Lynne Tillman and the Contributors to Suck Magazine Revisit Their Experiment in Radical Feminist Pornography
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Type: Read time: Tex t: Photography: Article 12 minutes Alison M. Gingeras Joanna McClure Lynne Tillman and the contributors to Suck magazine revisit their experiment in radical feminist pornography 212 There were “men’s magazines,” and then there was Suck, “The real provocativeness and importance of endeav- an experimental amalgam of sexual liberation, feminist ors like Suck,” Kraus continued, was that the magazine ferment, alternative visual culture, and literary ambition, “not only demystified the sex acts themselves but translated into eight crazy issues of newsprint. Founded undermined any mythologizing of the individual speak- in London in 1969 and published irregularly until 1974, ers.… Suck’s authors viewed disclosure not as personal Suck offered a radically different vision of avant-pornog- narcissism but as a means of escaping the limits of ‘self.’” raphy—no small feat in an era that produced a plethora Unlike run-of-the-mill “jerk-off” magazines, Suck of explicit and transgressive printed matter. The self- boasted some sky-high (if erotic) culture, such as W.H. styled “European sexpaper,” Suck decisively contested the Auden’s little-known “The Gobble Poem,” which pruriently formulaic conventions of straight porn mags. detailed the poet’s lusty affair with a male lover, and a With Germaine Greer as one of its star ambassadors, translated excerpt of Guillaume Apollinaire’s X-rated Suck blurred many boundaries in an attempt to forge, novel The Debauched Hospodar. Through the quality of its as Greer told the academic journal Women’s Studies writing and accompanying visuals, Suck put its anarcho- International Forum, “a new kind of erotic art, away from intelligentsia stamp on prosaic magazine fodder with the tits ’n’ ass and the peep-show syndrome.” Suck was eroticized horoscopes, interactive features (the “Feminine premised on the notion that explicit erotica was more Fuckablity Test” of Suck No. 1 was followed by the male than just physically arousing—it could also be politi- version in the second issue), celebrity testimonials, (porn) cal and intellectual, and it didn’t have to be inherently film reviews, and personal ads. Names were named and exploitative. As writer Chris Kraus argued in a 2008 piece boundaries were pushed: Actress Jean Stapleton con- for Artforum about the cultural significance of Suck, the fessed her first oral sex orgasm, accompanied by an alt-porno demonstrated that “sexuality and daily life exquisite line drawing that appears to be something out were seen as the locus of politics” and that “the public of a smutty fairy tale; Beat poet Michael McClure offered exposure of traditionally private behavior was a means a confessional “Fuck Essay”; Earth Rose (Greer’s Suck of disrupting the social order.” alter ego) dropped sexual gossip about London’s A-list Document No. 13 Article Suck Magazine 214 215 underground scenesters; and John Giorno titillated with Mailer, reading Playboy “for the articles” became the incorrect, and populist slant. Flynt’s editorial agenda was and literary exploits often providing fodder for publi- a short excerpt from his poem “My Old Men” that listed perfect alibi for libidinous male subscribers. driven in large part by his desire to demean the femi- cation. They also spawned the organization SELF (the the endowments of notable artists: “The size of their The general blueprint established by Playboy served nist movement. With the taunt, “We will no longer hang Sexual Egalitarian and Libertarian Fraternity), which cocks hard: Jasper Johns 7 inches, Biron Gysin 5 inches, the emergent skin-magazine business, though as the women up like pieces of meat,” the cover of the June 1978 became the organizing body of the two infamous Wet Andy Warhol 4 ½ inches, William Burroughs 3 ½ inches.” 1960s wore on, new titles veered increasingly into less issue poured salt into the wounds of that decade’s “femi- Dream Film Festivals in Amsterdam, in 1970 and 1971. There were no half measures on the pages of Suck—art, tasteful, more explicit, and in some instances vociferously nist sex wars” by collaging the legs of a naked woman And they created several spin-off publications, including sex, and life were collapsed and then absorbed into the incorrect territory. Riding on the coattails of the sexual with a meat grinder. the erotic photo-novella The Virgin Sperm Dancer, while totalizing experiment. revolution, these hardcore magazines catered exclusively fostering the careers of such young writers as Lynne to heterosexual male readers. A new cadre of pornog- Though it was in many respects the antithesis of Hustler Tillman, whose first novella, Weird Fucks, incubated To fully grasp the radical legacy of Suck, a succinct rapher-entrepreneur-auteurs tweaked Hef’s formula and its horny-male cohort, Suck was, in its own way, no during her years in the Suck family. detour into the so-called “Golden