Australia Post, which has been one of the many distributors for the excellent series of orange Popular Penguins, last week decreed that three titles could not be sold through their outlets – Anais Nin’s Delta of Venus, Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita, and Michel Foucault’s History of Sexuality Volume One.
Such books are apparently “inappropriate for a mainstream shop”, according to a spokesperson for Australia Post.
Jessica Au at Meanjin‘s blog Spike has put her finger on what’s at stake:
Yet no matter what kind of spin you put on it, this is clearly regressive behaviour, which again harks back to the days when books were treated as smut rather than literature. Behind it are the assumptions that consumers are not capable of making intelligent decisions about their purchases, that children’s innocence is paramount and that anything related to sex must be p*rnographic and therefore improper. As a government-owned corporation, Australia Post has simply shown that it will panic at the smallest kick of dust and do anything to preserve a conservative brand image.
The Popular Penguins range has been a huge success in a climate when it is increasingly difficult to sell titles – they’re affordable, diverse and easily recognisable in their eye-catching (but not-even-remotely-explicit) orange and cream covers.
Strangely enough, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which was banned in Australia until the 1960s, remained unscathed. Presumably Australia Post are okay with references to ‘f*cking’ and ‘c*nt’, but not so much a Foucauldian analysis of sexuality and repression.
Hmmm, well to be honest, I think she gets the wrong end of the stick. Sex is sex, whether you put it in a romance novel, or a romance novel that happens to be written by Henry Miller, etc. Neither is bad, wrong, immoral, what-about-the-children. It’s sex, most of us have done, are, or will do it. Just like crying or exercise. I think pretending it’s nasty is regressive, but equally, so is pretending it’s nasty unless it’s literature. What a strange and kinda elitist distinction to make.
Without getting libertarian, I do feel that Australia Post can hardly be taken to account for not stocking some products. They don’t stock pickled onions, either, but it doesn’t really bother me cause I can get em at Woolies. These books aren’t in danger of disappearing off the map, given that virtually every Borders, A&R and Dymocks has them.
Jeez, what a hark back to the dark ages. This is the sort of thing you expect to hear about in the American deep south not Melbourne. They have just won a bycott of my money for non essential purchases.
Well we wouldn’t want to give the PM an excuse to use the “revolting” word again now would we? Have a guess what word he might use for Foucault: contemptuous perhaps or scurrilous? Satanic? Or just plain old smutty?
“I think pretending it’s nasty is regressive, but equally, so is pretending it’s nasty unless it’s literature. What a strange and kinda elitist distinction to make.”
Ding! Spot on.
“They don’t stock pickled onions, either, but it doesn’t really bother me cause I can get em at Woolies”
2/2.
If Australia Post would concentrate on being a fucking post office, then maybe I’d not have to wait behind 20 people in a room full of Andre Rieu and Dan Brown products to send a package.
Yes, and if everybody keeps talking about their repression, the discourse of repression itself becomes central to the way a society understands Post Office literature. Ahem.
Is there a handy phrase, like ‘moral panic’, for easy outrage at things that are really not all that outrageous? I can’t get too exercised about this, for much the same reasons Patrickg gave. The books are still for sale all over the place. They’re not ‘banned’. Australia Post can decide not to sell whatever they want to not sell. They don’t sell the Da Vinci Code do they? Well that’s ok then.
Let’s just hope they don’t sell that scandalous crime novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice”. Quite out of place it would be.
“Yes, and if everybody keeps talking about their repression, the discourse of repression itself becomes central to the way a society understands Post Office literature. Ahem.”
I can has fud for thort?
I am sure many a man’s man would just lerve the Da Vinci Code IMO. All that holy family sex scandal at a rickety table, men pretending to be women, seedy woman pretending to be virginal while secretly sexing it up with Jesus while already married and having a boyfriend at the same time, morning after rock in her pocket, jesus juice in a chalice, nobody forced her, come on we all know one of those Merovingians LOL, and all that sacred feminine in a triangle buried under a slab of marble. Which is where it should be you stupid fairy feminists. LOL. My IQ is 128338422342423. Cause men are men and women are women. Which is to say, look, I do feel terrible for the family that Jesus died and all that. But come on, let’s not pretend that Mary Magdalene is a saint or anything….
eh? oh shit. Sorry, wrong thread.
But yes, so what. Go to a bookshop.
While I agree with you about Australia Post, FDB, since the actual post offices are now staffed by franchisees rather than Commonwealth public servants, they’d go broke in a week if they only sold stamps and money orders.
