Cultural pollution
Sir: Thank heaven someone has had the guts to cry out that Lord Goodman is not wearing the imperial clothes with which recent publicity has endowed him (Patrick Cosgrave, May 20). He is responsible for a disaster of devastating proportions, in the realm of cultural pollution. The pronouncements of official bodies are taken to be responsible, and believed to be based upon serious and thorough investigation of social problems. Today it is believed throughout our society :that pornography and obscenity in the Arts are ' harmless ' — on the basis or art. Arts Council working party report made a year or so ago. This report was hastily prepared, by a group of people who, as Encounter recently pointed out, mostly had interests in the theatre, film, and publishing. They came to their conclusions without making any attempt to consult literary critics, psychologists, those concerned with children's welfare, and educationists, nor did they investigate the prolific literature on the subject. This I know, now, from my own researches into the subject. They did not investigate philosophical concepts behind this problem — as is clear from the response of one of the members to a recent book of mine — Miss Kathleen Nott. There is, for instance, a good deal in the work of Merleau-Ponty that makes it plain that the meanings of the body must be taken into account, and that damage to the meanings of consciousness by abuse of nudity is indivisible — that is, everyone suffers from obscene display. From Erwin Straus, too, one could find evidence that volyeurism — the staple of our culture today — is a disease which menaces perception at large.
During the period following tthe Arts Council report many developments took place in our culture that I, from my researches, believe to be diseased, not least Oh! Calcutta! Yet this 'acting out' of sick and sadistic fantasies was given respectability by Lord Goodman and his colleagues. The working party did its work, as far as they were concerned, and then it was disbanded. After several years of effort, I offered the Arts Council some results, in terms of books and articles — only to discover that the party had been abandoned. It was no longer needed — for England was now swamped by a culture which a follower of Wilhelm Reich (Leslie Shepard) has recently described as neurotic sexual preoccupations ' which have almost reached the point of a national perversion.' This writer fears, as I do, that this debasement of the emotional life could lead to fascism — for Reich himself saw how this happened in Germany, after the excesses of Weimar.
I resigned from the Arts Council list of poets willing to speak in public, in protest against the Arts Council's support of filthy-mindedness. Since then I have resigned from the Poetry Society and the Society of Authors, because I could no longer bear to be presented with obscenity evidently believing it was good for us. It will take many years for us to overcome this slide into a preoccupation with mental rage and obsession with hate and dehumanisation. In the meantime, it is bitterly destructive of creativity itself — for who can write honestly of love and passion, in the atmosphere created by perverted sexual display, coarse 'frankness,' and compulsive 'welfare pornography' — on the media, and in every corner of our cultural life? There are not good grounds in the life-sciences for it all, . or in psychology (see Eysenck's latest book), or in cultural criticism for it all, and there are no good reasons even for the tolerance Lord Goodman has achieved for filth. He has the ear of the Prime Minister, and quite possibly of the Home Secretary, too — and no doubt this explains why those of us who have expressed our deep concern, on real grounds of study and research, have been ignored, and made to feel frustrated and gagged. We have a great deal to thank Lord Goodman for, and, when we look hack at this episode in our history, it will, I believe, be seen as sordid, not as a liberation.
David Holbrook Yonder, Lustleigh, Newton Abbot, Devon.
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