Age of Porn” is required to reach different target audiences. On a mission to less shocking or graphic. Its core mission was to thwart to provide context. The sex press was largely an under- poach the readership of Playboy, Bob Guccione launched the misogynistic, masculine hegemony of regular porn. While far from a conventional nuclear family, the editors ground phenomenon in the US and much of western Penthouse in 1965. Guccione targeted the upscale, aspi- Suck actively courted both male and female readers, with nevertheless found themselves with a father figure in Bill Europe until the mid 1960s, when a string of court cases rational demographic with a similar “sex, politics, and full-frontal nudity of both genders, including erections. Levy, the former chief editor of London’s countercultural gradually redefined obscenity laws and weakened gov- protest” editorial mix, while upping the ante with full- It refused to privilege heteronormative tastes, and page paper International Times (IT) who shaped the editorial ernment censorship. By the late 1960s, Suck was one frontal nudity, more provocative poses, and his own, after page featured polymorphous sexual experimen- direction of Suck. As Tillman explained, “Suck’s primary of many titles—among them, such sex-heavy icons of signature soft-focus photographic style. tation. Gay and lesbian pictorials were presented next idea was to join writing, pornography, and sex—to knead the countercultural press as Oz, Actuel, Yellow Dog, and Three years later, Al Goldstein infused his hardcore to straight sex, orgy scenes rubbed up against photos it together. It really was equally born of the sexual revolu- Other Scenes—that constituted a dam burst of mass- tabloid Screw with a heavy dose of shock-and-raw obscen- touting masturbation, transgender and cisgender models tion and out of a desire to change writing. Bill wanted to culture porn. ity, promising in the first issue “to never to ink out a pubic intersected on its spreads without any fanfare—in a revi- do something different, something bold.” Pre-Suck, Hugh Hefner set the publishing standards hair or chalk out an organ. We will apologize for nothing. sionist reading, the mix might be described as “queer.” To this end, Levy recruited some of his London for the genre in a relatively soft and decidedly urbane We will uncover the entire world of sex. We will be the Suck embraced feminism. Among the women promi- acquaintances and former collaborators from IT to tone, launching his tasteful “centerfold” paradigm in Consumer Reports of sex.” If Goldstein strove to marry nently featured as editors, contributing writers, and join him in founding Suck. Levy convinced literary the glossy monthly Playboy in 1953. Under the tagline the era’s revolutionary ethos with prurient smut, he often photographers were some illustrious and very public femi- heavyweights William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg “Entertainment for Men,” Playboy fashioned an editorial did it under the sly cover of cutting-edge visuals by such nists. The editors thought of themselves as a “family,” to make occasional contributions, while the sexolo- recipe that combined lusty (semi-) nudes with a relatively artists as Dan Graham, Andy Warhol, and Yoko Ono. and their collectively run editorial board repudiated the gists Eberhard and Phyllis Kronhausen loomed over the highbrow potpourri of textual content, including in-depth With Hustler, which debuted in 1974, Larry Flynt lone male editor-auteur-pornographer model. proceedings as unofficial gurus. Other alumni of the IT celebrity interviews and essays on politics, culture, and swung the pornographic pendulum towards the more These editors wanted Suck to be more than just a scene joined, as well, including Greer; the English poet literature. Given the contributions of such luminaries as sensationalist tastes of the working classes, endowing magazine—indeed, they aspired to no less than a roving and playwright Heathcote Williams, who was dating the Vladimir Nabokov, Jack Kerouac, Roald Dahl, and Norman the magazine with a crass, anti-revolutionary, politically experiment in living and loving, with their own amorous model Jean Shrimpton (a relationship that yielded both Document No. 13 Article Suck Magazine “The iconic hand-drawn covers could have been transposed onto an acid rock album cover, were it not for the dildo in the hippie’s belt or the creepy geisha doll the school girl was fondling.” sensationalist celebrity fodder and a notorious photo- totally free, and you should be able to have sex collage in Suck No. 8 in which Shrimpton is depicted as with whoever or whatever if you and the other Williams’s erect member); and Jim Haynes, the founder person(s) wanted it. However, the most impor- of the Arts Laboratory in London, who had, according tant thing for me was that it should never have to Tillman, “an address book for every city in the world.” any commercial aspect. Neither the sex, the Each of them embodied various camps of the Swinging writing, [nor] the images.