Banned by James Cockington

At dinner with a group of friends one evening, a 27 year old man gives his 23 year old female friend a massage. Unbeknownst to her, his penis is hanging outside of his trousers and frequently touches her hair. When the ratings for the television show on which this act occurred are made public, they estimate around 3,000 children between the ages of 5 and 12 were watching at the time.

Australia hadn’t heard from the Wowsers in mainstream media for a while. A tight tank top advertising Bourbon failed to generate anywhere near the commotion that leather shoes and a deep fried snack had in previous years. Before this particular Big Brother episode it seemed, at least for a while, that Australia’s moral descent into the fiery abyss had at least slowed, if not paused entirely. But if that young man’s errant penis showed us anything, it was that the Wowsers are forever teetering on the edge of retribution, and that all they needed was the right sort of push.

Exactly what sort of push that was needed, according to James Cockington in his latest novel “Banned”, has changed rather drastically. It was minors watching full frontal nudity in 2005, but 150 years earlier in Sydney a grown man catching a mere glimpse of ankle was considered equally horrific. Taking us through to a recent tangle over parents rights to photograph their own children at school events, Cockington presents a series of vignettes illustrating the ascent (or is it decline) of just what society deems obscene.

It’s all treated in a pretty light manner, so don’t expect to find out too much about Cockington’s own views on the topic. His decision to focus on some of the more comical cases in recent history, such as the pre-1940 illegality of visible male nipples, does suggest general bemusement. But what about a serious discussion on the topics at hand?

Artistic freedom, at least, gets a slightly more serious treatment. Cockington was a moderately successful musician before turning to the pen, and has written extensively on music and poetry. Obscenity is for the most part all about the visuals, so it makes perfect sense to focus on a visual artist.

“Banned” is, at least for the early part, loosely threaded by the story of Norman Lindsay. Beginning with an account of Lindsay’s first viewing of Solomon J Solomon’s “Ajax and Cassandra”, Lindsay then pops up frequently throughout the vignettes. After all he is “…one of the elite to have been banned for both the drawn and the written word”. Of course, Cockington is careful to note that such notoriety was an inevitable source of popularity: a fact Lindsay was quite aware of.

Perhaps in the interests of objectivity most of the other sections concerning the arts are weighed strongly in legal accounts and police statements. Luckily these sections are fairly contained, because most of the joy of “Banned” comes from the sheer ridiculousness of it all. The cheesy 1930s advertisements for cheeky “ring back” men’s swimming costumes (illustrations provided) and the descriptions of Lola Montes’ “Spider Dance” that revealed a scandalous glance of her “allegedly shapely ankles and calves” are where its at. The shocked accounts of a society dragged into the gutter by “Bodgies and Widgies” (An Australian equivalent of American ‘Rockers’) and the double-decade long battle for the bikini are by far the most resonating. The stipulation that all naked bosoms on stage must remain stationary in 1952 one of the most bizarre.

These events are only loosely connected however, and the book doesn’t really flow so well as a result. Sure, there are some enduring characters: the irrepressible Aub Laidlaw, chief “moral enforcer” of Bondi Beach for 33 years. The surprisingly conservative Patricia Niland who was made a legal scapegoat for wearing a bikini in 1945. Even Graham Kennedy’s televised (though heavily cut) war against censorship has its own chapter.

Its just a pity the sections are just that. Cockington has done a fantastic job on research: the illustrations alone do a great job of putting you in the moment. If the moments were more than just that, more than just a series of vignettes, we’d have a serious read on our hands. Instead what we have is a very entertaining and occasionally illuminating potted history. Even the wowsers might approve.