"Pigs Ate My Roses": Media moralities, comedic inversions, and the First Amendment Anna Lisa Candido Department of Art History and Communication Studies McGill University Montreal, Quebec March 2018 A thesis submitted to McGill University in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Communication Studies. © Anna Candido, 2018 ABSTRACT This dissertation examines the politics of morality that structured the moral development of mass and niche media forms in America between the 1930s and late 1970s. In order to understand how media became entangled in moral struggles, this work begins by tracing the rise of moral regulation in film and broadcasting in the 1930s and 40s, and the ways that live performance, narrowcast recording, and listener-sponsored radio enabled forms of expression around gender, sexuality, race, crime, and vice that had been unconstitutionally prohibited in mass media. To do this, this dissertation examines a number of critical moments at which community and religious groups charged performers or media players with the loosely-defined concepts of “obscenity” or “indecency” as a way of establishing moral boundaries in mediated culture. By charging Mae West, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, and listener-sponsored radio stations with obscenity or indecency, groups like the Legion of Decency and Morality in Media (in concert with other state and industry players) exerted significant control over forms of expression that may have otherwise circulated freely under the protection of the First Amendment. Although these groups succeeded in producing discursive and representational limits in film and broadcasting between the 1930s and 1970s, the semi-hiddenness of live performance spaces, niche recordings, and listener-sponsored radio partially or temporarily sheltered controversial performers and allowed like-minded people to convene over unorthodox expressions that more adequately reflected the depth and complexity of their affective states, experiences, or social positions. In presenting this cultural history of media moralities, this dissertation offers Media and Communication scholars a model of historicizing media in relation to ethical-cultural formations, while also intervening in remediation theory by illustrating how the movement of content across media not only has aesthetic, phenomenological, and economic impacts, but moral ones as well. 2 RÉSUMÉ Cette dissertation examine les politiques de moralité qui ont structuré le développement moral de formes médiatiques de masse et spécialisées entre les années 1930 et la fin des années 1970 aux États-Unis. Dans le but de comprendre comment les médias sont devenus enchevêtrés dans des luttes morales, ce travail s’amorce en localisant la croissance de la régulation morale dans le cinéma, la télévision et la radiodiffusion des années 1930 et 1940, et les façons dont la performance en direct, l’enregistrement ciblé, et les radios parrainées par des auditeurs ont autorisé des formes d’expression gravitant autour du genre, de la sexualité, de la race, du crime, et du vice. Ces formes d’expression avaient été inconstitutionnellement prohibées dans les médias de masse. Pour les approcher, cette dissertation examine des moments critiques où des groupes religieux et communautaires usaient de concepts faiblement définis comme « indécence » et « obscénité » pour accuser les artistes ou les acteurs médiatiques dans l’objectif d’établir des barrières morales au sein de la culture médiatisée. En utilisant ces termes pour juger de Mae West, Lenny Bruce, George Carlin, et de stations de radio parrainées par les auditeurs, des groupes comme Legion of Decency et Morality in Media (de concert avec d’autres acteurs de l’industrie et étatiques) ont exercé un contrôle considérable sur des formes d’expression qui auraient sinon pu circuler librement sous la protection du Premier amendement. Bien que ces groupes aient réussi à produire des limites discursives et représentationnelles dans le cinéma, la télévision, et la radiodiffusion entre les années 1930 et 1970, le caractère semi- caché des espaces de performance, des enregistrements spécialisés, et des radios parrainées par les auditeurs ont partiellement ou temporairement abrité les artistes controversés. Ces espaces ont permis aux personnes aux vues similaires de se réunir autour d’expressions non-orthodoxes qui reflétaient la profondeur et la complexité de leurs états affectifs, expériences, ou positions sociales. En présentant cette histoire culturelle des moralités médiatiques, cette dissertation offre aux chercheurs en médias et communication un modèle pour historiciser les médias en relation aux formations ethnoculturelles, tout en intervenant dans la théorie de la remédiation, puisque ce travail doctoral illustre comment le mouvement du contenu via différents médias n’a pas seulement des impacts esthétiques, phénoménologiques et économiques, mais aussi des impacts moraux. 