6
Of Cocks & Cunts & Comic
Books
Presenting your own defence in a court of law has several
distinct advantages, not the least of which is that you get to speak more
often than anybody else. In the witness box you present your own
introduction, are then cross-examined by all counsels for defence and
prosecution, and then, believe it or not, you cross-examine yourself. Mick
Farren used these complex advantages with considerable skill:
Nasty Tales was, if not a labour of love at least a
labour of interest. Over the last four years the US have begun to push
forward from the concept of using comics as a child's medium, to use of
it as a medium for social and political beliefs...When one is publishing
any magazine which in any way makes a discussion of sexual aspects, and
I don't think anyone can deny that human sexuality is a constantly
debated subject in this society, you have to guess what is deemed
obscene. If you begin to diverge and take it into the realm of humour or
pictures, there is immediate potential contact with Obscene Publications
Act...On page 50 of this magazine (Crumb's Fuck-in and Orgy Riot) there
is a lampoon on the sexual act. I feel that this picture has very great
humorous merit in what I regard as a society obsessed by sex...Page 9
(Crumb's Dirty Dog) makes the point that the repression of an individual
who is not glamorous, charming, or eloquent, is in fact the force that
produces what this character has become, the archetypal man in the dirty
raincoat. We are not in this story given the impression that the
character is happy. He operates under total self-delusion...this
particular story lays bare the myth of the glamour magazines and the
girlie books.
Between pages 34 and 38 we have a number of stories
of characters called the Furry Freak Brothers. In the underground the
Furry Freak Brothers are virtually an institution, in the same way as in
England Andy Capp is an institution, and they have great similarities.
Andy Capp is shiftless, lazy, deceitful, he drinks and gambles to
excess. He appears every day in our largest selling national daily
newspaper. The Furry Freak Brothers also are shiftless, lazy, and
deceitful, but instead of being drunkards they are soft drug users. They
have the same cathartic effect of laughing at our failures and
weaknesses.
Page 50 (Fuck-in and Orgy Riot) is somewhat more
difficult to explain because it is a single visual joke. There is no
thread of continuity. I can really only draw your attention to some of
the attitudes to sex that we find in contemporary media. Chocolate ads
where the relationship to a chocolate bar and a human penis is so
explicit as to be almost embarrassing if one is watching it in mixed
company. Page 50 is a parody of advertising techniques in that it takes
reality through to total absurdity...
Judge: People who
watch these television advertisements are deliberately being
titillated?
Mick: Undeniably, my lord. They titillate the
observer and then offer the product as a substitute. This is a very
common technique.
Prosecution: What effect would this
magazine have on the sanctity of marriage?
Mick: I do not
have a great deal of faith in the sanctity of marriage.
Prosecution: Is there anything in this magazine which
advocates love?
Mick: The culture around which this
magazine was produced has frequently been referred to as the Love
Generation. I see nothing in this magazine which says that love is a
spurious emotion which should not be admitted.
The ad in IT advertising Nasty Tales No.1 suggested with uncanny
accuracy, that hippies write in for copies of the magazine 'before we're
busted'. At the Old Bailey so artless a remark takes on the proportions of
a conspiracy...
Prosecution: 'Write to us before we're busted', Mr
Farren?
Mick: At the time of publishing this
advertisement the previous company who ran IT was in some course of
their appeal to the House of Lords and the OZ Trial was set for June. It
seemed from where we were in the underground press that being raided by
the police was almost a fact of life, like rain...
And
back to the Fuck-in and Orgy Riot:
Prosecution: How can it be to the public good that
this parody of television advertising apparently was circulated among
hippies?
Mick: It is a parody of the society that
produces this kind of television advertising...it is a surreal fantasy,
it is laughable and I felt that the laughter elicited would be to the
public good.
Which is where the judge asked a Most
Revealing Question...
Judge: Public good? Of hippies? Or of society at
large?
Mick: Society at large, my lord.
Judge: I am not a hippie and I am over 28. What good is it
going to do me?
Mick: It is a joke which deflates
hypocrisy and pomposity...
Judge Alan King-Hamilton seemed
to adopt the role of a second prosecution counsel with nonchalant ease. He
rounded off Mick's evidence with these questions:
Judge: Can you point to any item in the magazine
which either attempts to enlighten the dark areas of society or would
help a group of people to evolve their morality?
Mick:
Even the notorious page 50 would seem to take out a social bogey man,
the representation of sex, hold it up to the light, and cut it down to
size.
Judge: Sex is not a dark area of society.
Mick: I feel that despite progressive liberalising of sex
over the past ten years, there is still a lot left to be desired in this
field, and even what has so far been achieved has only been achieved in
courts of law like this, and there is still a counter movement to push
us all back into Victorianism.
