Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Legal and the Obscene

Legal and the Obscene


There was a good article in the Unofficial Erotica Newsletter, UEN this week by an informed writer, as to what constitutes obscenity under the Law. She discussed a community standard, a Patently Offensive standard and an Artistic/Scientific/Lliterary/Political standard. What the law says is always a good place to start in trying to draw the line between legitimate literary expression and obscenity.

She also mentioned that the law is a baseline standard. This means a point below which society will not suffer an act of human expression to fall. This is also important for a writer to consider because just because something is legal does not mean it is morally or otherwise acceptable. To a writer what this translates into is what a reader or viewer or censor will tolerate. In other words is anyone going to read it or watch it… which is very different from its legal context.

Most of what is written here at writing.com I would not consider obscene in a legal sense, however some of it would certainly be considered offensive to many. This is the reason for rating classifications. Since an important litmus test of writing is whether or not it gets read, the concern of the writer is not so much with the legal standard but rather with how much the reader’s awareness is going to accept something without becoming disgusted and putting it aside.

Where the line gets drawn by the public is a moving target. It varies from genre to genre and from nitch to nitch. In some cases a reader or viewer will tolerate more based upon the interest of the story and the quality in which it is written. At writing.com I am constantly groping about trying to find out where that point is and to get into the ball park and ask myself the question… “Will seventy-five percent of the reading public be comfortable with the language or graphic expression of the material. The answer to this hypothetical question frames the window in which the story will be written.