The Happiness Of Context

As the blog header states: this isn't just smut here, it's sex history. And in order to have better historical perspective you need to understand the time, the place, and the culture of that time and place for 'culture' varies. For example, 1955 New York was not the same as 1955 Nebraska and neither were the same as 1955 Sweden or 1955 Angola (which were not alike themselves) -- even if, to you smut-hounds, the breasts look deliciously the same. (Similarly exotic, enticingly differing breasts may not necessarily be an indication of differing cultures.)

I've written before on the importance of context, either anecdotally or with entire posts such as Context Is The New Bullshit, and if you haven't let that sink into your brains please take a moment to do so; this post will help with that. If you share this love of history in context, then you'll just enjoy this post all the more.

One of the best ways to glean a general overview of times and places, especially with Western cultures, is via newspapers and magazines.

For example, look at 1955 Fargo-Moorhead newspapers. There, along with the news of the day (such as "Yogi Could Be 'Great'" and the odd news item regarding the police's possession of woman's lingerie), and the ads promising pork loin at 39 cents a pound and the debut of the 1956 "PowerStyle" Chrysler, you find old advertisements for films.

In this case, thanks to Deanna (aka Pop Tart) & her husband, Derek (aka Azrael Brown) who wrote the article at Collectors' Quest on the 1955 newspaper & sent me the scan (I love it when collectors share info!), we see this ad for One Summer of Happiness:


This Swedish film, based on the novel Sommardansen by Per Olof Ekström, was originally titled Hon dansade en sommar and was directed by Arne Mattsson after the producer decided he didn't want to "risk Ingmar Bergman's 'Neurotic Vulgarity,' and fired him".

The film starred Folke Sundquist and Ulla Jacobsson as teenage lovers who meet on a farm -- complete with a short outdoor nude swimming scene and "unambiguously implied coitus, minor aspects on which most Swedish critics did not bother to comment in their reviews of its premiere in Stockholm in December 1951."

The film went on to win awards and recognition. Time for sex in Sweden: enhancing the myth of the "Swedish sin" during the 1950s:

For that matter, the sexual aspects drew little attention when Hon dansade en sommar won the coveted Golden Bear award and received more popular approval than any other entry in the Berlin Film Festival the following June (see "Tag" and "Festspiel"). Its score also won a secondary prize that year at the Cannes Film Festival, where it was shown under the title Elle n'a danse qu'un seul ete (see Magnan). Reviews in several European countries were favorable and in some cases definitely enthusiastic. In the United Kingdom, however, One Summer of Happiness was not allowed to be shown until 1953, and in some parts of the United States of America local authorities forbade it entirely.

Once again, the prudes enter the arena and are upset by a little bit of boob. OK, so it likely mattered that it was a story of teen boob; but only the idiot kind of boobs throw out storyline and cinema for a bare breast.

My first thought upon seeing the ad was, "Hell, they had Roxys in Fargo?!" and then, vaguely remembering this film was 'notoriously naughty', I wondered how it had been allowed in theatres in such a conservative, rural, place as 1950's Fargo-Moorhead.

Was I engaging once again in "rampant presentism"? (I love tossing that comment from brave 'anonymous' in now and then; forgive me.) Perhaps I seem to be. But any good or decent historian or anthropologist will allow such reactions -- they are a natural part of human reaction -- and then examine them. To acknowledge my limited experience, knowledge & thought doesn't mean I have to stay stuck in it.

While some places were upset by the film (see info on the 1954 Memorandum of the New York State Education Department regarding this film), places I'd imagined more 'small town' (both in terms of selling tickets and the proverbial closeted attitude) were less likely to make a stink over the film. (Actually, over time the opposite picture is emerging and I'm beginning to see that larger cities are often the ones more inclined to raise such legislative stink -- but that's another musing.)

Now I know that not everyone in 'the charming conservative Midwest' was as prudish in the 50's as I had stereotyped. Point taken; lesson learned.

Related:

For more on this film, in Swedish film context, see Swedish Film 1946-1960.

For a more anecdotal look at how a bit of boob in One Summer of Happiness affected a teenage boy in the 1950's, read a confession in More Nostalgia From the Innocent 1950's: Those Adult Movies.