Love, Fear, and Decency

With assists from the music of Nada UV and flotsam and esoterica on loan from the Prelinger Archive, we stitch together a flirtatious invocation with stark archival recordings that swing from teen dating rules to moral panic to vanishing Los Angeles landmarks. 

The result is a fast, strange ride that asks what humor can protect when culture gets anxious and progress starts to bulldoze memory. 
• How can you be yourself without suffering for it? 
• How do you pick a date, and what “counts” as a real one?
• What are the ever-evolving edicts of etiquette rules around floral arrangements
ow to say good night 
• How do you say goodnight—and stick the landing?
• Angel’s Flight and Bunker Hill as symbols of heritage threatened by redevelopment 
• The recurring idea that levity can be a lifeline

Note: This episode of the podcast differs significantly from the one that aired on KCHUNG Los Angeles tonight. Check out that version, too.

Transcript

Levity And Becoming Yourself

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Oh darling, stay right there. You're wrapped up in Emerson Dameron Medicated Minute, America's number one avant-garde personal development program on Cage on Los Angeles. Let it tease you a little, let it charm you open, let it remind you that becoming yourself doesn't always have to hurt. Sometimes it can purr, sometimes it can wink, and sometimes honey. Levity saved live.

SPEAKER_07 13:24

Well, let's see what he has to say. Here's the latest on my broken ankle. That says I'll be all right. Only I have to stay off my feet for a week or so. Anyway, here's the ticket for the high community. It's too late to turn it in, so you have yourself a time and tell me all about it. That means a date. Not like just going around with the crowd. Just me and a girl. Well, that's all right. Um what girl?

SPEAKER_05 14:14

How do you choose a date? What company would you enjoy? Well, one thing you can consider is love. What do you thought of Janet? How good looking she was. You'd really have the rate to date somebody like her. Yes, he'd enjoy that. Well, it's too bad, Janet's always likely to play and borrow. She'd make a fella feel awkward and inferior. Well, we have the one who doesn't feel to be bad. What about the dog? He knows how to have a good time. And how to make the fellow with her in life have fun too. He wanted to know he's appreciated. So what he decided, he'd want to find anybody's birthday. But he has to know what to be asking. What if you do? No, it won't be easy to be for that for today. Well, is there another way?

SPEAKER_07 18:31

Why would you like to go? Yeah. Well, I think it'll be all right, but I'll let you know for sure.

SPEAKER_06 19:35

Oh, you do have to come here when I'm just having a green board.

SPEAKER_08 22:00

Huh? Oh, I hardly think so. I'm taking these to Mary because it's a special occasion. Of course, if you want to take flowers anyway, I guess there's no law against it. But but I don't want to, unless it's a risky affair. That's the general idea. Flowers for a farm are a very special party. Otherwise, you don't need to. Say, I'll have to run. Me too. See you later. I'm going, folks.

SPEAKER_06 22:28

All right, Ed. Have a nice time.

SPEAKER_05 22:36

But when you're having so much fun, time goes all too fast. Well, it's the time and except for getting home. And now, good night. The end of a perfect evening. But how do you say good night?

SPEAKER_07 22:55

Perhaps whatever.

SPEAKER_05 23:16

Or it could go this way.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

Well, it's a lie.

SPEAKER_05 23:28

Just like that. After all, a girl likes to know you've had a good time. So let's try saying good night again. One more way.

SPEAKER_07 23:41

Well, it's getting late.

SPEAKER_06 23:44

Yes, it is. I'd ask you in for a bike to eat if it works so late.

SPEAKER_07 23:53

Say, that sounds good. I'll call you next week.

SPEAKER_06 23:58

Well, thank you so much. I had no good time.

SPEAKER_07 24:02

No did I.

