NAKED CITY: DIFFERENT STROKES FOR DIFFERENT FOLKS!
During the 1970s the Festival Of Light, a religious based organisation set up as a watchdog of community standards, kicked up a real stink when a Bathurst Street adult bookshop displayed magazines with naked female breasts in its window. The main complaint surprisingly was that the mammaries pointed directly towards the nearby St Andrews Cathedral, which seems absurd today but was perfectly understandable given the somewhat confused moral fervour of the time.
About a decade earlier in 1968 Sandra Nelson, a well known Kings Cross dancer and attention seeker, caused widespread uproar when she paraded topless on the Manly Ferry as a photo-op/publicity stunt. The Sydney Morning Herald at the time reported that “men clapped and called ‘Encore’ when she walked along a passageway” with her coat removed to display her breasts whilst one woman complained “why don’t you go home and put something decent on”. Needless to say the tabloids of the period had a field day as commuters scurried to snap up the late afternoon editions.
The two episodes both prove that times have certainly changed in the ensuing forty to fifty years and that the internet has opened the floodgates when it comes to all manner of pornography and tittilation. These days the only excitement generated by a pair of naked breasts in the tabloid press is when they belong to some well-known celebrity and when they are pixilated to further enhance the sense of intrusion.
In 2013 The Festival Of ‘Lights’ is better known as Vivid and the Festival Of ‘Light’ has long since changed its name to Family Voice Australia with an insurmountable task in front ot it when it comes to curbing the onslaught of internet porn. The old moral debates that saw books and movies banned for their explicit sexual content and abundance of naughty words during the 60s, 70s and 80s have long since dissipated. Parade topless on the Manly Ferry today and the only thing you will get is a chill.
It might be stretching a point but we rather miss the old sense of moral outrage, the clandestine thrill of reading a freshly banned book or exchanging a badly dubbed VHS copy of some long forbidden movie. What about a bookshop full of naked breasts in Bathurst Street, all strategically pointing in the direction of nearby St Andrews Cathedral? Now that would be something!
THE HIT LIST: There’s a very special night at the Mu-Meson Archives in Annandale on Saturday June 15 from 7.30pm to raise much needed funds for musician Neil Duncan. Neil is perhaps best known as the sax weilding maniac in the Sydney band Darth Vegas and one of our most innovative musicians. Sadly, after a torrid battle with cancer Neil lost his left forearm but this has not deterred him from continuing his musical career. At considerable cost a special one armed saxophone is being modified by a specialist in the Netherlands so that Neil can continue with his much loved profession. The night will take a look at one of Neil’s greatest musical inspirations in the very eccentric Spike Jones. A true musical innovator, Jones and his band the City Slickers kept music lovers in stitches from the 1940s to the early 1960s influencing generations of future comics and musicians from Frank Zappa to Weird Al Yankovick and Billy Crystal. There will be live musical performances throughout the night and lots of surprises. The Archives are situated at the ear of the King Furniture Building at the corner of Trafalgar St and Parramatta Road (in the soon to be New Orleans precinct).
www.meson.org
