Howling mad

"I saw the best minds of my generation destroyed by madness.” – Allen Ginsberg, “Howl.”\nThough you may not always know it from the usual themes of my columns, I am an English major through and through. I love nothing more than reading literature and sharing it with others. But sadly, in the last 50 years, our society has become even more ruthless in its declaration of “obscenity” in thoughtful or intellectual circles, while permitting ever-wider latitude for violence, crassness and brashness in general. \nTake, for example, Allen Ginsberg’s iconic poem “Howl.” In 1957, a highly publicized trial cleared Ginsberg’s work of obscenity. Yet today, TV and radio stations fear the Federal Communications Commission fines that inevitably await a broadcast of “Howl.” Fifty years after a court ruled children could read it, you can’t hear this public masterwork on public airwaves. \nIt would be easy to say that our culture has become even more sanitized than it was in 1957, that the “culture warriors” have achieved their victory. Yet, vulgarity and obscenity have not exactly vanished. We can discuss a starlet’s lack of underwear in the public square and violence porn like “Saw” can become a sequel-spawning box-office smash.\nEven with “Howl,” one can easily find copies with a quick Google search or a trip to the library. So why does it matter?\nWhat concerns me is the bizarre double standard of our society’s stance on unpleasantness. When we see Peter Griffin & Co. projectile vomiting on “Family Guy,” we can shrug it off. But when something offensive highlights substantive problems, we’d rather not discuss it at all. If the obscenity is frivolous, we tolerate it; if essential, we forbid it.\nTake, for instance, the images we receive from our wars. People within media and government have decided that we shouldn’t see images of American casualties. Brutality on both sides is cleaned up. Famously, the pictures of the “Falling Man” from the World Trade Center were excised from major media outlets, while the Defense Department tried to quash the Abu Ghraib prison abuse photos. Our wars, for the sake of sensitivity, have drifted away from us, now distant and incomprehensible.\nIn the meantime, we can all sit back, watch “High School Musical 2” and forget the troubles of the world, without its ugliness around to bother us. We have cut the raw power of visceral images and feelings from our lives, living in an unreality, deliberately out-of-touch with everything outside our insulated bubble.\nI mention “Howl” in particular because it rages political agitation in verse, demanding no less than an urgent rejection of greed and its ills. But instead of repeating it in our public spaces or on our public airwaves, we’ve shunted the poem, casting it into a corner rather than inspecting it in the light. \nWe’ll perform any gross act as long as we get famous. We’ll fight any war as long as we don’t see the consequences. We’ll spew all the vulgarity we want as long as there’s no meaning.\nThe best minds of our generation, destroyed by madness.