SPEAKER_04 26:20

A simple yet shocking fact. It is this. A flood tide of filth is engulfing our country in the form of newsstand obscenity and is threatening to pervert an entire generation of our American children. We know that once a person is perverted, it is practically impossible for that person to adjust to normal attitude in regard to sex. Yes, much of this material has been described as an illustrated, detailed course in perversion, abnormal sex, crime, and violence. It is also a fact that no matter who buys this material, 75 to 90 percent of it ends up in the hands of our children. Now, you might ask yourself, why the sudden concern? Pornography and sex deviation have always been with mankind. This is true. But now consider another fact. Never in the history of the world have the merchants of obscenity, the teachers of unnatural sex acts, had available to them the modern facilities for disseminating this filth. High-speed presses, rapid transportation, mass distribution, all have combined to put the vilest obscenity within reach of every man, woman, and child in the country. In the past few years, this obscenity traffic and salacious newsstand literature have become increasingly worse, not only in content, but in volume. This traffic continues to increase and flourish for one reason. It is big business, profitable business for the mercenary persons who produce it, and for its more than 800 distributors. We describe it as dirt for money's sake. Obscene literature is a two billion dollar a year business. That's two billion dollars. Through this material, today's youth can be stimulated to sexual activity for which he has no legitimate outlay. She is even enticed to enter the world of homosexuals, lesbians, sadists, machines, and other sex deviants. The psychiatric terms for these unnatural sex acts are unknown to most decent adults in our country. But through this salacious material, these abnormalities are corrupting the minds and the hearts of our children. Perversion for profits. Here is the most vicious, the most insidious feature of these publications. They constantly portray abnormal sexual behavior as being normal. They glorify unnatural sex acts. They tell youngsters that it's smart, it's thrilling. It provides kicks to be a homosexual, a statist, and every other kind of disease. The Military Captain's Association of the United States, practically every major fraternal, civic, and religious organization, the juvenile court judges, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, innumerable psychiatrists, sociologists, and psychologists attribute the moral decay among our people in very large part to the obscene and pornographic literature so prevalent in our society. This moral decay weakens our resistance to the onslaught of the communist masters of deceit. A major factor that makes youngsters prime targets for this printed bill is the natural curiosity of youth about the mysterious force of sex. Yet, on virtually every newsstand is a welter of misinformation which can wreck them for life. Well, at this point, my friends, I wish to make it clear that the obscenity I'm talking about and the examples that I'm about to show you were not bought on the sly from under the counter. They were not purchased on Skid Row or on the other side of the tracks. They can be bought openly by anyone in drugstores, groceries, delicatessens, terminals, malt shops, cigar stores, newsstands, all over the community. They can be purchased by children, whether in a small town like McCallan and the Rio Grande, or in Chicago, New York, or Los Angeles. A prime example of one major category are the so-called girlie magazines, which sell over 15 million copies a month. These highly colorful magazines picture stark nudity on slick paper. They often present their subject on beds or couch in positions indicative of intercourse or other sex acts, obviously calculated to stimulate the reader. The nakedness, the nudity of these magazines is defended and foisted upon the people by a vociferous minority in our society. They lack the moral standards and values of our Judeo-Christian heritage. They not only oppose the principles of that heritage, which has given us our rich institutions and laws, but they advocate their overthrow. For the sake of decency in this film, we have partially covered the pictures and disguised the identity of the model. But actually, these magazines not only display complete nudity, but they do so in a perverted manner. Such as this appeal to the sodomist. Such as these shots, which are typical of the preoccupation with the female breast, to a point that it has become a fetty. And this one, with its overtones of bestiality, and with lesbian implications. Another important problem common to these publications is the dwelling upon teenage participation in wild, flagrant abuses of the God-given gift of sex. This is amply depicted by the pose of this obviously young girl, her clothes in the disarray of sexual activity, with the stimulus of alcohol indicated by the tumbler placed on her thigh. And again, the breast fish. Note the sensual expression alluded to by Dr. Sirokin, the renowned Harvard sociologist, as being the hallmark of so much of contemporary photography. And then we come to Nudist magazines. If they were printed only for the nudist cults, they would never exist. Their circulation would not support the cost of printing. These total exposures are not of nudists in some instances, but rather of paid professional models. Group exposure is a hallmark of these cultists. However, it's been well stated that very few blind people join the nudist colony. This mixture of male and female with total anatomical detail is typical of these magazines. A young boy in Philadelphia raped and killed a five-year-old girl. And while he was testifying that he had been stimulated to this heinous crime by reading a nudist magazine, a federal court judge in Washington was granting to that very same publication a second-class mailing permit. And then we come to a terribly sad indictment of our society, the so-called physique group of publication. These magazines with a homosexual viewpoint and poses are often not understood by many youngsters who take them as instruction of body development. But psychiatrists believe that prolonged exposure of even the normal male adult to this type of publication, though he may not be aware of its true nature, will nevertheless pervert. Think then of the consequences to the inexperienced youth, who in purchasing and studying this material becomes a pawn for these misfits. These homosexuals who have a slogan that betrays the evil of the breed. Today's conquest, they say, is tomorrow's competition. See the tender age at which homosexuals prefer their conquest. Look here at the young face and bright smile, which could be the hope of the world. But in the other half of the picture is revealed the seduction of the innocent. Look at this poor young lad. But when looking, think of the others who might follow his perfidious footsteps when photos like these are available at the corner newsrock. And so it goes. Countless poses, still pictures, slides, movies, all with the same content. And more of the same. This picture is not one typical of the physique magazine. It approaches another class of magazine dealing with transvert sites, wherein the wearing of female garments is that which provides sex gratification for the participants. This picture, of course, merely confesses on the cover of the magazine the charges we have made. In this ad, the titles of the magazines and their table of content speak more eloquently than I of the tremendous problem here presented. Sexual sadism. Strange flipulation cult. Era confession of a statist. What is fetishism? The pleasure of pain. The worship of the whip. How to buy a whipping. Famous transeptic. Are cross dressers afraid of sex? These titles lead us to an even more bizarre but nevertheless common product of our new dress. The composite picture here speaks for itself. This type of aberration is usually depicted by showing several persons, one of whom is dominant and binding or inflicting pain upon the other. And thus the grotesque costuming and the significance of the extreme spike heel and the tight boots, the riding clock, the burning cigarette, rubber and leather garments, and all the rest. And here again, an appeal to the sodomists with a play upon the button. The late leather garment. This picture hints at the common idea of bestiality. Dr. Sorokin, the renowned sociologist at Harvard, say that today the newsstand quotes depict the world as a sort of human zoom, inhabited by raped, mutilated, and murdered females, and by females, outmatching in bestiality cavemen, and outlusting the lustiest of animals. Male and female alike are hardened in cynical contempt of human life and values. Unquote.

