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The Population Story... So Far
The Population Story...So Far
A generation ago, human population growth became an explosive issue. Since then, it has largely disappeared from the media. But the consequences of still-rising population colliding with fast-rising resource consumption have in some respects worsened, and are bringing a whole new set of concerns.
Forty years ago, the world's women bore an average of six children each. Today, that number is just below three. In 1960, 10-15 percent of married couples in developing countries used a modern method of contraception; now, 60 percent do.
To a considerable extent, these simple facts sum up the change in the Earth's human population prospects, then and now. In the mid-1960s, it was not uncommon to think about the human population as a time bomb. In 1971, population biologist Paul Ehrlich estimated that if human numbers kept increasing at the high rates of the time, by around 2900 the planet would be teeming with sixty million billion people (that's 60,000,000,000,000,000). But the rate of population rise actually peaked in the 1960s and demographers expect a leveling-off of human numbers this century.
Every couple of years the United Nations Population Division issues projections of human population growth to 2050. In 2002, UN demographers predicted a somewhat different picture of human population growth to mid-century than what the "population bombers" thought likely a generation ago. World population, growing by 76 million people every year (about 240,000 people per day), will pass 6.4 billion this year. The latest UN mid-range estimate says there will be about 8.9 billion people on Earth by 2050. And, according to this new scenario, total population will begin to shrink over the next hundred years.
These numbers are leading some people to say that the population bomb has been defused. A few nations, such as Italy and Japan, are even worried that birth rates are too low and that their graying populations will be a drain on the economy. (Some studies suggest that China, the world's most populous country, may also "need" more people to help support the hundreds of millions who will retire in coming decades).
We're not out of the woods yet. While the annual rate of population growth has decreased since 1970-from about 2 percent to 1.3 percent today-the rate is applied to a much larger population than ever before, meaning that the added yearly increments to the population are also much larger. These numbers show that the largest generation in history has arrived: 1.2 billion people are between 10 and 19. In large measure, it will be their choices-those they have, and those they make-that determine where the global population meter rests by mid-century.
Population ¥ Consumption
Potential for catastrophe persists. In many places, population growth is slowly smoldering but could turn into a fast burn. Countries as diverse as Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and Pakistan are poised to more than double their size by 2050 even as supplies of water, forests, and food crops are already showing signs of strain and other species are being squeezed into smaller and smaller ranges. Arid Yemen will likely see its population quadruple to 80 million by 2050. The UN estimates that populations in the world's 48 least-developed countries could triple by 2050. And if the world's women have, on average, a half a child more than the UN predicts, global population could grow to 10.6 billion by mid-century.
But it is a mistake to think that population growth is only a problem for developing countries. While consumption levels need to increase among the 2.8 billion people who now live on less than $2 a day, high rates of population growth combined with high levels of consumption in rich countries are taking a heavy toll on the Earth's natural resources:
- Carbon dioxide levels today are 18 percent higher than in 1960 and an estimated 31 percent higher than they were at the onset of the Industrial Revolution in 1750.
- Half the world's original forest cover is gone and another 30 percent is degraded or fragmented.
- Industrial fleets have fished out at least 90 percent of all large ocean predators-tuna, marlin, swordfish, cod, halibut, skate, and flounder-in just the past 50 years, according to a study in Nature in 2003.
- An estimated 10-20 percent of the world's cropland, and more than 70 percent of the world's rangelands, are degraded.
As global consumption of oil, meat, electricity, paper products, and a host of consumer goods rises, the impact of population numbers takes on a new relevance. Although each new person increases total demands on the Earth's resources, the size of each person's "ecological footprint"-the biologically productive area required to support that person-varies hugely from one to another. The largest ecofootprints belong to those in the industrialized world.
Further, new demographic trends can have significant impacts as well. Since 1970, the number of people living together in one household has declined worldwide, as incomes have risen, urbanization has accelerated and families have gotten smaller. With fewer people sharing energy, appliances, and furnishings, consumption actually rises. A one-person household in the United States uses about 17 percent more energy per person than a two-person home.
And while some nations are getting nervous about declining birth rates, for most of the world the end of population growth is anything but imminent. Although fertility rates are ratcheting down, this trajectory is not guaranteed. Projections of slower population growth assume that more couples will be able to choose to have smaller families, and that investment in reproductive health keeps pace with rising demand. But along the route to the eventual leveling-off of global population, plateaus are possible. And smaller families are not guaranteed in countries where government resources are strained or where health care, education, and women's rights are low on the list of priorities.
In the West African country of Niger, for example, the availability of family planning and reproductive health services has declined, while birth rates have increased. According to a recent report by the World Bank, the average woman in Niger will give birth to eight children in her lifetime, up from seven in 1998 and more than women in any other nation. Niger is already bulging with young people; 50 percent of the population is under age 15 and 70 percent is under 25.
Biology ≠ Destiny
A series of global conferences in the 1990s-spanning the Rio Earth Summit in 1992, the Cairo population conference (1994), the Beijing women's conference (1995), and the UN's Millennium Summit in 2000-put issues of environment, development, poverty, and women's rights on the global policy table. As a result, discussions of the relationship between growing human numbers and the Earth's ability to provide are increasingly framed by the realities of gender relations. It is now generally agreed that while enabling larger numbers of women and men to use modern methods of family planning is essential, it is not sufficient. Expanding the choices, capacities, and agency of women has become a central thread in the population story. Consumption-what we need and what we want-is, too.
Many studies have shown that women with more education have smaller, healthier families, and that their children have a better chance of making it out of poverty. Likewise, wealthier women and those with the right to make decisions about their lives and bodies also have fewer children. And women who have the choice to delay marriage and childbearing past their teens tend to have fewer children than those women-and there are millions of them still-who marry before they've completed the transition from adolescence. Equalizing relations between women and men is also a social good: not only is it just, but a recent World Bank report found that in developing countries where gender equality lags, efforts to combat poverty and increase economic growth lag, too.
Yet women's rights and voices remain suppressed or muted throughout the world. Over 100 million girls will be married before their 18th birthdays in the next decade, some as young as 8 or 9. Early childbearing is the leading cause of death and disability for women between the ages of 15 and 19 in developing countries. At least 350 million women still lack access to a full range of contraceptive methods, 10 years after the Cairo conference yielded a 20-year plan to balance the world's people with its resources. Demand for services will increase an estimated 40 per cent by 2025.
The assault of HIV/AIDS is also increasingly hurting women: more than 18 million women are living with HIV/AIDS, and in 2003 women's rate of infection for the first time equaled men's. In the region hardest hit, sub-Saharan Africa, 60 percent of adults living with HIV are women. Two-thirds of the world's 876 million illiterates are women and a majority of the 115 million children not attending grade school are girls. In no country in the world are women judged to have political, economic, and social power equal to that of men.
Even in the United States, women's reproductive rights are increasingly constrained by the growing number of restrictions and conditions on choice imposed by state and federal laws. Like the U.S. lifestyle, the current Administration's blinkered view of sexuality has gone global. The United States has withheld $34 million from the UN Population Fund (UNFPA) every year of the Bush Administration due to a dispute over abortion. And the "global gag rule," a relic of the Reagan presidency reimposed by President Bush, binds U.S. population assistance by making taboo any discussion of abortion in reproductive health clinics, even in countries where it is legal.