7
"It is a fact that these people take
drugs"
Being a witness at court of law requires a peculiar form of
verbal competence. At the Old Bailey it's a fine art. It's not quite
enough to be simply honest, or ordinarily articulate. You're called upon
to follow arguments almost Socratean in their deviance, to watch for the
hidden assumptions in the most innocuous question. A sense of humour is
allowed, but only on the level of the express repartee set by the
cross-examiner, and under the intense, television-camera immediacy of
the courtroom procedure. No remark can be effectively revoked, any lengthy
silent consideration is interpreted as vacillation. Nothing could be
further from the high-pressure academic logic of the Old Bailey than the
crazed disjointed world of the underground comic, or the minds of the
artists responsible. With all that said, Edward Barker, co-editor of
Nasty Tales and one of the most original and talented cartoonists
in this country, gave lousy evidence.
On paper, in the transcript, it doesn't look so bad: but the transcript
doesn't record the minute long silences before the monosyllabic answers,
the nuances of expression in the prosecutors voice as he picks up and
expands a casual answer. Edward's own cartoons were analysed down to the
final detail, picked clean for any form of 'social merit'-of which in the
terms of the Old Bailey, they fortunately have precious little. Do you
know," asked the judge at the end of Edward's evidence, "of any
cartoon which has not got artistic merit?" Edward had no answer.
"Why," continued the judge, "is it
calledNasty Tales?" Again, Edward didn't know. "Couldn't it,"
savoured the judge, "have discouraged drug-taking?" "Yes, it
could," Edward admitted, "but finding American strips that
discourage drug-taking is very difficult. I don't believe in discouraging
people from doing anything, I think they should make up their own
mind...If we had discouraged drug-taking it would not have been bought. It
is a fact that these people do take drugs."
George Perry is assistant editor of the Sunday Times Magazine
and co-editor of The Penguin Book of Comics. H J Blackham is 69
years old and a humanist. Germaine Greer is a cosmopolitan feminist.
"You may be surprised," said the irrepressible judge in his summing
up "that anybody came forward to tell you that anything in this
magazine has literary or artistic merit. But there you are. This world is
full of surprises and it happened." Yes, indeed, it happened, and all
three of the individuals concerned acquitted themselves in the dock well
enough to merit a less-boorish dismissal. For your amusement and
education; extracts from the evidence of Perry, Blackham, and
Greer:
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Perry on Robert Crumb:
He is the most outstanding certainly the most interesting
artist to appear from the underground, and this(Dirty Dog) is
Rabelaisian satire of a very high order. He is using coarseness quite
deliberately in order to get across a view of social hypocrisy in this
strip...This is by no means the best of Crumb's work, Crumb at his best
is probably far more shocking than this. He is a master of this
particular medium, which for him is an appropriate one...I would say the
first strip (Ruff Tuff Creampuff) does condemn violence.
Prosecution: By the police?
Perry:
Authoritarian violence; the authority figure represents
authoritarianism which could be in the form of sending B 52s to Vietnam.
It is a condemnation of the politicians. The policeman is merely a tool
of politicians and the establishment. He stands for an attitude towards
people.
Perry on the Freak Brothers:
This is mocking the conventional children's comic
approach where you have a cast of characters enacting a scenario week by
week which ends in a gag...I don't think it is suggesting that drug-
taking is necessarily a good way of life. I can remember cartoons in
Film Fun and Dandy about burglars which in no way
suggested that a child should become a burglar.
Blackham on Nasty Tales in Society:
I think the whole magazine is crude, but I think that is
neither here nor there in the question at issue. It seems to be not in
any sense vicious, assuming rather than creating pornography; it is
positive in that it is calling for a more honest and open treatment of
certain topics and an expanse of diversity of behaviour and ethos...It
is anti-authoritarian within the context of the kind of harassment
experienced by members of this group.
Prosecution: Does
it brutalise and dehumanise sex?
Blackham: It is dealing
with aspects of the social scene in which sex is brutalised
already. Greer on Robert Crumb:
(Dirty Dog) is one of the many people who is
disfranchised by our society, in this case sexually. The only people
admitted to the permissive society are the good-looking, young, and
relatively well-to-do...(The Fuck-in and Orgy Riot) refers to a seminal
notion that the underground entertained for a long time, the 'group
grope' concept. It was of course absurd, it is impossible to behave as
if a sexual revolution had occurred before it has occurred, and it is
quite possible that if it had happened it would have been as
unappetising as it is depicted here...(Crumb) satirises the underground
for its servility, lack of democracy, complacency, inability to see what
the political explanations were for the manifestations that surrounded
it...
Greer on Literary Merit:
I would have thought the economy and breadth of language
in Dirty Dog shows literary merit. It is at least very good
journalism.
Prosecution: Surely journalism is not
literature?
Greer: Addison would be very hurt to hear you say
that...Among comic strips and comic books this is rather better than
most and a good deal less insidious in its effect upon public taste
than Superman. Creampuff has literary merit because it sets out
to make a different point about concealed institutional violence.