SPEAKER_03 39:12

A world of its own. A hill in the city of Los Angeles. A remnant of America at the turn of the century. This hill is waiting. Waiting for the bulldozers, the bucket cranes. Bunker Hill is waiting to be leveled. To make way for a new world of concrete, steel, and glass. Still, this place is part of our heritage. As the concrete, steel, and glass will someday be. And something more will fall when the hill is torn away. A magic chariot will topple to the ground. A gaudy colored chariot that can still take us back to the world of the near past. From top to bottom, 300 feet. The world's shortest franchise railway. Price, still a nickel arrive. It has rolled on to the turn of the century. The war to save democracy. The tumbling walls of Wall Street. Rolled on to the dark days of the Depression. Past World War II. Into the atomic age and the new age of outer space. These are facts. But more than facts, more than cables, tracks, or the cars themselves. Angels flight is people. The people who need it. Because they are the people on the hill. Up the hill to them is a ride all the way home. The people who have heard about it and have come to see it. Flights of Fancy on Angel's Flight. Angel's Flight is also those who walk in its shadow. Far more than angels of light will fall when these ties and tracks are torn apart. One more safety valve of a saner, more lifelike pace, one more part of our heritage will be sold for scrap. Throughout this city, this nation, in the impatient world of the new, there is little room for the old.

Closing Mantra On Levity

SPEAKER_00 52:37

Stay delicious, darling. Levity saves life.