The impacts reach more deeply than the rhetoric: due to the loss of U.S. population funds, reproductive health services have been scaled back or eliminated in some of the world's poorest countries, precisely where fertility rates are highest and women's access to family planning most tenuous. In Kenya, for instance, the two main providers of reproductive health services refused to sign a pledge to enforce the gag rule, with the result that they lost funds and closed five family planning clinics, eliminating women's access to maternal health care, contraception, and voluntary counseling and testing for HIV/AIDS. In Ethiopia, where only 6 per cent of women use modern methods of contraception, the gag rule has cut a wide swath: clinics have reduced services, laid off staff and curtailed community health programs; many have suffered shortages of contraceptive supplies.
A recent study by UNFPA and the Alan Guttmacher Institute estimated that meeting women's current unmet need for contraception would prevent each year:
- 23 million unplanned births
- 22 million induced abortions
- 1.4 million infant deaths
- 142,000 pregnancy related-deaths (including 53,000 from unsafe abortions); and
- 505,000 children losing their mothers due to pregnancy-related causes.
The non-medical benefits are not quantified but are considerable: greater self-esteem and decision-making power for women; higher productivity and income; increased health, nutrition, and education expenditures on each child; higher savings and investment rates; and increased equality between women and men. We know this from experience: recent research in the United States, for example, ascribes the large numbers of women entering law, medical, and other professional training programs in the 1970s to the expanded choices afforded by the wide availability of the Pill.
Despite these benefits, vast needs go unmet as the Cairo action plan remains underfunded. The United States is not the only culprit. UNFPA reports that donor funds for a basic package of reproductive health services and population data and policy work totaled about $3.1 billion in 2003-$2.6 billion less than the level agreed to in the ICPD Program. Developing country domestic resources were estimated at $11.7 billion, a major portion of which is spent by just a handful of large countries. A number of countries, particularly the poorest, rely heavily on donor funds to provide services for family planning, reproductive health, and HIV/AIDS, and to build data sets and craft needed policies.
A year from now, donors will be expected to be contributing $6.1 billion annually, $3 billion more than what has already been spent. "A world that spends $800 billion to $1 trillion each year on the military can afford the equivalent of slightly more than one day's military spending to close Cairo's $3 billion external funding gap to save and improve the lives of millions of women and families in developing countries," says UNFPA's executive director, Thoraya Obaid. But as the world's priorities lie in other arenas, it is looking increasingly unlikely that the Cairo targets-despite their modest price tag in a world where the bill for a war can top $100 billion-will be met.
But it isn't only poor people in developing countries who will determine whether the more dire population scenarios pass from speculation to reality. Family size has declined in most wealthy nations, but the U.S. population grew by 32.7 million people (13.1 percent) during the 1990s, the largest number in any 10-year period in U.S. history. At about 280 million people, the United States is now the third most populous nation in the world and its population is expected to reach 400 million by 2050. A recent study suggests that if every person alive today consumed at the rate of an average person in the United States, three more planets would be required to fulfill these demands.
Whether or not birth rates continue to fall, consumption levels and patterns (affluence), coupled with technology, take on new importance. The global consumer class-around 1.7 billion people, or more than a quarter of humanity-is growing rapidly. These people are collectively responsible for the vast majority of meat-eating, paper use, car driving, and energy consumption on the planet, as well as the resulting impact of these activities on its natural resources. As populations surge in developing countries and the world becomes increasingly globalized, more and more people have access to, and the means to acquire, a greater diversity of products and services than ever before.
It is the combined effect of human numbers and human consumption that creates such potent flashpoints. Decisions about sexuality and lifestyle are among the most deeply personal and political decisions societies and their citizens can make. The fate of the human presence on the Earth will be shaped in large part by those decisions and how their implications unfold in the coming years. This population story's ending still hasn't been written.
Danielle Nierenberg is a research associate at Worldwatch and the author of Correcting Gender Myopia: Gender Equity, Women's Welfare, and the Environment (Worldwatch Paper 161). Mia MacDonald is a policy analyst and freelance writer and a Worldwatch Institute Senior Fellow.
References and readings for each article are available at www.worldwatch.org/pubs/mag/.


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The following are two of the most recent projects that the British Airways Carbon Fund has supported.
Carbon Fund example 1: Ol Pejeta Conservancy, Laikipia County, Kenya
Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Kenya is a wildlife conservation and community reinvestment programme. Its aim is to improve the livelihoods of rural communities. Most of the communities around Ol Pejeta are not connected to mains electricity and people typically turn to fossil fuels for power.
The British Airways Carbon Fund has helped to fund the replacement of two diesel-powered water pumps with a solar PV powered pumps. In addition to reducing the conservancy's environmental footprint, the replacement of the pumps provides financial savings and improved water resource management in a drought prone area. Money saved by the project enables further conservation work including funding for protecting endangered species such as the Northern White Rhinoceros.
The solar pump house also acts as a WiFi hub, enabling broadband access up to 15 km from the pump. Local schools are able to use this WiFi for free, bolstering pupils' education.
Carbon Fund example 2: KLAS Care, Renfrewshire, Scotland
A former janitor's house which had lain empty and derelict for seven years, has undergone a six-figure refurbishment and is now providing much needed community space in a Renfrewshire town. The building, which provides after school care and is operated by the social enterprise KLAS Care, has become the hub for a growing number of community groups in the East Fulton area of Linwood.
The installation of the building's energy efficient lighting, heating, hot water system and highly rated insulation was made possible by a £12,000 funding package from the British Airways Carbon Fund. A further donation of £5,000 from the British Airways Carbon Fund in the next funding round will see the installation of solar panels on the building, further reducing energy costs and helping the social enterprise initiative become even more financially viable, benefitting the community as a whole.
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British Airways Gender Pay Gap Report 2019 (pdf, 90kb, English only)
BA Cityflyer Gender Pay Gap Report 2019 (pdf, 90kb, English only)
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British Airways Gender Pay Gap Report 2018 (pdf, 90kb, English only)
BA CityFlyer Gender Pay Gap Report 2018 (pdf, 100kb, English only)
British Airways Maintenance Cardiff Gender Pay Gap Report 2018 (pdf, 100kb, English only)
British Airways Holidays Gender Pay Gap Report 2018 (pdf, 87kb, English only)
Gatwick Ground Services Gender Pay Gap Report 2018 (pdf, 153kb, English only)
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In 2018, we answered two DEC appeals in Myanmar and Indonesia. Learn more about these appeals.
Through our Payroll Giving scheme, we empower UK-based colleagues to make regular tax-free donations to a cause of their choice. In 2017, more than 3,000 colleagues donated £750,000 to 540 charities and we received a Silver Award in the Annual Payroll Giving Quality Mark Awards to recognise the airline's commitment to workplace giving.
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In 2018 British Airways teamed up with Monkey World in Dorset to rescue a baby slow loris primate named Nora from being sold illegally at a pet shop in Lebanon. The endangered primate had already been prised away from her mother, but when local authorities in Lebanon discovered her, she was confiscated and cared for by Animals Lebanon. The organisation contacted Monkey World in Dorset to ask if they could arrange a permanent home for her with their loris community.
Nora travelled as a VIP in the cabin on a British Airways flight from Beirut to London, so that she could be given the best care throughout this special journey to her new home. She was the first endangered animal to be confiscated under the new Animal Protection and Welfare Laws in Lebanon, and her case will be moved to the courts for prosecution.
British Airways has a long and proud history of working with primates. We helped rescue Kan'bulo, another slow loris which had been smuggled into the Maldives and rescued as part of a drugs raid in 2014. In 2017, we assisted with the rescue of Mimi, an Orang-utan from Russia.