Thank you, Mr Howard, or Mr Keating, whichever one of you pricks did that.
And, what’s worse than any of the above they sell that notorious left wing book by E. H. Carr, What is history?
As for the three scary books aforementioned – I’ve only read Lolita. But it didn’t fuck my mind, so far as I’m aware. Still, there are people out there, who, if they started thinking …
I wonder if the person responsible for this has even read Foucalt? I think they probably read the title of the book then looked him up on wikipedia and decided his extra curricular activities were too much.
Aust Post sells “I wish I had a pirate suit” which scandalised a few kids who I read it to at a school in term 2 – because tehre is a topless mermaid on the front of a pirate ship. boobies. Proabbly good I made the decision to read it at a public school over a catholic school.
Their kids packs of books are wonderfully priced though!
The banning of Foucault is in the great tradition of Victorian Minister Arthur Rylah banning “Fun in Bed”, which title turned out to be a colouring book for ailing moppets.
The difference between the 1960s and today is that few people seem to think that it is worth the effort to ridicule these decisions.
Wowsers can congratulate themselves over these small public victories while they stand fetlock-deep in material that would had caused Rylah’s head to explode.
Everyone is happy.
I would expect the Delta of Venus to be in the science section (no truth in the rumour that there is an Australian edition called Map of Tassie by A Nun).
Little Birds is in the Ornithology section and I understand that Story of the Eye is right next to the biography of Fred Hollows.
Really, no one could give a Foucalt, but I am led to understand (on good authority) that these titles were making the Andre Rieu discs turn a bit raunchy and that would never do.
Joe @7: Let’s just hope they don’t sell that scandalous crime novel “The Postman Always Rings Twice”. Quite out of place it would be.
Or Eudora Welty?
What a load of tripe patrickg! So a porn movie is equivalent to a great work of literature in your eyes because to pretend otherwise would be elitist.
If that’s the case I’m all for elitism.
BTW, I think it was during the Howard years that the word ‘elite’ became a pejorative term.
“So a porn movie is equivalent to a great work of literature in your eyes because to pretend otherwise would be elitist.”
Comprehension fail.
“Sex is sex, whether you put it in a romance novel, or a romance novel that happens to be written by Henry Miller, etc.”
In other words sex is sex, whether you put it in a porn movie or literature.
Therefore no distinction, therefore equivalent.
I think people really should be in moral panic about the plight of the penguins.
The Chileans have been studying their numbers and migration paths, and they are convinced that the situation is becoming dire.
It’s great to see that Aussies have realised their moral responsibilities also!
Science Fiction rules!
Look, there must be Deltas on Venus: highly moist planet, runaway greenhouse effect, opaque cloudy atmosphere; trickless of sweat running down, even thinking of it. Rivers of Venusian condensation flowing over rounded, eroded rocks; gushing through clefts, flowing gently over rolling plains, fanning out in deltas and disgorging into a salty sea. Routine. Boring?
Lakes, streams, creeks, rivers and deltas: standard stuff. Lightning, storms, showers, warm fronts: unexceptional.
The real poetry is in describing the Mountains of Venus.
Equivalent for the purposes of determining who can and can’t get to see it, perhaps.
Jesus, Ambigulous, I need a cold shower and a lie down after that.
I’ll have to break out the John Donne when I get home.
Ambigulous, you have been awarded the inaugural Missy Higgins Medal for Innuendo. The prize is a hot cup of tea full of bromide.
Thanks FDB. Loosen your grip upon thy stick, Adrian. You have the wrong end of it, anyway.
My argument (such as it was) is that finding a felching scene perfectly delightful when it happens to be written by T.S Eliot, yet stonkingly offensive when spurting from the mighty pen of Xavier Holland is silly and, yes, frankly elitist.
I’m not judging the relative merits of the works (or the act for that matter; whatever gets you through the night), but to act like the felching itself is acceptable because of who writes about it is most definitely regressive.
Why deny the unwashed masses the fecundity of the felch? Not everyone is up for Finnegan’s Felch, or While I Lay Felching. Let people have their Harry Potter and The Half-Blood Felch or The Da Vinci Felch , too. There’s enough to go around, and both – in degree of sexual offensiveness – are truly equal.
Now wait a moment.
Patrickg is being traduced by the usual suspects here.
He didn’t say that literature and pr0n were equivalent. He said that giving literature a pass while not giving pr0n a pass is regressive.
Patrickg may well think that there is absolutely no equivalence between literature and pr0n. It is entirely consistent for him to conclude that pretending that pr0n is nasty is regressive. If on the other hand one sincerely believes and states that pr0n is nasty then that is not regressive.
