Court Opinion

ID: 9634160
Source: CourtListenerOpinion
Date Created: 2023-08-22 12:51:01.97479+00
Date Added: 2024-06-11T18:08:54.874879
License: Public Domain

BATTISTI, Chief Judge
(concurring).
I concur in the majority’s conclusions, but wish to state my views with regard to the obscenity question.
The movie industry, as well as other forms of communication, is not only a medium of artistic and other expression for particular individuals; but it comprises, in fact, a powerful, pervasive and persuasive educative institution within our society. It must bear responsibility commensurate with its power. This film, purporting to be both artistic and educative, explicitly depicts, or creates the illusion of explicitly depicting, acts of coitus, the commencement of cunnilingus, the ending of fellatio, and an act which may be interpreted by some as sodomy and by others as coitus from the posterior position.
First Amendment privileges are not absolutes. Inherently, the exercise or use of a First Amendment privilege or right bears the correlative responsibility to consider the effect of such use on others. Thus, as the right to own private property does not confer upon anyone the right to pollute the atmosphere or to poison the village wells, the First Amendment does not confer upon anyone the right to pollute or to shock the sensibilities of reasonable society.
The director and the producer of “I am Curious (Yellow),” as the testimony reflects, were familiar with the standards to be met for enjoyment of constitutional protection in the United States. To evade the “prurient appeal” and “redeeming social value” aspects of those standards, as set forth by the Supreme Court of the United States, specific sex acts were depicted in such fashion as to make a social statement by means of the sexual act. The acts of coitus were surrounded by cinema techniques designed to indicate political protest (the ballistrade episode), and derision of established social institutions or norms (the oldest tree episode), also sexual activity was incorporated into seemingly humorous and unrealistic circumstances (the retreat house and water pond episodes).
These indirect and totally transparent attempts to avoid the consequences of what is otherwise utterly devoid of any redeeming social value ought not to be afforded constitutional protection.
The cunnilingus and fellatio scene has no justification whatever on any rational standards. This scene was designed to reflect a moment of “tenderness” (as one expert puts it) within the couple’s sordid love affair. It is entirely pornographic in nature, prurient in appeal, and shocks the sensibilities of reasonable minds.
Pornography can never meet the First Amendment standards formulated by the Supreme Court of the United States. It is not considered artistic, it contains no *588redeeming social value, and is prurient in appeal. As we do not hesitate to pierce a corporate veil in order to deal fairly with official corruption indirectly conceived and carried out, so we should not hesitate to pierce an attempt to raise pornography to the level of constitutional protection where the explicit depictions of coitus, otherwise hard-core pornography, are veiled in humorous political significance, protests against present-day social norms, and feigned considerations of that “tenderness” which always exist in a genuine love affair. When the real motives or objectives of this film are discerned, it must be condemned.
Civilized society can only exist within a framework of reasonable inhibition. When reasonable inhibition regresses, the disintegration of civilized society commences; and this film, if allowed in general circulation to so-called adult audiences, will constitute a landmark in this connection.