subset: commoncrawl


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Sunday Sweets: Super Mario Wedding Cake
Who here in my generation doesn't remember the Super Mario brothers? Ah yes, the square controllers, the thumb blisters, that annoying music that played endlessly in your head every night when you were trying to sleep...
Well, two people with those fond memories grew up, found each other, and decided to get married. Then they commissioned this wedding cake:
Gorgeous, no? But the real beauty is in the details; check this out:
That multi-colored ring is the Rainbow Road (I believe from Mario Kart), and it's made of hard sugar candy, like a lollipop.
Look how adorable:
Lookit the tiny bananas in the road! Ack! I love them!
This masterpiece was created by Beth over at Let Them Eat Cake, and the photos were originally uploaded here.
Interestingly enough, the other Mario-themed wedding cake I was going to feature anyway is the one this couple reference as their own inspiration cake - small world! Here it is:
Too cute, and also with beautifully done details. It was created by Robin at Gateaux Inc, and the photo was originally uploaded here.


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Keeping First Things First
Wednesday, 07 May 2014 01:01
Prayer is the defining discipline of Christian life.
Nothing Greater
Friday, 11 April 2014 01:01
Are your prayers aimed as high as they ought to be?
Friday, 31 January 2014 00:01
Prayer should cost us something.
When, Indeed?
Monday, 27 January 2014 00:01
Have you learned the joy of coming into the Lord's presence?
Talk to God, Talk with Men
Friday, 17 January 2014 00:01
How can we prepare to be better witnesses for the Lord?


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Listen to this article
Martin Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street may be cleaning up at the box office but it has a very dirty mouth. It has officially been nominated for five Academy Awards and has already earned more than $220m worldwide. Unofficially, The Wolf of Wall Street is also the sweariest mainstream film in cinema history, with some viewers counting as many as 569 audible instances of the word "fuck" over its three-hour duration. Scorsese cut his original film to avoid the American NC-17 rating that has, since 1990, been regarded as the kiss of commercial death for a film but he has recently announced plans for a director's cut, adding another hour to the film's running time and, presumably, a proportionate increase in swearing, sex, drug-taking, and nudity.
Whether a film becomes more obscene the more swear words it contains is arguable: presumably the law of diminishing returns kicks in at some point. As the late film critic Roger Ebert once pointed out, when you've heard one f-word, you've heard them all. But film classification boards on both sides of the Atlantic disagree: the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) and the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) rule that teenagers' films must have fewer than four "fucks". More important than numbers is context: "fucks" can only be used as adjectives in such films, preferably in humorous contexts, and never as verbs. Who says grammar isn't useful?
From its inception, cinema has provoked fears about debasement and corruption of its audiences, especially in terms of the way language is used. It is no coincidence that the term "dumbing down" was coined to describe the effects of Hollywood all the way back in 1927, one year before sound in film prompted the drafting of the notorious Hays Code, the self-censoring guidelines that defined Hollywood film from 1930 until 1968. Similarly, when it was established in 1912, the BBFC was originally named the British Board of Film Censors: the boundary between classification and censorship has always been porous.
Film classification boards were created to safeguard those audiences considered impressionable, and much of what film censors prohibited a century ago would also make modern audiences uneasy: incest and "sex perversion" remain controversial, although earlier audiences saw homosexuality as a perversion whereas we are concerned by depictions of paedophilia. There were similar concerns about the "hardening" (desensitisation) of audiences to violence, and these prohibited showing the methods of crime so that film couldn't become an instruction manual for wrongdoing.
"Excessive" violence, nudity, sexuality have always been prohibited but our threshold for excess has been considerably raised. A recent study found that PG-13 films today feature three times more gun violence (2.6 times an hour) than films of the 1980s, while The Wolf of Wall Street includes male nudity in a sexual context, long the uncrossable frontier between pornography and mainstream cinema, as well as cocaine-taking and a lot of sex, including a gay orgy. Clearly, this represents something of a brave new world in mainstream cinema – and, some would argue, a depraved one.
But it may not be true that we are more accepting of profanity; rather, our definitions of profanity have changed. Broadly speaking, profanity has evolved from 19th-century prohibitions against blaspheming, through 20th-century preoccupations with sexuality and bodily functions, into 21st-century fears about hate speech and incitement to violence. As the BBFC's regulation makes clear, we primarily use words such as "fuck" as an intensifier, and intensifiers only work if they are interpreted as intense. In the 19th century, "damn" and "blast" were unacceptable in polite conversation. Now, as one linguist noted, if a film character spoke in "damns" and "blasts" he would sound like Yosemite Sam. "Fuck" was always an indecent word but it was used in limited ways, to describe sexual acts. Now our notions of profanity tend to circulate around bodily functions and relationships. There is a reason why "motherfucker" is ruder than "fucker": we are much more outraged by incest than by sex. By the same token The Wolf of Wall Street would have been far more controversial if its characters were espousing racist sentiments instead of saying "fuck" in every sentence.
The Hays Code specifically prohibited representing miscegenation (interracial sex), while the BBFC prohibited scenes "bringing into disrepute British prestige in the empire", especially India, references to "race suicide", "controversial politics", or "relations of capital and labour", all of which would render impracticable any accurate representation of slavery or colonialism. Today our attitudes have almost entirely reversed, as films such as Django Unchained (2012) and recent release 12 Years A Slave demonstrate. Their depictions of interracial violence are controversial but they would never have found mainstream distribution if either film had failed to condemn slavery from start to finish.
It is also true that the rules regarding cinematic propriety were resisted at the time in more ways than are often appreciated, as the battles over profanity in the 1939 blockbuster Gone with the Wind demonstrate. The story has long circulated that Clark Gable's famous valedictory line, "Frankly, my dear, I don't give a damn", was targeted by the Hays Code, and that producer David O Selznick had to pay a fine. In fact, production records make clear that there was no particular fuss over Gable's blaspheming. The profanity that did cause a struggle behind the scenes was the word "nigger", which was in the script in the name of historical verisimilitude. The Hays Code had no problem with the n-word but the film's African-American actors did, refusing to say it. Eventually, Selznick agreed to cut it from the script, in what might be seen as a bellwether for our changing ideas about what constitutes profanity.
We are not necessarily a more permissive society today: we control hate speech and harassment quite tightly. Until recently, society permitted fairly wide gaps between morality and legality – many things were legal that were considered immoral, especially in excess – but now we tend to legislate our morality, so that what is unacceptable is also criminalised. And profanity that is losing its ability to shock may retain an ability to entertain.
A hundred years ago, by contrast, film censors viewed comedy not as a mitigating context but an aggravating one. The BBFC and the Hays Code both banned obscenity and profanity "in word, gesture, reference, song, joke, or by suggestion (even when likely to be understood only by part of the audience)". And they particularly objected to levity: the BBFC prohibited various forms of "irreverence", while the Hays Code decreed, "seduction and rape . . . are never a fit subject for comedy" but they could be shown as long as they were duly deplored. The Hays Code, in particular, attempted to control the feelings of audiences, insisting that their sympathies must not be "thrown on the side of crime, wrongdoing, evil or sin".
Rather sweetly, the authors of the code hoped that cinema might "affect lives for the better", thus becoming "the most powerful force for the improvement of mankind", for the promotion of "higher types of social life, and for much correct thinking". This goal becomes less surprising when we realise how prevalent incorrect thinking was in early cinema. For example, a 1920 Harold Lloyd comic short called Get Out and Get Under is a series of gags about a young man whose car won't start. He sees a passing junkie, sluggishly reeling and scratching his arms, who pulls out a syringe and shoots up; instantly he perks up, straightens his tie and begins to stride off. Lloyd steals the syringe from the junkie and injects it into his car, which gets coked up and speeds off without him. A 1929 film called Glorifying the American Girl glorifies her with full-colour full-frontal nudity, while many films between 1920 and 1934 featured homosexuality and lesbianism (not always negatively), prostitution, incest, sadomasochistic sex, various kinds of drug use (they were especially fond of cocaine), and even satanic cults.
