Cultural Taboos

This note is really mostly about Ulysses, sorry

I've read Ulysses and didn't care much for it. You can read my full review of Ulysses if you want, but right now I'm talking about its influence.

The opening scene of Ulysses mimics a Catholic communion, in a way that was considered blasphemous at the time. Now, most readers wouldn't blink twice at it. Part of this is the lack of cultural context which I discuss in my review, and part of it is that we are becoming more secular and less religious.

Ulysses is a long, detailed book. The funniest scene of the book discusses a man on a beach masturbating while watching a young girl flash him. He jerks himself off in Joyce's turgid prose to the tune of a fireworks show. Both explode at the same time, you get it. Bloom (the man, and the main character (aside from the chapters from the perspective of Joyce's self-insert Stephen)) is embarrassed when he realizes that the woman he'd been jacking off to is lame.

She walked with a certain quiet dignity characteristic of her but with care and very slowly because—because Gerty MacDowell was...

Tight boots? No. She’s lame! O!

Mr Bloom watched her as she limped away. Poor girl! That’s why she’s left on the shelf and the others did a sprint. Thought something was wrong by the cut of her jib. Jilted beauty. A defect is ten times worse in a woman. But makes them polite. Glad I didn’t know it when she was on show.

The Lawsuit

Other scenes detail Bloom using the bathroom or having sex with his wife. These are things that resulted in the book being banned. It was sued by the government! And won! (aside, that was a bit of a gimmick: the book's publisher wanted to get it sued, to avoid a ban. It took some doing, in a slapstick sort of way).

The crux of the lawsuit was this: is Ulysses porn? Is it the work of a deranged man? Does it contain art, or is it just intended to provoke?

The ruling was that yes, the book details course thoughts and desires that are usually repressed. Yes, it may be blasphemous, yes there may be sexual titillations (though they refer not to the masturbation scene above as their main point).

But the judge was like "Look, we all know those bad words, and the book takes place in Ireland, and we know they're horny, especially in Spring". I'm only sort of paraphrasing here.

The book may cause you to vomit, the judge said, but you can't jerk off to it. (that's 99% a real quote).

So it was published. And the flood gates opened.

Aside

A good friend had a professor who claimed that only 7 people had read Ulysses, and of those only 2 of them understood it. Frank Delaney was such a man. I have no follow-up to that, but his wonderfully named podcast Re: Joyce was essential in me getting was little understanding I had from the book.

The Result

Ulysses was a landmark case in the US. It meant that you could write about things that were taboo. I don't think it's hyperbole to say that without Ulysses, we wouldn't have Family Guy. And maybe you cheer at that, no great loss to society! But that's not the point. It's not about the specific Family Guy or South Park, it's about the water around us.

We're more secular than we were when Ulysses came out, and that makes it hard to read. But it also opened the gate to publish things that — while not intended to titulate — contained vulgar or blasphemous thoughts. And the more you're exposed to blasphemy, the less poignant it gets. Things dull. You get desensitized. You're riding the Hedonic Treadmill of propriety.

See Also

The Lightning
Ulysses
The United States v. One Book Called Ulysses (yes that's the real name of the case)