe ), Montreal, Quebec August 5, 1988, pp. A-1 FRO.