Between 1929 and 1930, the Hays Office – which had been established in 1922 in response to a wave of outrage over film stars' personal lives, not over films' content – drafted an official code of practice, which began to be implemented immediately, but inconsistently: the so-called "pre-code Hollywood" films of 1929-1934 are actually a small, anomalous sample from a large group of increasingly conservative and moralising films.
By 1934, the Hays Code was in full force – but it is not true that it insisted that men and women be shown in separate beds (it stipulated only that bedroom scenes be treated "with delicacy and good taste"). Contrary to popular mythology, it was the BBFC that prohibited scenes of "men and women in bed together" but American films adhered to this proscription to secure distribution in Britain.
The Hays Code was generally more vague, and thus more flexible, in its prohibitions. Perhaps the best explanation of the way it was understood in practice was offered by F Scott Fitzgerald in The Last Tycoon, his unfinished 1940 novel, in which a producer explains the heroine's motivation: "At all times, at all moments when she is on the screen in our sight, she wants to sleep with Ken Willard . . . Whatever she does, it is in place of sleeping with Ken Willard. If she walks down the street she is walking to sleep with Ken Willard, if she eats her food it is to give her enough strength to sleep with Ken Willard. But at no time do you give the impression that she would even consider sleeping with Ken Willard unless they were properly sanctified."
Increasingly, however, writers, actors and audiences objected to this piety and hypocrisy; by the 1950s, American film had become absurd in its infantilising representation of adult behaviour. A backlash was inevitable, and as television made inroads into cinema audiences, film-makers began disregarding the censors, who were never legally empowered: the Hays Code was voluntary, implemented to avoid the commercial catastrophe of outraging audiences and provoking boycotts. By 1959, the now-classic comedy Some Like It Hot, flagrantly defying the Hays Code's prohibitions against laughing at sin, didn't bother to get classified at all but still became one of the biggest commercial successes of the year.
The 1960s were at hand, and things were about to change. Landmark literary trials permitted the publication of profanity and obscenity for the first time. In 1968, the Hays Code was formally disbanded and replaced by the MPAA, the modern classification system, which implemented similar categories to the BBFC, primarily targeted at defending children and accepting that adults no longer needed to be protected from realistically violent films. It didn't take long for movies to become unrealistically violent, though the X-rating soon proved too blunt an instrument. In 1969, Midnight Cowboy was rated X for its depiction of male prostitution and drug addiction but went on to win three Oscars, including best picture (it remains the only X-rated film to have won an Academy Award).
In the 1970s and 1980s, X-ratings became associated with pornography, and ceased to demarcate mainstream films for adults that had sexual or violent content. Films such as A Clockwork Orange (1971), Last Tango in Paris (1973) and Blue Velvet (1986) were serious artistic ventures deemed beyond the pale of R (restricted) ratings but that, nonetheless, appealed to relatively large audiences, thus calling the whole ratings system into question. In 1990, the NC-17 rating was created, in response to films such as Peter Greenaway's The Cook, The Thief, His Wife and Her Lover (1989), with its scenes of cannibalism and torture, which its director forcefully argued were permitted by artistic licence.
This remains the crux of the matter, the impossibility of legislating taste, and ever-shifting socio-historical contexts. It is not news that one viewer's art is another's pornography, and Anglo-American culture has not succeeded during centuries of debate, over painting, sculpture, literature, television, magazines or, indeed, film, in drawing a cordon sanitaire between the two. Nor are fears about seduction and imitation likely to disappear: they accompanied the arrival of the novel, as ministers sermonised against the corruption of readers by fictional "lies", and have never left imaginative narratives behind, for the very good reason that we know that people learn from imitation, and from inspiration.
But imagination cannot be legislated, even if representation can be controlled. As long as we live in a culture that values free speech and artistic expression, we will continue to have debates about how to "classify" art, even if we don't always think that's the argument we're having. The negotiations are ongoing – indeed, new regulations about swearing will be implemented later this month, after the BBFC consulted 10,000 members of the public about what they consider appropriate and inappropriate. They say there's no disputing taste but that doesn't stop us from trying.
Sarah Churchwell is professor of American Studies at the University of East Anglia and author of 'Careless People: Murder, Mayhem and the Invention of The Great Gatsby'
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Is it too early to try to figure out what the Toronto International Film Festival means for the Oscar race?
Roger Ebert doesn't think so. After the first weekend of the fest, Ebert announced that Ben Affleck's "Argo" was going to win Best Picture at the next Academy Awards show. His reasoning: The last five Oscar winners had all screened in Toronto, and "Argo" was "the audience favorite coming out of the top-loaded opening weekend."
I think Ebert's conclusion might be shortchanging "Silver Linings Playbook" and "The Master" and a few others, but on Thursday Kris Tapley chimed in with a more reasoned defense of Ebert's stand, arguing that Affleck's film might just capture the zeitgeist with its 30-year-old story that happens to center on current concerns like tensions between Islamic countries and the United States, and attacks on an American embassy.
"It's [a] film about the world tearing itself apart while simultaneously trying to mend itself," Tapley wrote. "And given that it's also about, well, Hollywood saving the day? That could be a formidable equation indeed."
Without disputing the effectiveness of "Argo" as a film, I do wonder if its second half isn't too much a straight thriller – with its string of nail-biters and narrow escapes – to win over an Academy audience usually looking for weightier fare.
Also read: Toronto Film Fest Day 2: Ben Affleck Flies Commercial, Paul Thomas Anderson Gets Creepy
Of course, the weightier fare on display in Toronto has its own Oscar problems – though Sasha Stone, for one, is already preparing to participate in the it-didn't-deserve-to-win backlash: "I … have to say that I pity the film that will win Best Pic against 'The Master,'" she tweeted after seeing that Paul Thomas Anderson film on Thursday. "History will not be kind."
While "Argo" and "The Master" are among the crop of mostly well-received films that had gala debuts during the first few days of the festival, critical opinion has shifted as the fest goes into the homestretch.
Thursday's biggest premieres were Billy Bob Thornton's family story "Jayne Mansfield's Car" (right) and Xavier Dolan's "Laurence Anyways" – and while both films had their admirers, neither got anywhere near the kind of consensus praise enjoyed by "Argo" or "Silver Linings Playbook" or "The Master."
"Unmissable for its Robert Duvall-on-acid sequence alone, Billy Bob Thornton's 'Jayne Mansfield's Car' is a crazy-quilt patchwork delight of a movie, a southern-fried intergenerational family melodrama that veers in and around brilliance often enough that you can forgive it for never quite having all its quacking ducks neatly lined up," read an unsigned review in The Globe and Mail.
On the other hand, Leora Heilbronn tweeted this immediately after the premiere: "Give 'Jayne Mansfield's Car' a Razzie now."
And Tom Carson from GQ called the film "the kind of crackpot-Southern-family drama that will make Tennessee Williams glad he's dead and all eight people who pay to see it wish they were."
Then again, Carson's latest dispatch from Toronto makes a pretty good case for the critic as the grumpiest person in Ontario. He also says that he hated "Arthur Newman" and "Thanks for Sharing," though he reserved his most extensive vitriol for an earlier TIFF debut, the Wachowskis and Tom Tykwer's "Cloud Atlas."
