Flanders and Swan on Pretencious Smut

Okay, I put up a piece a few minutes, which used Tom Lehrer’s satirical song ‘Smut’ to attack the moral panic about pornography on the Net. I share the same fears as the people worried about the exposure of children to porn and other unsuitable material. However, I’m also afraid that these perfectly natural, perfectly decent fears are being used to justify a broader campaign of censoring anything of which the Right disapproves, even if it has little or nothing to do with the sex.

The other side of this issue, is that a lot of intellectual and cultural pseuds have promoted some real rubbish as being high art or great literature, when it’s just basically filth. This pretty much describes, in my opinion, nearly everything ever produced by Damian Hirst and Tracy Emin and many of the rest of the Young British Artists, as promoted by the Turner Prize and Nicholas Serota. The best comment on this came a generation ago with Flanders and Swan and their song, ‘Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers’, commenting on the risqué literature coming out of the pens and typewriters of Norman Mailer, Alan Ginsburg and the Beat poets, and the rest of the artistic avant garde at that time. Here it is:

Tags: 'Pee Po Belly Bum Drawers', 'Smut', Allen Ginsburg, Beat Poets, Censorship, Children, Damian Hirst, Flanders and Swan, Internet, Nicholas Serota, Norman Mailer, Pornography, Tom Lehrer, Tracy Emin, Turner Prize, YBAs