Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press
- Posted: 25th Mar 2010
- Category: Reviews
Often cited as the most important person in American publishing, Barney Rosset is an overlooked giant of the American counter culture movement. Throughout the 50s, 60s and 70s he was constantly battling against censorship, fighting for the right to publish controversial works of fiction, such as Naked Lunch, Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Tropic of Cancer as well as explosive political biographies from the likes of Malcolm X and Che Guevera. Blending both new and archive interviews, Obscene tells Rosset’s story, starting from his early rebellious years; to how he stumbled into owning a small publishing house, Grove Press; to the later years, which saw him going up against the American courts, radical feminists, grenade attacks, CIA surveillance and the constant threat of bankruptcy.
It’s a deserved and long overdue tribute. It’s hard to imagine the American literary landscape without the likes of Henry Miller, William S. Burroughs, Jack Kerouac and Allen Ginsberg, all of whom were first published in the US by Grove. And those who would accuse him of simply indulging in the scandalous or the titillating should take a look at his list of published Nobel Prize winners, such as Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.
He’s a man who’s always believed, even when he was in his teens, that everyone has the right to say whatever they like. The first time we see him, he’s on a late-night adult chat show called Midnight Blue, his respect for culture and expression in all forms extending even to extremely low budget XXX television. He was certainly never in it for the money: throughout his career he became rich then poor, then back again over and over. In tough times he resorted to selling off land he inherited from his father just to pay his own legal fees; he could never quite give up the fight. While Obscene deserves credit for raising awareness of Rosset, there’s a feeling that we never get to really know him or what makes him tick. It’s hard to reconcile the image of him today as a somewhat gentle and quietly spoken man with the guy who fought for years against the establishment. There are hints of a darker side to him: he’s a man with four failed marriages behind him, a man with a sexual appetite for dominating women: one of his colleagues laughs and describes him as being “fucked up”, but that’s not the man we ever get to really see.
Also, by following Rosset’s own story, the film offers only a frustratingly brief overview of the court battles and heated debates that changed the whole landscape of American publishing. It’s a tantalising subject that deserves a full-length work on its own, but sadly the film can only go into so much depth.
Obscene does great tribute to a very significant figure in American culture. But it isn’t quite able to deliver on the full promise of its subject and the great battles that he fought.
Dir: Daniel O’Connor and Neil Ortenberg. US 2007, 97 minutes.
Obscene is released at the ICA in London on the 27th February. For more details see DFGDocs/Events.
Obscene is released at the ICA in London on the 27th February. For more details see DFGDocs/Events.