Wrote Carson, "You may have learned from the Interwebs that Mr. Nice Guy himself, Tom Hanks, threw a rare public hissy fit at his press conference here on Sunday. He started out by comparing himself to a bull being driven to slaughter, and then — well, then things got kind of nasty. But maybe he was just trying to distract everybody from what an overstuffed mish-mosh his new movie is."
And if "overstuffed mish-mosh" isn't descriptive enough, Carson goes on: "this clogged, interminable (almost three-hour) movie drives straight into the metaphysical equivalent of the La Brea Tar Pits on a bicycle built by filmmakers with ADD."
The thing is, "a rare public hissy fit" is a spectacularly inaccurate description of Hanks at that press conference (right). The actor joked about the narrowness of some TIFF corridors that the stars are herded down – hence the bull reference – but did so with what was clearly mock outrage. And for the rest of the panel, he not only defended the movie passionately and articulately, he was his typically good-natured and entertaining self.
As for "Laurence Anyways," the third and most ambitious feature from young French-Canadian director Xavier Dolan was the subject of a spate of tweets offering free tickets and berating TIFF audiences for not making the film a sellout. But the word-of-mouth after its Thursday night premiere was largely positive, with a couple of first-responders immediately saying they'd found the fest's best movie in Dolan's near-three-hour drama about a high-school teacher trying to get his longtime girlfriend to embrace his cross-dressing.
Eric Kohn at indieWIRE, though, found that Dolan's ambitions outstripped his subject matter: "[T]he movie contains an epic scope that feels out of sync with the smallness of its plot; you get the idea by the first act and then Laurence's world simply hangs there for another two hours like a slo-mo shrug … Dolan clearly has the chops to make another great movie, but he needs to find a great editor first."
Other TIFF-watchers who took a turn for the negative include Brad Brevet from Rope of Silicon, who has reviewed 20 movies in the first week of the festival and finally gave out his first grade of F. It went to "Aftershock" (left), a gruesome film from Nicolas Lopez starring Eli Roth as one of a group of friends dealing with the horrific, lawless aftermath of an earthquake in Chile.
"'Aftershock' is a travesty of a film and one I recommend you stay as far away from as you can," Brevet said of the upcoming Dimension Films release.
And Brian De Palma's "Passion," which was not particuarly well-received in Venice, isn't faring much better in Toronto. Tweeted Nicolas Billon: "#TIFF12 dubs 'Passion' a 'fiendishly clever erotic thriller'; I think 'steaming turd of utter nonsense' is closer."
In a much better mood at Thompson on Hollywood, Meredith Brody raved about "Blancanieves," a black-and-white silent film that reinterprets "Snow White" as the story of a female bullfighter who travels with a troupe of matador dwarves.
But she wasn't a fan of Harmony Korine's "Spring Breakers," which has been winning a modicum of favorable word-of-mouth for the one-time art-movie enfant terrible (who's now 40).
"The movie," Brody says, "is vulgar (way beyond its vulgar subject matter of beer, tight bodies, grass, gangsta rappers, guns, money, and humiliation), disjointed, noisy, ugly … I stay put while three different people occupy the seat next to me (there are some overflow stalwarts that wait patiently outside overbooked theaters to be let in when someone exits, as they inevitably do); they all fall asleep."


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Your taxes at work
More from the Foreign and Commonwealth Office activism files. This is a comment from Hannah Wood, the FCO climate officer last seen showing "green" movies to the natives in her posting in Tanzania. In this episode, she reports on a visit by Met Office staff:
Here in Tanzania we have also been happy to welcome the UK Met Office, working alongside the Tanzanian Meteorological Agency to provide advice and guidance on future plans. We were delighted to welcome two UKMO staff emembers – David Robinson and Tim Donovan.
David was here to install some essential digital recording equipment, provided by the Foreign Office, which will allow the TMA to record and digitally distribute their weather forecasts, thus keeping the forecasting up to date and helping with distaster risk reduction. David also provided guidance on filming and editing of material to produce a climate change awareness film for broadcast on national television and distribution among Tanzanian secondary schools.
Just remember when you hear people complaining about cuts to government spending, that we can still afford to help Tanzanians make "climate change awareness" films.


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We just found a great blog on Virginia.org/travelblog – thank you for a salute to Winchester, Virginia. I can remember just slightly when Patsy visited our home since my mother was also a Hensley and a good friend of Patsy's mother. We had a picture in our piano room that she had signed. Staring up at her as a child, I thought she was beautiful. I also remember attending her funeral again as a child and how very sad it was.
Virginia "Ginny" Patterson Hensley would be 80 years old this September 8. "Who is that?" you're no doubt asking. It's Patsy Cline, of course, and her home in Winchester, Virginia – the only tourist site in the country dedicated to the iconic singer – is now a museum open for touring and paying respects.
In Patsy's Footsteps: Winchester
The Patsy Cline Historic House (608 S. Kent Street) opened to the public this year. She resided in the modest home with her mother and first husband from 1948 to 1953 and returned intermittently until 1957.
John Handley High School (425 Handley Blvd.) is where Patsy struggled to earn an education. She dropped out at age 16 to help support her family. Working the soda fountain at Gaunt's Drugstore (S. Loudoun St. & Gerrard St.) was one of Patsy's jobs during her teenage years.
WNC-92.5 FM Studio (520 N. Pleasant Valley Road) is where Patsy made her very first radio appearance.
The home you'll see (but can't tour) at 720 S. Kent Street is the one in which Patsy married Charles Allen Dick. You can also see the Winchester Star at 2 N. Kent Street, which is where Charles worked as a linotype operator.
Patsy's parents, Samuel Lawrence Hensley and Hilda Virginia Patterson Hensley, are interred at National Cemetery (401 National Avenue). Shenandoah Memorial Park (1270 Front Royal Pike) is where you'll find Patsy's final resting place. Folks leave pennies on her headstone for good luck.
A Little About Patsy
Ginny took the stage name Patsy when a radio personality gave her a chance to tour regionally with his band, Melody Boys and Girls. When she married Gerald E. Cline in 1953, she became Patsy Cline.
Patsy's first 45 single, released in 1954, was not successful, but in 1955 she was able to take the stage with Jimmy Dean on a 30-minute music variety television program in the Washington DC area. The spotlight moment launched her onto Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts in 1957 where she took the prize with "Walkin' After Midnight". The beginning of her musical career met the end of her marriage.
In September 1957 Patsy married Charles Allen Dick. The birth of their first child put her career on hold for a time, but in 1959 the family moved to Nashville. In 1960 Patsy became a regular on the Grand Ole Opry and in 1961 "I Fall to Pieces" topped the country charts and landed at number 12 on the pop charts.
An automobile accident critically injured Patsy in June 1961, but she made it back into the studio by August to record "Crazy" – a song written by Willie Nelson that would rise to number two on the country charts and number nine on the pop charts. In December, "She's Got You" was recorded and would become her second number-one country hit.
Over Patsy's career she was seen performing with Johnny Cash, June Carter Cash and George Jones. She landed appearances on American Bandstand and played Carnegie Hall. By 1963 she had more than 100 recordings under her belt.
March 5, 1963 was Patsy's last day as the plane she was aboard crashed in Tennessee. Her remains were buried in Winchester.