Equally, it is entirely consistent for Patrickg to conclude that pretending that the designation “literature” precludes a work from being nasty is regressive. If on the other hand one sincerely believes and states that the designation “literature” precludes a work from being nasty then that is not regressive.
I’m sure that clears up the misunderstanding.
Thanks for that very lawyerly exposition, Katz.
You’ll make a fine High Court judge some day.
Yes Patrick my apologies, doing three things at once and probably got the wrong end of the stick as it were. Would not be the first time.
Yeah ok Katz, but quit with the ‘usual suspects’ bullshit please.
Ok then … the unusual suspects.
My kid had a dress-up day at pre-school recently. There were to be NO SUPERHEROES in line with the general ban on the representation of superheroes. Violence is violence you see, even if directed only at cartoonishly evil super villains. The example given of an acceptable costume?
Pirate.
Interesting you should say that, DI(nr). I’ve had a theory about Katz for a while now.
Pirate porn is all tits and arrrrrs.
Getting back to the point of the post I would just like to point out that I agree with Jessica Au that this is regressive and unwarranted, though it is hardly the greatest issue of our time, unlike the subject of the thread that is now approaching 700.
arrrrr Laura, yer a fine gal !!
Thanks Liam !
Should I spend less time at the telescope?
Nothing is so heinous
As banning the Delta of Venus
So proclaim and proclaim
“Écrasez l’Infâme!
Defend the liberty of every bum booby dick willie twat prat dick and penis!”
Laura @ 31 – indeed.
Yeah OK, on topic, I can see PatrickG’s point. However, given that 1/3 of the literature is Lolita, I dunno if we’d like to follow to the logical conclusion and have the pr0n equivalent next to the literature.
I was always too embarassed to rent the Jeremy Irons film version, because the vid had that windswept shot of the very pretty juvenile on the cover and, well you know. Then last year we rented a beach shack for hols, and they had the Peter Sellers version right there amongst a bunch of old vids! “There you go,” thought I, “…oooh look, Braveheart!” So I never got around to it.
Peter Sellers? WTF? I thought it was James Mason. (Although it’d be close to 40 years since I’ve seen it.)
Peter Sellers plays the other dude, ummm, you know, whathisname, in it.
My previous comment regarding Katz is in moderation.
…
A young man in Australia Post livery
Used to boast he could make clients shivery.
“The Office sells smut
From dawn ’till we shut,
But the real trick’s in the delivery”.
You must be right. Time has drawn a veil over it for me.
Quilty
Get the f*cking penguins out of the P.O. anyway I say. Cluttering up the queues with their little flippy arms full of cheap camping torches and Jamie Oliver cookbooks. And always waddling out and back again when they spot some other Xmas bargain. I’m going to kick one next time I trip over it.
I agree with Helen: no more flocking penguins.
Never mind banning fiction, I want to enforce some fiction, viz that sublime Eudora Welty story that Helen linked to at #16. Read the whole thing, preferably aloud in a Deep South accent.
That’s funny PC.
I wasn’t really getting into it, then the hyphenated names made me twig to the geography. From then on I was reading, if not speaking, in a Southern accent and couldn’t click away.
That cup of tea was very good, Liam. Unusually mineral or herbal tang. Afterwards I lost all interest in planet-based fiction.
Pero los pinguinos pequenos….
@44, naughty boy, you leave those little penguins alone…
So … um … what’s John Cleland’s Fanny Hill? Pron, lit? or something really really weird in between?
I don’t want adult literature sold in a post office. There is no need to turn everywhere into part of the sex obsessed culture. And as for the statement that
“Behind it are the assumptions that consumers are not capable of making intelligent decisions about their purchases, that children’s innocence is paramount and that anything related to sex must be p*rnographic and therefore improper.”
Well, yes. Children’s innocence is paramount. Sorry, but my right to take my children into a post office, a post office (!) without being confronted with sex titles is above that of an adult to read what they want. Go somewhere else to get off but don’t pollute public space with your sex obsession. And as for adults not being able to make intelligent decisions… How true you are. Wanting to sell sex books in a post office is dumb. Stick to bookshops or adult shops but keep public services free for sex obsession. They are not banning the books. They are saying a post office is not the place. Big difference.
Spana, if your kids are capable of making the delta of venus/map of tassie gag, they’re prolly old enough to read it. It’s not like it’s Big Natural Jugs Quarterly.
That’s the newsagent.
Definitely porn, Paul (Fanny Hill that is.)