Literary merit has everything to do with choosing the words most
appropriate to the expression...Pope also has cause to refer to
excretory functions. It would have been inappropriate to have (the
characters in Nasty Tales) delivering two line speeches in
rhythm. |
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8
Obscenity who really cares
The summing-up is, bar interruptions, the last time that any of
the counsel get to speak to the jury. One after another they present the
summary of their case, and then the judge takes everything under his
judicial wing and presents what is theoretically an accurate précis of the
entire proceedings. Of course, this never has been what happens and the
Nasty Tales trial set no precedent. The judge says what he thinks,
in whatever manner he chooses; and if he is 68 years old and his subject
matter is an anarchic comic book aimed at and produced by people four
generations younger than him; then his summary of their case is unlikely
to resound with sympathy. In fact, Judge Alan King-Hamilton's summary of
the Nasty Tales trial did the prosecution shame.
He followed
a defence summary that with the exception of Mick Farren, was
unconvincingly weak. Robin Grey insisted that Nasty Tales "may be for
all time the least offensive magazine ever prosecuted" and stating
quite unnecessarily that Mick Farren "is blessed with an intellect
higher than most of the people in this court"; and Ronald Grey quoted
Dorothy Sayers on the undereducation of children. Mick Farren's closing
speech I would like to quote in full but lack of space forbids. Nervous,
and speaking very quickly, he reminded the jury that:
We have become very removed from the real outside
world...The bustle of everyday life seems to vanish as we step inside
the courtroom and a new world appears. A world where to make a simple
joke is fraught with sinister overtones, or to tell a story that
involves people who take drugs becomes an instruction to take
drugs.
The jury were watching Mick very curiously,
allowing him a kind of attention which no member of counsel had gained. He
repeated the essences of the magazine's virtues and purposes, expounded
briefly on the machinations of authority in dealing with awkward minority
groups, and took a brief pause for breath before stating:
I believe that this society has attempted to place too
much emphasis on the role of authority in regulating the private lives
of individuals. This is a belief that I hold strongly, and the bulk of
the material in this magazine appeared to me to put this very question
to the reader...The jokes in Nasty Tales took a robust view of
our society. It poked fun at some of the authority, at the hypocrisy, at
the failings of many sections of our society. If you, gentlemen, feel
that this is contrary to the good health of our society, then I can only
suggest that you convict myself and my friends. Roger
Davies, counsel for Edward, made the final speech for the defence at a
time when there was little left to say, and closed the case apart from the
judge's summing-up.
Judges do not favour Not Guilty verdicts. No rash statement, that, nor
comment on the obvious. The point is that a Not Guilty verdict is the only
courtroom occurence that can take the case concerned completely out of the
judge's patriarchal hands. If a Guilty verdict is returned the case is
still the judge's: his decision whether to fine the accused one new penny
or send them to jail, and these actually relish making. Deific power over
people's futures does odd things to any human being, and judges, difficult
as it is occasionally may be to credit, are human beings.
Alan King-Hamilton began his summary calmly enough, flattering the jury
of their ability through "common sense and good taste" to reach a
sane verdict, and suggesting to them that they ignore his own remarks if
they see fit. Fortunately the jury heeded that latter piece of advice,
because after four or five minutes something deep in the back of Alan
King-Hamilton's mind seemed to miss a cog.
...the pendulum of permissiveness (the judge looked
meaningfully at the Nasty Tales on his desk) has gone too far and
it is time it began to swing back again...Mr Farren said that he doesn't
'have a great deal of faith in the sanctity of marriage'. You may think
it right to consider this...You may think it would have been more for
the public good if it was designed to make the hippies understand what
is wrong with them...Miss Greer is from their camp...it would not be
proper to regard her as an independent expert...Mrs Farren, we have
heard, was used to helping around the office with their personal
problems. You may ask yourselves, members of the jury, whether she would
not have been better employed in helping young hippies get back to their
parents...
At this point a forceful shock-wave ran around the court, two counsels
stood to object simultaneously, and my personal outrage grew so
uncontrollable that the clerk of the court gesticulated violently at me, I
gesticulated back, and was promptly ejected from the courtroom. Not an
unpleasant experience, actually, if somewhat undignified.
The jury
was sent out to consider its verdict first thing next morning, and after
four hours thirty-four minutes they returned a verdict of Not Guilty. The
majority was 10-2.
9
Kapow
Michael Bateman in The Sunday Times rather sillily
expressed the view that "the underground press sees this verdict as one in
the eye for the Whitehouse Brigade". Were that true, it would be a petty
and naive point of view. We've won a trial. We had a jury that was
informed and liberal enough to identify more with the defence than with
Edwardian morals of the judge and the prosecution. The implications of
this fact are interesting. Could it be that Nasty Tales expresses
the attitudes of the British public more accurately than Lord Longford or
Alan King-Hamilton? On the basis of this jury decision that is a
reasonable speculation, but not one that is going to seriously affect the
authorities on the basis of one Old Bailey verdict. The genuine climate of
informed public opinion must begin to express itself more vociferously and
more widely. To quote Page 50, Nasty Tales No.1:
'Don't
be shy! Anyone can join! Bring the whole family! And get them signed
up for jury duty.
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