Like many performers lost too soon, Patsy's notoriety came after her death:
Country Music Hall of Fame, 1973 – first solo female elected
Virginia Folk Music Association's Virginia Country Music Hall of Fame, 1981
National Academy of Recording Arts and Sciences Lifetime Achievement Award, 1995
Grammy Hall of Fame, 1992 for "Crazy" and 2001 for "I Fall to Pieces"
United States Commemorative Stamp, 1993
Hollywood Walk of Fame, 1999
"Crazy" is the number one jukebox hit of all time.
For more information or to pick up a map of the Winchester area, visit Go Blue Ridge Travel.
LOVE is at the heart of every Virginia vacation. Virginia is for Lovers.


text: What's Your Sex Number?\\nFun fact: Having sex is good for you.\\nSex prompts your brain to release oxytocin, which can improve your sleep, says Helen Fisher, Ph.D., biological anthropologist at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. And more zzz's could mean fewer pounds. Sleep regulates hunger-related hormones ghrelin and leptin, helping you say no to seconds.\\nPeeps who do it two or three times weekly have 30 percent more immunoglobulin A proteins, which protect against illness, in their system than others do, a study from Wilkes University notes. The researchers believe the relaxing, mood-lifting effects of sex may play a role in keeping you healthy.\\nIt's more fun to hop on a guy than an elliptical, but both aid your ticker. Sex revs heart rate and blood flow. People who do it three times a week could see their risk for a fatal heart attack cut in half, a study from the University of Bristol shows.\\nCouples who do it routinely look four to seven years younger (per study subjects asked to guess couples' ages) than those who have less sex, scientists at the Royal Edinburgh Hospital in Scotland report. Could be because sex produces human growth hormone, which may lower body fat and smooth complexion, the study authors say.\\nFrequent sex is linked with increased optimism, energy, focus and creativity. So even when you're not rolling around in the sack, you could feel more positive and have a happier relationship. Plus, all that focus and motivation could help you perform better at work, Fisher says.\\nTo be a smarty pants, you gotta drop your pants ... as many times as possible. High-five if you get to six, but even one booty sesh is good for your smarts. When you have sex, it increases blood flow to the brain, releasing hormones that may enhance your intellectual capacity, according to Barb DePree, M.D., an ob/gyn in Holland, Michigan. And get this: It might even create new brain cells!\\nWe're impressed if you're doing it every day. Wow. Even if you're not, though, getting down can help you de-stress. \\"Regular sex can reduce anxiety,\\" possibly because of the endorphins it produces, says Jonathan R. Cole, M.D., an internist in Westlake Village, California.


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Brittany Bohnet / Official Google Blog:
Be part of the Super Tuesday action — They don't call it Super Tuesday for nothing! Today marks an exciting day in the race to the U.S. Presidency: voters in 24 states will choose their party candidates. This will be the largest number of primaries taking place at one time in the history of the U.S. electoral system.
Vanessa Fox / Search Engine Land: Super Tuesday, Internet Style: How We're Using the Web In the 2008 Elections
Brittany Bohnet / Google LatLong: Super day for a super map
Josh Lowensohn / Webware.com: Google teams up with Twitter to make Super Tuesday geomap
MG Siegler / VentureBeat: Follow Super Tuesday results live with Google
Clint Boulton / eWeek: Google, Twitter Team For Election Tuesday
Josh Catone / ReadWriteWeb: Keeping Tabs on Super Tuesday
MG Siegler / ParisLemon: Google and Twitter Team Up - Will Twitter Stay Up?
Jason Lee Miller / WebProNews: Google, Twitter Team Up For Primary Map
Nathan Weinberg / InsideGoogle: Why Did Google Work With Twitter, Not Jaiku?
Will Radcliffe / TechBlog: Election 2.0: Google and Twitter mash up Super Tuesday
Gina Trapani / Lifehacker: Track Super Tuesday Results with Google and Twitter
Mike Pegg / Google Maps Mania: The Google Super Tuesday Map Mashup
Jeremiah Owyang / Web Strategy: Josh Bernoff Analyzes the Twitter Bowl Results (see who the …
Charlie Anzman / SEO and Tech Daily: Update: Google joins Twitter for Super Tuesday
Duncan Riley / Seeking Alpha: Google Teams Up With Twitter to Track Super Tuesday
Joel Housman / Tuzworld.com: Super-Duper Tuesday Coverage
Duncan Riley / TechCrunch:
Google Teams With Twitter For Super Tuesday Tracking — Google has teamed with Twitter to provide a Twitter/ Google mashup for Super Tuesday. — Tweets relating to Super Tuesday are overlaid on a Google Map, along with other data including YouChoose '08 videos, Google News election headlines and primary state results.
Discussion: Search Engine Watch Blog and Somewhat Frank
Kevin Heisler / Search Engine Watch Blog: Google is the Bomb! Obama, McC, Mitt, Hill, Huck, Paul on Super Tuesday
Frank Gruber / Somewhat Frank: Google Maps Twitter Super Tuesday: Acquistion Next?
Scott Petry / Official Google Blog:
A Super Tuesday for business — For those of us who joined Google from Postini, one of the most exciting possibilities was to learn how to operate at Google scale. As a young company, we were accustomed to moving quickly. But now that we're here, we're seeing speed in a whole new dimension …
Discussion: Google Blogoscoped, Official Google …, Andy Beal's Marketing Pilgrim, InsideGoogle, CNET News.com, BetaNews, Neowin.net and Epicenter
Tony Ruscoe / Google Blogoscoped: Google Adds Postini Security Products
Sundar Raghavan / Official Google Enterprise Blog: Simplifying email security, archiving and discovery
Nathan Weinberg / InsideGoogle: Google Releases Postini-Powered Security Hosted Services
Darren Murph / Engadget:
Fourth undersea cable cut near UAE, suspicions rise — For the fourth time in a week, an undersea communications cable has apparently been cut (or "failed due to a power outage," as some sources suggest), and while no official reports of subversion have surfaced just yet, things are beginning to get suspicious.
Discussion: International Herald Tribune, Digital Daily, Switched and Digg
Heather Timmons / International Herald Tribune: Ruptures call safety of Internet cables into question
John Paczkowski / Digital Daily: Damn Cable's Out Again
Charles Cooper / CNET News.com:
Who cut the cables? — Three undersea fiber-optic cables …
Who cut the cables? — Three undersea fiber-optic cables …
Discussion: ABCNEWS
John Borland / ABCNEWS: Analyzing the Internet Collapse
EBay to ban negative seller views — Online auction site eBay has said it plans to overhaul its feedback system and will ban sellers from leaving negative comments about buyers. — EBay said problems were occurring, and slowing down trade, when buyers left negative comments about sellers who then retaliated with their own views.
Discussion: Techdirt, Download Squad, broadstuff, TECH.BLORGE.com, Mashable! and Digg
Michael Masnick / Techdirt: eBay Bans Negative Feedback For Buyers; Everyone Be Good Now
Brad Linder / Download Squad: eBay to eliminate negative feedback from sellers
Alan Patrick / broadstuff: EBAY GETS BAD KARMA FROM RATINGS
Jonathan Schlaffer / TECH.BLORGE.com: eBay blocks sellers from leaving negative feedback
Adam Ostrow / Mashable!: eBay: The Land of Shiny Happy People?
