Moral Panic and the Consumption of Pornographic Literature in Israel in the 1960s

Abstract

During the 1960s the reading material and reading habits of young Israelis came under the scrutiny of censors, police, committees and courts. The proliferation of book markets was of great concern to the authorities because of the political and social consequences of young people who were exposed to the wrong kind of reading. In this cultural history of the pornographic book market, the author analyzes the shifting discourse in different social contexts on what made the texts obscene. In the early years of Israel, as in many other Western countries, the perception of the obscene was embedded in contemporary notions of the governance of reason, emotions, and sex. Moral panic was the predominant attitude of parents to pornography.

The article focuses on the pornographic book market, the Committee to Combat the Dissemination of Obscene Literature in the early 1960s, and the emergence of a genre of pulp porn novels. Among others porn novels, the article studies a unique genre, set in Nazi POW (Stammlager) camps, called Stalags, where Allied soldiers – never Jews – were tortured and sexually assaulted by female SS guards. These works were extremely popular among teenagers and created a veritable state of moral panic among their parents who were represented, inter alia, by the committee.