Review: Andrew Katzenstein on J. Hoberman and the 1960s Avant-Garde
The clash between unfeeling, self-righteous authority and the aspiration for the liberation of the American soul
In postwar New York City, underground art was “underground” not only because it was obscure, but because it was often illegal. Only films approved by a censor could be lawfully screened. Musicians had to have clean records to maintain their cabaret cards, which licensed them to perform in nightclubs. If a judge deemed a work devoid of “redeeming social value,” it could be confiscated or shut down and its creators or exhibitors arrested. Even living in the newest bohemian neighborhood, SoHo, was forbidden. The police and fire departments occasionally raided artists’ lofts for code violations, since the area was still zoned exclusively for industry.
J. Hoberman’s latest book, Everything Is Now: The 1960s New York Avant-Garde—Primal Happenings, Underground Movies, Radical Pop, is full of acts of defiance against this repressive regime. Plenty of daring stunts succeeded. In 1963 the NYPD barricaded the Living Theatre’s building during the run of The Brig, a play about corporal and psychological abuse in the Marine Corps. Determined to put on a final performance, actors avoided the cordon by entering the theater via fire escapes and neighboring rooftops. (The Living Theatre’s directors owed money to the IRS, purportedly for not paying taxes on actors’ wages, though many suspected the case was politically motivated.)
Other challenges failed. In 1964, the critic and filmmaker Jonas Mekas tried to avoid a police bust by screening Jack Smith’s orgiastic Flaming Creatures, which had been repeatedly impounded for obscenity,alongside Jean Genet’s 1950 short Un Chant d’amour, about two male prisoners’ sexual yearning for each other. Mekas hoped that the recent off-Broadway success of Genet’s The Blacks would help establish the aesthetic value of Smith’s work. The cops showed up anyway and took both films. “When I told them that Genet was an internationally known artist,” Mekas wrote, “I was told it was my fantasy.” He also claimed that an officer said he “should be shot” for showing such disgusting material.
