Bookkake

This is a repost from the Short Term Memory Loss blog, originally posted in September 2005. It’s reposted here because today America goes to the polls, and while we are uncomfortable conflating literature and politics, and even more uncomfortable pronouncing on the politics of a country that is not our own, there are certain issues at stake in which we have prior experience, namely the anti-gay ballot additions of Proposition 8 in California, and similar efforts elsewhere. The British experience is perhaps instructive, and I hope it strikes a chord.

The picture on the left comes from It’s Perfectly Normal by Robie H. Harris and Michael Emberley, a guide to ‘Changing Bodies, Growing Up, Sex, and Sexual Health’ for kids, one of the books on the list of WPAAG, a US organisation attempting to remove scores of books from school libraries. This image is pretty standard fare for the collection (more can be seen here), and describing them as “shocking porn” (which WPAAG does) seems a little strong. Regular Litblog followers may have encountered the various battles currently being fought in the US concerning the suitability or otherwise of childrens books (over at Bookslut, Pornlit and Maud). This ongoing debate concerns both sex ed. books for kids, such as the above example, and novels, particularly those aimed at the tricky teenage market. As quickly becomes clear on reading the petition of one protestor seeking to have such books removed from school libraries (and presumably they’d prefer to have the whole lot shredded, pulped and burned too), their wrath is particularly focussed on books which promote “the homosexual agenda”.

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If you didn’t see Isabella Rossellini’s Green Porno series of extraordinary shorts for the 2008 Sundance Channel, hie thee there now. Rossellini impersonated, and soliloquised on the sexual habits of, a series of insects including the fly (above), Praying Mantis, and earthworm.

In an interview over at The Daily Beast, she makes a good, Bookkake-esque point about the nomenclature:

Listen, I took advantage of the fact that there’s a certain fixation in people about sex, and that’s why I called it Green Porno. I was very aware that the name was provocative, and there’s a lot of people coming to our site who think it’s porno, and then they get a nice little film. There’s a titillating interest in sex, and I took advantage of that in making a film about how the animals have sex instead of a film about how they take care of their babies. If we made a film called Different Ways To Be Mamas, we wouldn’t get the same hits.

Excellent news, however, that Sundance have comissioned a second series, focussing on sea creatures. And if any well-heeled Bookkake readers are planning to attend The Language of Love in the Italian Renaissance at the Metropolitan on December 9th, where Rossellini “will read in Italian, English, and French from great love poems and dialogues on the nature of love, as well as from the immensely popular bawdy verses of the period”, we’d love to hear a report.