Liam, do we have a photo of Haynes J to compare with Katz’ gravatar? The Wikipaedia article seems to lack one.
Interesting, Liam. A recent comment of mine, replying to the one of yours that was in moderation, is in moderation.
Have faith in the Streisand effect.
Perhaps Post Offices not selling a certain book is the thin of the wedge, but I suspect this blog post and many of the comments are a case of moral panic itself.
Aren’t the main threats to publication mainly lawsuits (America Alone, Denying the Holocaust, Funding Evil) or threats of violence (eg Satanic Verses, Jewel of Medina)? Have you covered such cases?
If any kid can guess that Anais Nin, Nabakov and Foucault are books containing full sexually charged content by the Penguin covers they’ve really got a dirty mind, and they probably don’t need to buy the books.
Thanks, Laura. I’m fascinated by John Cleland, that opium addict refugee from India, and his interelationships with the greats of his time, notably Richardson, the Fieldings, (including Sarah) and Tobias Smollett. A joint biography of them all is one of my future projects, should I live so long.
If censorship in Australia is of interest then the Austlit-hosted Banned in Australia project is a very worthwhile thing to check out: http://www.austlit.edu.au/specialistDatasets/Banned
Moral panic about moral panics!
Next will be a moral panic about moral panics about moral panics.
Then a stack of retro-revivals of old school ‘moral panics’ and ‘moral panics about moral panics’ that, on the surface, have the same look and feel, but lack the innocent enthusiasm of the originals.
We could just cut to the chase, Jobby, and have a moral meta-panic.
Of the relativist kind.
Yep. Spana wins the Arthur Rylah Award for a fatuous comment (dirty mind by proxy category).
Spana should never take his kids to Bunnings. The shelves are full of screws and nuts.
It’s also where you go to get wood.
FDB is nerdy retard boy who think he is smart cos he learnt how to use a computer and wear his glasses straight. But all he probably does is sit at home jerking of to female domination porn movies then imagines he is playing soccer for Australia.
Time for a good old immoral panic.
I’m having a moral picnic.
I’m too busy jerking off to panic.
Good on the post office for banning those naughty penguins. So we are spared the sight of catch-the-fire types running through post offices trailing sardines tied to strings, like the pied piper of Hamelin, leading those salacious penguins off to liberation in the salty deeps.
“Spana should never take his kids to Bunnings. The shelves are full of screws and nuts.”
Not to mention wood shredders and bush trimmers.
Adrian and Katz. Humour aside, my point is that sections of the left get all worked up if somewhere makes a decision that they don’t want to sell something. I am not advocating banning the books. My point is a post office is a post office. Why do we have to turn everything and everywhere into a sex selling space. If you are into these books that is your business. But can’t we leave Post Offices out of it??? What next, selling sex books in the tax office? The left can so quickly jump to cry about censorship. Censorship is not not selling books in some places. It is banning books from all spaces. Big difference. Its as if you look for issues where there should be none. I believe in reclaiming public space for the people, free from advertising and free from sex obsession. Go and look for a real issues guys. A Post Office not selling sex books is not an issue!
Spana, what wrong with selling books with sexual content in post offices? The covers and titles are hardly salacious. Kids can see them just as easily in bookshops or other retailers in any case. I can’t see what your point is.
You’re right Spana.
That would encourage bracket creep.
“My point is a post office is a post office”
Yeah, I made that point back at comment #4.
Are you as outraged about mobile phones, screwdriver sets, Dan Brown novels and Andre Rieu CDs?
Definitely outraged by Andre Rieu CDs.
Fine @73, copy that – definately outraged by Andre Rieu CDs.
Looks very sleezy to me – totally not suitable for people with delicate sensitivities…
Altough, it’s even more outrageous that they’re sold in music shops.
And, even worse, they’re promotedon the channel 9 Today show. But then again, they’ve elevated bad taste to an art form.
Privatise Australia Post.
Problem solved
Yeah, like that’s going to lead to *less* of the cheap imported crap on sale there…
Whether it solves the penguin problem is anyone’s guess.
Tim Andrews, privatising Australia Post (effectively) is precisely what has caused the problem. If they just sold stamps, it’d all be good. (See earlier posts by FDB and me for clarification.)
So…stamps with boobies? All OK now?
Yes, Boobies, far less likely to induce untoward anxiety or panic amongst the kiddies than penguins, especially those godawful cartoon penguins with the grossly deformed keel and breathy NicoleeffingKidman voice. Nightmarish. Never mind Henry Miller, keep the littlies away from George Miller.