3 Acknowledgments This dissertation was made possible by a pretty unlikely confluence of forces that I am eternally grateful for. Nicholas Johnson, Paul Krassner, and Larry Josephson generously took the time to conduct interviews about satire, listener-sponsored radio, censorship, and the counterculture. Chuck Reinsch provided early assistance navigating the KRAB archive and connected me to Nicholas. Grants from the Social Sciences Research Council of Canada, Media@McGill, and the Faculty of Arts at McGill supported the research and writing of this dissertation. The Communication Studies department at McGill in general has been an incredible intellectual home over the years. A lifelong thank you goes out to Carrie Rentschler who has been a guiding light through this PhD. Your no-nonsense approach to scholarship, coupled with your deep understanding of the complex intersection of law, culture, subjectivity, and knowledge, provided a model of inquiry that I have worked from over the years. Further, your particular form of support—your ability to jump into the work when it was most needed and to give space when ideas (or life) needed to breathe—was integral to the completion of this dissertation. An enormous thanks to Jonathan Sterne for helping me navigate the world of Media Studies and for introducing me to the many thinkers and texts that provided a foundation for this dissertation. Thank you as well to Will Straw for your thoughtful and encouraging feedback as a member of my dissertation and dissertation proposal committees. Your attention to traditionally undervalued cultural figures and objects (I’m thinking of your impeccable presentation on Bess Flowers and your work on second-hand cultural commodities) influenced how I approached the writing of this cultural history. Kembrew McLeod, I am deeply grateful to you for coming on-board the dissertation committee and lending your expertise to this study of free expression. Thank you to Darin Barney and Charles Acland for carefully reading and reflecting upon the work, and for your thoughtful comments during the oral defence. Sarah Shoemaker, Anne Woodrum, and Chloe Morse-Harding were gracious hosts at the Robert D. Farber University Archives & Special Collections at Brandeis University. Thank you, Chloe, for your warm and detailed correspondences. Sarah—generations of scholars are indebted to you for making the Lenny Bruce archive a reality. Thank you for seeing the importance of such an archive, for allowing me to access materials in advance of its formal opening, and for hosting a truly unique and incredible conference on Lenny Bruce. I’ve benefited enormously in my work and life from the brilliance of my colleagues in the AHCS community. Thank you to Jonathan Rouleau for providing translation assistance for my abstract. And a very special thanks goes out to my closest friends and allies over the years: François Mouillot, the great instigator of many heartfelt and philosophically- inflected late-night conversations on the steps of Casa and all over Mile End; Paul Fontaine who was (and continues to be) the source of countless hours of laughter; and to my partner in everything PhD, from feminist interventions to KemCoBa, Abi Shapiro. Abi, I’m not sure where I (or this dissertation) would be today if it weren’t for your encouragement, good example, and great company. I hope one day to adequately express how important you’ve been to me. 4 Finally, thank you to my given and chosen family for feeding my curiosity and love of knowledge. Thank you to Kate Eichhorn for seeing something in me when I was a constantly devastated 22-year-old with nothing to my name. Thank you for going over my first SSHRC application many times until I got it right, and for checking in with me all these years, providing guidance, opportunities, and encouragement for over a decade. Thanks to George Blott for deepening my love of comedy and for being our anchor in Montreal. Thanks to my brother and sister, RJ and Trina, Caroline, Rizal, my dad, and the Burke family for your lifelong support. Mark Burke—your name should appear with mine on this dissertation. So many of the questions and ideas were generated in conversation with you. You were there at every step of the way, at just about every conference and research trip, beside me while I grappled with dozens of books, articles, recordings, and considered each problem or revelation with me. The strongest parts of this work were fortified by your clear eye and bottomless heart. I’m so grateful for your loving support, good humor, intellect, and homemade