Howl

This past week marked the 50^th anniversary of Allen Ginsberg’s Howl winning its 1957 obscenity trial, and WBAI had planned a 90-minute special commemorating the occasion. Unfortunately, they were informed by their lawyers that broadcasting the poem could result in FCC fines substantial enough to actually put the station out of business.

Call me crazy, but I think the fact that the single most influential work of twentieth century American poetry cannot be broadcast in America says something about our society.

Now, theoretically, it might be acceptable to broadcast it during the “safe harbor” hours of 10pm to 6am. I say “might” because, as a matter of policy, the FCC will not tell you whether something is OK or not until after you’ve already done it. So your only options are:

1) Try it and see if you get fined $350,000 per word per broadcast (conservatively, that would be around five million dollars to play the whole poem once); or

2) Don’t broadcast the poem.

Under that system, most people will simply not bother to broadcast material that they think even might be a problem. And, since it was their own decision, the FCC can claim that they didn’t censor anyone. And they’d be telling the truth. Sort of.

Ultimately, WBAI decided to produce the special anyway and just put it on the web. You can listen to or download it here.

From a hip-hop perspective, one of the most intriguing comments on the whole situation is made at 59:59 by Bob Holman, of the Nuyorican Poets Café:

“I was just thinking about…what this says about the vision of orality and literature. You know, that you can buy the book. And that it can be in a library…There’s no legal repercussions…for anyone to take this book out of the library, or to buy it, or to give it to anybody of any age.

And yet, nobody is allowed to hear it…

The idea that a written text somehow can pass a test, that there is a certain kind of intelligence inherent in one’s ability to read and decipher language versus - shall I just say it? – you know, “the animalistic immediacy and impact of orality must be stopped.” You know, if you start to think about it, it becomes a really damning piece of analysis of this country’s appreciation of different cultures.”

Ironically, I’m not sure if his point comes across as well in written form, but what he’s talking about is the fact that American society sees written literature as being so much more valuable than oral literature that the exact same work can be considered OK for a 12 year old to read, but worthy of a five million dollar fine if that same kid were allowed to hear it. His implication at the end is that this is because European cultures tend to value the written word, while African and Asian cultures have historically been more oriented toward oral literature, so the bias towards the written word basically amounts to racism.

If you disagree with that, a useful exercise would be to try to come up with a better explanation. I’ve had this conversation many times, and usually the best people can do is an argument about how written literature is just obviously, inherently better than oral literature, which is of course a tautology at best (“European culture is superior because European culture is superior”). Usually, this doesn’t stem from intentional racism, but from a lack of familiarity with the successes of oral literature (e.g. Vedas being passed down by word of mouth for 3500 years in India, Sundiata epic being passed down by word of mouth for 700 years in West Africa, Genghis Khan transmitting all military information throughout his empire in the form of songs, African American spirituals containing important information about Black history and escape strategies, etc., etc. etc.)

It’s also worth thinking about how this issue has affected the perception of hip-hop lyrics. I’m just saying.