Not Safe For Work ???
The Voodoo Goddess Sessions
On Monday, I posted a note that has received more views than almost any of my other posts (except for the one with the word “Sex” in the title). Of course, it involves sexy photos!
I really don’t intend to appeal to anyone’s prurient interests, but if sex sells, should I ?
As I wrote in the Note, when I selected Adobe Photoshop’s Generative AI tool to remove, en masse, the paper-covered wire hangers from a quadriptych of Voodoo Goddess shots, it sent me back a warning that I was risking my account by violating its TOS vis a vis nudity and p*rn.
Shouldn’t the tools be apolitical or neutral here? What if I were a graphic artist employed by a mammography clinic? If an artist was going to exploit the female form, there are others to appropriately “police” that, not the Photoshop bot!
Anyway, there are a few things I wanted to say about the Voodoo Goddess Sessions, and the difference in the cultural temperature between the 1980s and the 2020s - doesn’t it seem like we’re LESS progressive these days?
Freedom of Speech / First Amendment is a two-sided flag everyone wants to wave and it’s one with a fungible definition that these same everyones think leans to their way of thinking. It’s not like that.
Some of our greatest First Amendment Warriors have been the so-called pornographers - the Larry Flynts, Al Goldsteins, Hugh Hefners, Robyn Byrds, etc ad infinitum. They paved the way for everyone by taking the hits - legally as well as to their reputations.
At the same time, these so-called pornographers employed and empowered women journalists, editors, and photographers. They paid competitive or better rates, and they paid on time. There are so many of us in the punk population who did freelance, contract, or on-the-payroll work with them because they paid the bills.
In the late 1980s/early 1990s, I worked at the law firm then known as Frankfurt, Garbus, KIein and Selz (they are now Frankfurt, Kurnit, Klein and Selz.) The iconic First Amendment lawyer and firm founder, Martin Garbus left the firm in 2002, but while I was there, I learned so much from him by being one of the many in that firm who worked on matters for his clients ranging from Daniel Ellsberg to the Estates of Abby Hoffman and of Lenny Bruce. It is not unusual for people such as Hoffman and Bruce (or their estates) to have multiple attorneys on retainer. Marty was one of them, and probably the most high profile.
I mention Garbus and the firm, for when I started there, my coworkers told me how Marty had represented Barney Rossett, founder of Grove Press, and the distributor of the Swedish film, I Am Curious (Yellow) in certain transactions and matters that enabled the film to be screened in the United States. Considered “hardcore p^rn” back in the 1960s (for depicting sexual acts), it was banned from exhibitions worldwide, but ingenious workarounds overcame that. That counterculture DIY attitude and work ethic is one I was and continue to be drawn to. The legal woes, First Amendment and other, of Marty Garbus’s clients could fill a book (and he’s written a few), and that’s not what I’m here to discuss.
While you may think that Larry Flynt and his Hustler magazine are First Amendment and p^rn heroes based on references to the landmark Supreme Court decision that bears his publication’s name (Hustler Magazine vs. Falwell) or the movie that bears his name (The People vs. Larry Flynt), that case wasn’t about pornography, it was about SATIRE. Chief Justice William Rehnquist wrote that robust political debate and public satire, even when outrageous, abrasive, or intended to cause emotional pain, are fully protected by the First Amendment's freedom of speech and press. But because satire and snark and sarcasm are part and parcel of the language and visuals of all counter cultures1, we accept Larry Flynt as a social justice warrior.
In 2015, on the occasion of Hustler’s 41st anniversary, in his editor’s column, Flynt wrote, “We have regularly offended the high and mighty, the powerful and corrupt, the pompous and shameless with uncompromising investigations and unscathing satire. That’s what the First Amendment protects – speech that rocks the boat and rattles the complacent.”
He always considered himself a publisher first, not a pornographer.
As for pornography and obscenity, there is a legal standard that has evolved over several decades. Everyone has an opinion but children, it is agreed, must always be protected. There have been laws challenged, upheld, struck down and circled around again involving language, nudity, and the depiction of sexual acts. Lenny Bruce is not just the man’s name, it is a cipher and cultural shorthand for obscene language on trial.
What I’ve danced around here is the imbalance of determining obscenity via the human body - the apples and oranges (or bananas and melons, I guess) argument.
It’s about TITS.
Last year when I wrote about the volunteer stripper at The Strangler’s Whisky a GoGo show, the views were through the roof. Was it her breasts? Or was it the word “sex” ?
Sex Sells
Of all the bands that emerged out of England during the punk era, The Stranglers were among the very few who were expert at playing their instruments. A hallmark of punk rock’s musical aesthetic was that you didn’t have to be adept or even good in order to perform it. Punk rock was abou…
Hollywood really wants women to show you their tits. The amount of gratuitous nudity or at least toplessness is astounding. It’s not like that for the men. Unless the actor is Ewan McGregor2 or Harvey Keitel3, Hollywood doesn’t want to show you a naked penis in any state. (Rock and roll is different, and Iggy Pop is happy to show off.)
In the Autumn of 1980, Pleasant and I were doing a feature for Velvet, as mentioned up top and in Monday’s NOTE. The subject was The GoGo’s, “LA’s Hottest Punk Band” as they wrote in the table of contents. Our actual daily vibe was them posing and me shooting - we made Fucked Up Fake Film Stills, Fake Fashion Layouts - that kind of thing. We did it all the time. So, after getting Belinda to pose in her Disgraceland bedroom, she and Pleasant decided to pose for some “French Postcards.”
That photo session has become known as the Disgraceland Voodoo Goddess session and after 46 years, I made a Box Set of postcards! You’ll have to click on → this link ← to actually see them, because Substack censored a Note I made with one of the more benign (but sexy poses) and I am having fun with that anyway.
The Pre-Sale has ended but you can still buy these postcards. You’re getting a far better deal than the last person who bought these images.
They did, however, lend a print to the Museum of Sex:
COME HITHER!
MAD Magazine, The Harvard Crimson, CREEM - those are the most high profile sarcastic counter culture publications that snark freely thanks to people like Larry Flynt. It isn’t all about sex!
Harvey Keitel has appeared naked in seven movies.
“Who’s That Knocking At My Door” (1967) “Fingers” (1978) “The Men’s Club” (1986) “Bad Lieutenant” (1992) “The Piano” (1993) “Ulysses Gaze” (1995) “Holy Smoke” (1999)
I did a thing last year I can't quite talk about. But let's say we caught up with Heidi Fleiss in her current state.
Highly intelligent, highly connected, high functioning, and... slightly high. But I'll be dammed if she didn't have the same insights about sex, capitalism, men, sex, opportunism, money, sex, and tits.
I'd rather spend an hour with her than one second with the prudes, censors, politicians, and uptight sqaurejohns that put their things on *us*/*you*