WHAT DOES "DIRTY" MEAN?

It means that thinking about sexual desires, or engaging in intercourse without the sacrimental sanction of priests or rabbis is [1] prurient and [2]degenerate. It also means that selling sex is, in the words of Anthony Comstock, who wrote the original anti-obscenity statues and got them through Congress in 1872, "indecent" and "immoral." His prohibitions include "every obscene, lewd, lacivious, indecent, filthy, or vile article, matter, thing, device, or substance." Each of these snarl words was and still is an accepted synonym for sexual explicitness. Nietzsche: "Christianity gave Eros poison to drink; he did not die of it, but degenerated into vice."

The consequence of the identification of sex with shame and guilt is repression, furtive desires, fantasies, and the need for "pornographic" outlets. Of course, popular culture in general contains plenty of these. But mainstream (or [ugh] "family friendly") amusement centers, magazines, films, novels, and posters selling clothing, automobilies, hair styles, cigarettes, or fad diets are not prosecuted.  These items are necessary both for the economy and as outlets for sexual frustrations. As for the pornography, what a boon the smut merchants are for the "reformers," who could not keep power without maintaning the cynical illusion of stymieing the enemies of decency:

    "We [the candidates on the Albany machine's mayoral ticket, 1946] must protect our soldier boys and young people against goatish lust and illicit smut. We raid the after-hours strip clubs, mother's, the Blue Jay bar, we nail Broadway Books for pushing pornographers like Henry Miller, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, and those dirty Cuban comic books, then we sweep the newsstands and confiscate every girlie magazine that shows more titty than is absolutely necessary in a virtuous society.
    "That's a freedom of speech issue. How do we get away with it?
    "We don't indict anybody, and after the election things go back to normal." --William Kennedy, Roscoe


In the 20th century, it was the borderline erotic (not legally obscene, i.e. pornographic) materials that  were described as "dirty." Their purveyors, often immigrants and first generation Americans doing dangerous jobs more secure citizens would not touch, were ostracized and prosecuted as pariahs. "We're in the forbidden fruit business," said David Friedman, legendary sexploitation film producer. The Billy Grahams, Rabbi Wises, Mayor LaGuardias, and the DA's and police chiefs went on crusades (Graham's 1957 campaign to make New York safe for his version of Jesus climaxed with a rally in Times Square). Like bootleggers, drug dealers, and extortionists, erotica merchants were said to be the polluters--cancerous invaders of an otherwide healthy nation and its clean-minded leaders. Getting beyond this useful, elitist lie, going to the roots of  what smut really is and why it sells, means understanding what it meant to be alive in the 20th century American city.