Christine Monaghan / Apple:
Apple Adds New iPhone & iPod touch Models — Apple® today added new models of the iPhone™ and iPod® touch which have double the memory, doubling the amount of music, photos and videos that customers can carry with them wherever they go. The revolutionary iPhone now comes …
Discussion: Silicon Alley Insider, TechBlog, Engadget, Apple Watch, Good Morning Silicon Valley, Web Worker Daily, DVICE, CyberNet, Bits, The Technology Chronicles, Mobility Site, Digital Trends, Cult of Mac, last100, Gadgetell, Tech Trader Daily, greg hughes, Apple Gazette, Apple 2.0, Orbitcast, MacUser, Technology Live, Podcasting News, Seeking Alpha, Digital Daily, Insanely Great Mac, ParisLemon, jkOnTheRun, IP Telephony, VoIP, Broadband and Slashdot
Dwight / TechBlog: 32-GB iPod Touch is a milestone
Thomas Ricker / Engadget: Official: 16GB iPhone available and 32GB iPod touch — both $499
John Murrell / Good Morning Silicon Valley: Apple iPhone and iPod Touch — now in video-rental-friendly sizes!
Mike Gunderloy / Web Worker Daily: Apple Doubles iPhone RAM Again
Ellen Lee / The Technology Chronicles: More room on your iPhone — Apple said Tuesday it is doubling …
Geoff Duncan / Digital Trends: Apple Doubles iPhone, iPod touch Memory
Petemortensen / Cult of Mac: Apple Doubles Storage for iPhone, iPod touch
Steve O'Hear / last100: iPhone, iPod Touch get supersized
Robert Nelson / Gadgetell: Apple adds 16GB iPhone, 32GB Touch, both at $499
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text:
This is FRESH AIR. I'm David Bianculli of the website TV Worth Watching, sitting in for Terry Gross. "J. Edgar," the movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio as J. Edgar Hoover, the first director of the FBI, is now out on DVD. The film was directed by Clint Eastwood and written by today's guest, Dustin Lance Black. Black also wrote for the HBO series "Big Love" and won an Oscar for his screenplay for the movie "Milk," about the assassinated gay activist and San Francisco supervisor Harvey Milk.
"J. Edgar" portrays Hoover as a man who transformed law enforcement but became so paranoid about communism that he spied on anti-war and civil rights activists, including Martin Luther King. Hoover, in Black's movie portrayal, collected secrets about others and used those secrets against them while keeping his own secret, his relationship with Clyde Tolson, whom Hoover promoted to the position of the bureau's assistant director.
You may have heard the interview Terry recorded last week with journalist Tim Weiner, who has just written a new biography of J. Edgar Hoover. Weiner remains unconvinced by the accounts of other written and film biographies, including "J. Edgar," that the FBI director conducted a long-term homosexual relationship with Tolson.
Other biographers have concluded that the two men were engaged in what in essence was a sexless marriage. In the movie "J. Edgar," the relationship between Hoover and Tolson, with implied sexual overtones, is at the heart of the story. Leonardo DiCaprio plays Hoover. Armie Hammer plays Tolson.
Before we get to Terry's interview with Dustin Lance Black, recorded last December, let's play a clip from "J. Edgar." Here's DiCaprio from the film's opening.
LEONARDO DICAPRIO: (As J. Edgar Hoover) Communism is not a political party, it is a disease. It corrupts the soul, turning even the gentlest of men into vicious, evil tyrants. What we are seeing is a pervasive contempt for law and order. Crime rates are soaring. There's widespread, open defiance of authority. Mark my words: If this goes unchecked, it will once again plunge our nation into the depths of anarchy.
Dustin Lance Black, welcome to FRESH AIR, welcome back. Before we talk about writing the screenplay for "J. Edgar," would you just mind giving us a little bit of your assessment of Hoover before we get into what his sexual orientation was and what we know about that?
DUSTIN LANCE BLACK: Sure.
GROSS: But just in terms of like the FBI and our country, what are a couple of things you really give him credit for and a couple of things you think were really harmful to America?
BLACK: In my research, I found the story of J. Edgar Hoover is a story of two men, in a way. If you look at his youth, he was so brilliant and so promising, and I give him credit for a lot of things. He helped organize the Library of Congress at a very young age.
He had a belief in science that a lot of people did not share and believed that science could help solve crimes in a way that hadn't been used before, that this sort of evidence, like fingerprinting, some of the forensic science, could help solve crimes that before you could not solve because all people really believed in was firsthand accounts of a crime.
And also probably the biggest thing he did was to understand that in this country we needed federal laws. We could no longer put up with criminals robbing a bank in Texas and crossing into Oklahoma and being able to mock the police right across the border. And he knew that needed to end because it had created this air of lawlessness.
Now, he did all these things before 1940, and I think if he had retired, he would be seen as a great hero in this country. But he didn't, and he became a dinosaur, and he started using the tools, the methods that he learned in his youth, to do great harm to this country and to rob people of their civil liberties and to rob people of their right to privacy.
He was really a man who should have retired much earlier, and I think his legacy would have been set.
GROSS: But your film wouldn't have been nearly as interesting.
BLACK: No, it wouldn't.
GROSS: So what led you to do a film about Hoover? Was that your idea, or were you asked to write a screenplay?
BLACK: I had been interested in Hoover for some time. It was actually my little brother, I think in 2007, might - gave me a Christmas present, a book called "Young Hoover." And you read this book, it really only goes through the time up until Hoover starts creating the FBI, and it was not the man I knew.
The J. Edgar Hoover I grew up with was this monster, and that was not the person portrayed in this book, and I started to do a little bit more reading, and really I found that all of these biographies out there about J. Edgar Hoover contradict each other.
And certainly none of them seemed to get into what I was really interested in, which was why, and how is it that we have this man who shaped this country in the 20th century, arguably the most powerful man in this country in the 20th century, and we might know what he did, but we have no clue why.
GROSS: The emotional story you tell is of, you know, a man who is very sexually repressed and is probably in love with the person who he makes his number two, the associate director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson, but can't physically express that love because he is so repressed and because of the way his mother brought him up.
I mean, his mother would probably rather see him dead than gay. Your film kind of says: Is this maybe why he was so paranoid about other people and about whether there were communists, and is this maybe why he spied on people, including spying on their sexual liaisons? So do you...
BLACK: Right.
GROSS: ...think that, that sexual repression might have been behind what made him, as you describe, a monster?
BLACK: I do. I mean I think that one of the symptoms is that he understood the power of secrets, and I think he used that against many people who he knew also had secrets in their personal life. For me, what became clear was this was a young man who from a very early age was never given the right to love.
If you read his mother's writings, it was very clear that she did not feel this was something he could do. Some of the quotes in the film about I'd rather have a dead son than a daffodil for a son are slightly changed from her own writings, where she said she'd rather have a dead son than a lily for a son. And...
GROSS: When did she say that? I didn't know that there were writings that she left behind.
BLACK: Yeah, there's not a ton, but she and her son did keep journals, thankfully, and so you can read some of the things she wrote. She was a very ambitious person in Washington, D.C., at a time when you needed a man to take you to the parties. And if you were going to be involved in the social life of Washington, D.C., you needed that man to take you so you could be on his arm.
And her husband was quite ill, mentally ill, and I think she saw it as a great gift that she had a son who was not particularly interested in women, and she could help him along in his career and encourage that and say, you know, probably the most important thing is your career, and it is the admiration of your fellow man in Washington, D.C., and I think that's what he was left with.
And I think that's actually where the darkness comes from because if that's all you have is political admiration and public admiration, that is fleeting, and when it starts to fade, as it always does, as it does with any political figure, you'll do anything to hold onto it, and I think you'll lose your moral compass.
GROSS: So you were in the position of writing a movie about the most secretive part of Hoover's life.
BLACK: Right.
GROSS: I mean, that's not all the movie's about, but that's the kind of central part of it. It's the - that's like the core of the film. I mean, no matter how much research you did, and I know you did a lot, that's the part of his life that he kept secret.
