According to the Obscene Publications Act 1959
"an article shall be deemed to be obscene if its effect or (where the article comprises two or
more distinct items) the effect of any one of its items is, if taken as a whole,
is such as to tend to deprave and corrupt persons who are likely, having
regard to all relevant circumstancs, to read, see or hear the matter
contained or embodied in it."
Deprave and corrupt? Doesn't that sound like fun? There has been a strict legal meaning for this juicy phrase that goes back to the controversial 1961 court case about the publication of
Lady Chatterley's Lover. The following definition of
deprave and corrupt became the precedent by which everything else since has been measured:
"To deprave means to make morally bad, to pervert, to debase or corrupt
morally. To corrupt means to render morally unsound or rotten, to destroy
the moral purity or chastity, to pervert or ruin a good quality, to debase, to
defile".
As time goes on, matter that was once unsuitable for reading aloud to your wife and servants is commonplace. Definitions and expectations shift. What would once have provoked a flurry of angry letters to The Times is awarded BAFTAs and good reviews and accolades as art, and standard every day entertainment. Even the old angle of the dangle measure has been ignored several times in recent years by the censors in the name of serious European art cinema.