Larry Flynt, pornographer and self-proclaimed free speech fighter, was born on 1 November 1942 but nudity is way older.
The ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was exhibited to the public for the first time on 1 November 1512. The story goes that the Papal Master of Ceremonies had complained about “all those nude figures [in the Last Judgement] exposing themselves so shamelessly”, that Michelangelo returned serve by elsewhere depicting the priest as a judge of the Underworld with the ears of a donkey and a snake-bitten penis, and that when the priest complained the pontiff observed that he had no jurisdiction over hell.
Skin colour is probably as old as nudity, and Othello was first performed a century later, on 1 November 1604 in London. Almost four centuries on, Janet Suzman decided to stage Othello in South Africa. She later recalled lots of hate mail about miscegenation. All of which was nine years after Flynt was shot by someone who claimed that he read Hustler and “I saw that interracial couple … having sex … It just made me sick … I threw the magazine down and thought, I’m gonna kill that guy.” The Othello of the staging, John Kani, memorably remarked “At least I’ll be able to kiss Desdemona without leaving a smudge”.
Kani has gone on to be a Hollywood star and his income is doubtless affected by Hollywood’s self-imposed censorship, formally known as the Motion Picture Association of America’s film rating system. The system was introduced on 1 November 1968, with a mere G, M, R or X to chose from. These days it’s G, PG, PG-13, R and NC-17. The last is for clearly adult material, or as the trade says, “the kiss of death”.
Critics of censorship may look to Mencken’s devastating take on puritanism, the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy. Whether this is so, censorship surely speaks more loudly to our sense of uncertainty. Flynt was no angel and clearly did some real damage, but there may be some virtue in his own self-certainty:
If the First Amendment will protect a scumbag like me then it will protect all of you, because I’m the worst.
