5 Iconic Works Of Art That Caused Moral Panics

If you were afraid to watch, I'll describe it to you. After a few seconds of awkwardly mushing their mouths together, two genteel folks give each other a dry peck upon the lips. It's the passionless, saliva-less kiss of a loveless Midwestern marriage. A kiss like that is the only way of using your mouth to tell your wife you've always been in love with another man that's more effective than actually just telling her.

Depicting the world's least-sexual use of lips since the invention of spelling bees didn't stop the Catholic Church from condemning The Kiss, however. Maybe they wouldn't have condemned it if, instead of a revolting, disgusting, pornographic kiss, Edison had shown horrific depictions of torture -- which, knowing Edison, was probably what he wanted to film anyway.

A contemporary commentator called The Kiss "absolutely disgusting" and "indecent in its emphasized vulgarity." He even called for police intervention, which apparently happened. In some cities, police would confiscate the film, and in Chicago they would refuse to issue screening permits if potential theaters wanted to show "immoral or obscene" films. Is it impressive or sad that people back then were apparently able to jerk off to this?

In the 1530s, a fresco of ripped dudes flying around nude ruffled some feathers, despite looking like Michelangelo had never actually seen a naked person in real life. Seriously, the people in this painting have weirdly lumpy bodies, like they're stitched together out of raw chicken breasts or a plastic Walgreen's bag stuffed with mashed potatoes.

Besides the Mickey Rourkian leather-sack-full-of-boots bodies, people were incensed that Michelangelo broke from orthodox depictions of Christ (depicted as beardless), angels (depicted as wingless), and butts (depicted as existing). The use of foreshortening was also condemned, because perspective is the work of the Devil, I guess? Michelangelo also mixed Christian and pagan iconography, such as including Charon, the oarsman of the River Styx from Greek mythology.

"I swear to Zeus, if you guys don't stop your weeping and gnashing of teeth, I will beat you with this goddamn oar."

Above all, people were mad that Michelangelo showed Christ's return to Earth as being more of a dickfest than the hotel sauna at the Pimp of the Year Awards. Pope Paul III faced pressure to stop the painting from being completed. Biagio de Cesena, his master of ceremonies, said the painting was "no work for a papal chapel but rather for the public baths and taverns." MC Dicks-B-Gone here was essentially calling The Last Judgment porn, referencing the proclivity those randy Romans had for saucy frescoes in bathhouses and bars.

By way of revenge, Michelangelo snuck the guy into the painting. As a demon. With donkey ears, which is a sort of Classicist semiotic burn calling him an idiot. He granted de Cesena's wish and covered up his peen, though ... with an extraordinarily phallic snake that appears to be biting the dude's baby batter blaster clean off.

"Still gonna make the dude swole, though. I'm not a monster." -- Michelangelo

Four years after The Last Judgment was completed, the Church had another artist cover up all the wangs. The guy who did this was given the nickname "Il Braghettonne," meaning "The Pants-Maker," which is pretty lame, but beats his original nickname of "guy who will only be remembered for bowdlerizing Michelangelo's cock festival." He's also remembered as the guy who painted over St. Catherine because it looked like she was getting railed doggy-style.

Related: 4 Everyday Things that Caused Huge Panics When They Were New

Of course, there was also all the jizz:

Ebb stung by the flow and flow stung by the ebb, love-flesh swell-

ing and deliciously aching,

Limitless limpid jets of love hot and enormous, quivering jelly of

love, white-blow and delirious juice,

Even more troubling were Whitman's apparent allusions to homosexuality. While today we're reasonably certain that Whitman had romantic relationships with men (and probably banged Oscar Wilde, because history is delightful), at the time, it was a subject of speculation. That review from The Criterion ends with a phrase in Latin that translates to "that sin that must not be mentioned." Welcome to the 1850s, where love between two men was treated like Voldemort.

It was deemed obscene, though, and at the time, it was illegal to distribute obscene material through the mail. The United States Postal Service had orders to burn all copies of Ulysses they saw, which made it pretty difficult to get a copy of the book, since it wasn't published in the U.S.

This was eventually challenged in court, and after a lengthy series of cases, Ulysses was allowed to be published. The ruling in the case of United States v. One Book Called Ulysses led to new ways to classify obscenity, which would greatly influence later cases that went to the Supreme Court and helped to overturn obscenity laws. Masturbation jokes change the world, kids. Don't ever stop making them.

Grapes also immediately caused a gigantic shitstorm. Plenty of moralizing busybodies took umbrage with the novel's use of realistic colloquial language -- which is to say that the characters talk like actual people and occasionally swear. The novel also famously ends with a woman who's just delivered a stillborn baby nursing a man so he doesn't starve to death. (Yeah, it's a laugh a minute.) That scene was viewed as being so pornographic that congressman Lyle Boren made a speech before Congress condemning the book, saying it "exposes nothing but the total depravity, vulgarity, and degraded mentality of the author." In fine American tradition, he seemed to have more of a problem with naughty words and boobs than, you know, realistic depictions of people dying horrifically. He would have loved the MPAA.

But it wasn't the vulgarity that caused the biggest problems. No, it was the fact that Grapes was anti-laissez-faire, anti-xenophobia, anti-corporatism, pro-union, pro-worker's-rights, and pro-collectivism. What do we call someone who suggests that poor people don't deserve to starve to death in 1939? That's right, a filthy COMMUNIST!

Criticism of the book came from everywhere, but the charge was led by the Associated Farmers of California, a corporate farm of the sort that was depicted in the book as destroying food during famine (which they totally did). They used their considerable wealth and influence to lead a smear campaign against Steinbeck, calling the book communist propaganda. Which was weird, since Stalin banned the book because it showed the poorest Americans having cars.

The Associated Farmers of California got the book banned in Kern County, where much of the plot takes place, got it banned from several school curriculums and libraries, and hosted public burnings of the book. That last move kind of backfired, since this was 1939 and some other guys had very much already made book burning their "thing."

Believe me, this is only a cursory look at the insanity that The Grapes Of Wrath caused. I didn't even mention J. Edgar Hoover's involvement, or that the Associated Farmers of California took out ads in newspapers demanding a boycott of the film adaptation. But this story has a happy ending. To combat pressure from business interests to ban books, the American Library Association created the Library Bill of Rights to protect The Grapes Of Wrath. It's a text they still use today as a bulwark against censorship, because it's not like the urge to silence voices ever goes away. We just keep changing who and what our fragile minds need to be shielded from.

William Kuechenberg is a screenwriter seeking representation. You can check out his work on Script Revolution or view his mind-diarrhea on Twitter.

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