Word: prurient
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...Brennan admits that he stumbled in his effort to define obscenity. One of his earliest opinions, in 1957, said an expression was not protected by the First Amendment if "to the average person, applying contemporary community standards, the dominant theme of the material taken as a whole appeals to prurient interest." But in 1973 he conceded that all such vague wording led only to "hopeless confusion." He recently told New Yorker writer Nat Hentoff, "I finally gave up. If you can't define it, you can't prosecute people...
...ability to make its funding decisions on the basis of promise and merit. Now artists--or organizations that sponsor artists--applying for a grant must sign a pledge promising not to produce anything that may be considered "obscene." The Helms wording defines obscenity as that which "appeals to a prurient interest," "depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct" and "taken as a whole, lacks serious artistic and cultural value...
...with Eugene Delacroix, had gone there in search of the picturesque, the exotic, the ready-made subject: mosques and Riffian horsemen, camels and harem slaves. By 1880 Orientalism had become a large fashion among salon painters and their clients. French artists brought their minutely realist style and their mildly prurient interests to Fez and Marrakech, and went back to Paris with both intact. To be influenced as a painter by Islamic art -- architecture, rugs, tiles, cloth, miniatures -- was inconceivable, like "going native." The imperious gaze went only one way; its view of Morocco was colonialism in paint...
...Rape has long been treated by the American press as a special situation. Hiding the victim's name, the argument went, protected her from the secondary trauma of exposure to prurient public attention. Journalistic policy elsewhere varies. The Code of Practice, drawn up by Britain's Press Council, prohibits newspapers from naming rape victims without their consent. In France, on the contrary, adult rape victims are usually named. In the U.S. three states have confidentiality laws that protect the identity of rape victims. But these are in limbo, largely because of the 1989 Supreme Court ruling in Florida Star...
WHERE THE HEART IS. Can a spoiled Manhattan family find happiness squatting in - a Brooklyn hovel? Why, sure. Can top director John Boorman (Hope and Glory) make a Disney comedy? Well, no. Dabney Coleman supplies the (few forced) laughs, Uma Thurman the redeeming prurient interest...