UID:
almahu_9949296958302882
Format:
1 online resource (280 p.)
ISBN:
9781503629493
,
9783110754001
Series Statement:
Post*45
Content:
With Reading the Obscene, Jordan Carroll reveals new insights about the editors who fought the most famous anti-censorship battles of the twentieth century. While many critics have interpreted obscenity as a form of populist protest, Reading the Obscene shows that the editors who worked to dismantle censorship often catered to elite audiences composed primarily of white men in the professional-managerial class. As Carroll argues, transgressive editors, such as H. L. Mencken at the Smart Set and the American Mercury, William Gaines and Al Feldstein at EC Comics, Hugh Hefner at Playboy, Lawrence Ferlinghetti at City Lights Books, and Barney Rosset at Grove Press, taught their readers to approach even the most scandalizing texts with the same cold calculation and professional reserve they employed in their occupations. Along the way, these editors kicked off a middle-class sexual revolution in which white-collar professionals imagined they could control sexuality through management science. Obscenity is often presented as self-shattering and subversive, but with this provocative work Carroll calls into question some of the most sensational claims about obscenity, suggesting that when transgression becomes a sign of class distinction, we must abandon the idea that obscenity always overturns hierarchies and disrupts social order.
Note:
Frontmatter --
,
Contents --
,
Acknowledgments --
,
Introduction: The Naked Editor --
,
1 Shocking the Middle Class --
,
2 An Aristocracy of Smut --
,
3 Decrypting EC Comics --
,
4 Reading Playboy for the Science Fiction --
,
5 Mad Ones, Mad Men --
,
6 White-Collar Masochism --
,
Afterword: Transgression in the Post-pornographic Era --
,
Notes --
,
Index
,
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
,
In English.
In:
EBOOK PACKAGE COMPLETE 2021 English, De Gruyter, 9783110754001
In:
EBOOK PACKAGE Literary, Cultural, Area Studies 2021 English, De Gruyter, 9783110754124
In:
EBOOK PACKAGE Literary, Cultural, Area Studies 2021, De Gruyter, 9783110753899
In:
Stanford University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021, De Gruyter, 9783110739145
Language:
English
DOI:
10.1515/9781503629493
URL:
https://doi.org/10.1515/9781503629493
URL:
https://www.degruyter.com/isbn/9781503629493