So how do you find out like: Did he really love his associate director of the FBI, Clyde Tolson? Did they really have an intimate relationship? Did they ever consummate that relationship? How do you get insights into that?
BLACK: Well, I started by reading everything I could on the man, and for me it's important to try and get firsthand sources. And thankfully there are still a lot of FBI guys who are around that knew him, and a lot of them have settled down here in Simi Valley in Southern California.
And a lot of them will talk in a way about J. Edgar Hoover that I don't think they would have 20 years ago. I don't think that even folks from that generation feel that being gay means you can't be an American hero, and that's a huge shift.
But even some of his closest associates will say, you know, we don't know, and it's possible. And when you start to look at the facts surrounding Mr. Hoover and Mr. Tolson, they beg a lot of questions.
These men showed up to work together every day in the same car and went home together in the same car. They went to lunches together every day and dinner every night, all of their vacations together, shared hotel rooms. These things are easily found and easily provable.
GROSS: Shared hotel suites, so they could theoretically each have had their own room.
BLACK: Yes, well, sometimes - in Miami, they didn't share hotel suites.
GROSS: Oh, okay.
BLACK: But there were - you know, that wasn't sort of a one-time thing when they went on vacations together. And this is a time before carpooling was popular, and they certainly could have afforded their own rooms.
And some of the evidence that gets more personal are things like the collection of photographs that J. Edgar Hoover has that he took of Clyde Tolson sleeping. As you get closer to them, you find that there's a very, very personal relationship there.
Now, that's not proof in any way, but as you start to learn about the rules of the time, which was the next layer of research for me, and I went to Washington, D.C. and I talked with many men who are now in their 80s and 90s who spent their time working for the government in a time before you could come out, pre-sexual revolution, pre-Stonewall, they described the rules to me, and they described the behavior to me.
And all of a sudden, J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson snapped into very sharp focus.
GROSS: Give me an example of some of the rules that they were telling you that helped bring Hoover and Tolson's relationship into focus.
BLACK: Well, a lot of it was very heartbreaking to me. I thought I knew the history of gay people, and some of it I didn't know. And a lot of it was what you couldn't say and what couldn't be discussed, what couldn't be said even in the privacy of your own home, just the danger of ever acknowledging that you had these feelings.
And certainly one of the things that I found really heartbreaking and that it really informed, I think, the way I portray their relationship in this film, is that oftentimes, if the relationship was consummated, that was the signal for the end of the relationship. It was just too dangerous.
And so a lot of these relationships weren't consummated, and if they were, it was never discussed, and you would absolutely need to take on, you know, a wife of some sort if you wanted to continue to rise in your position in the federal government.
GROSS: Well, let me play a scene from "J. Edgar," and I think this will give us a good sense of how you've handled their relationship. This is a scene at lunch, at a very nice restaurant. Hoover and Tolson are already very close and already working together. This is the scene in which Hoover offers Tolson the job as his number two, the associate director of the FBI.
DICAPRIO: (As Hoover) Clyde, I've been meaning to ask you something.
ARNIE HAMMER: (As Clyde Tolson) Feel free.
DICAPRIO: (As Hoover) I need someone who understands what's at stake here, you understand? Someone who I can trust, an associate director of the bureau. Now, I know you've only been in your current position for, what, 12 months now...
HAMMER: (As Tolson) Almost 18 now, sir.
DICAPRIO: (As Hoover) You're missing my point, Clyde. I want you to be my number two man.
HAMMER: (As Tolson) I'm not much for the spotlight, Edgar.
DICAPRIO: (As Hoover) I need you, Clyde. Do you understand? I need you.
HAMMER: (As Tolson) On one condition: Good day or bad, whether we agree or disagree, we never miss a lunch or a dinner together.
DICAPRIO: (As Hoover) Well, I would have it no other way.
GROSS: Okay, so in that scene Clyde Tolson accepts the position under the condition that they always have lunch and dinner together, even if they're angry with each other. Is that how you imagined it, or is there an evidence that it actually happened that way when Hoover offered the job to Tolson?
BLACK: Well, it's all rooted in fact and discovery. They did have these lunches together from then on, every single day, and it only changed locations because the one restaurant closed.
And certainly the fact that Clyde had only been there for 18 months before he got the number two position - he was not qualified for the position, at least not in the way that Hoover defined qualified for everyone else that he hired at the FBI - these two had a very personal connection, and they would admit as much.
And there were effusive letters that went back and forth between them. And so at a certain point for me, I like to ground everything I can in some sort of reality, especially on this movie, where there's so much myth out there about him and such a lack of clarity about the truth.
But then at a certain point, when it's two men alone who are both gone, and you can't get a firsthand account, you have to fill in the blanks. And that's why I try and spend as much time as possible, in this case about a year and a half, researching them, understanding how they talk and the sort of words they would use and so that it's as close to accurate as possible. That is my goal when I'm writing these things.
GROSS: You know, one thing I find so paradoxical about Hoover, at least about Hoover the way you've portrayed him in "J. Edgar," is that on the one hand, like, he and Tolson, assuming they had an intimate relationship, were so closeted. At the same time, they were so out.
I mean, they had these public lunches and public dinners together all the time. They drove to and from work together all the time. They vacationed all the time. They shared hotel rooms. Like...
BLACK: But according to the FBI - well, actually not the current FBI but the sort of older generation of agents, they were just married to the FBI. But you bring up a great point, which is these two lived what today would appear to be a gay relationship. It checked all the boxes.
But one of the things I found in my research of that time is that as long as you were polite about it, as long - and that's the word from the time - as long as you were a polite homosexual, and you didn't throw it in people's faces, and you didn't discuss it, and you didn't bring it up, people would look the other way.
BIANCULLI: Dustin Lance Black, speaking to Terry Gross last year. More after a break. This is FRESH AIR.
BIANCULLI: Let's get back to Terry's interview with Dustin Lance Black. He wrote the screenplay for "J. Edgar," the movie about longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover. The film is now out on DVD.
GROSS: So the movie is written from J. Edgar Hoover's point of view. The movie's seen through his eyes. So you had to figure out how to write in his voice.
BLACK: Yes.
GROSS: Did you find tapes, like extensive tapes of Hoover speaking - not just making speeches, but speaking extemporaneously?
BLACK: Yeah. You know, there's a lot there, and it was wonderful to do that research and to dive into his very strange accent, which isn't one, I think, you would find today; it was an amalgam of a lot of different sort of East Coast accents, and he invented his own words.
And he loved animal metaphors. He liked slippery, slimy, snaky sort of word choices to describe criminals. And so it was fun, in a way, to mine that from both his public speeches, which were slightly different than, say, his phone conversations and thankfully, we have some of those tapes because the presidents, you know, from Nixon to Johnson would tape those conversations.
GROSS: What was it like working with Clint Eastwood? Did he want to talk with you about the script and your motivation for writing certain scenes? Did he ask you for insights and ask you about subtext and things like that? Or did he just like take the screenplay from you, wave goodbye, and direct it?
BLACK: No. It was - thankfully, our introduction was over the phone - once he agreed to do it, we had one meeting in person - because then I wasn't just staring at Clint Eastwood, and that would have been rather intimidating, at least at first.
And so, it was over the phone, and he would call and we would spend quite some time going through the script. He wanted to know where everything came from. He wanted to read all of the books I'd read. He wanted to hear the interviews I'd done. And he wanted to make sure that things were grounded in fact. And I really respected that.
GROSS: I'm wondering if he asked you about this: Part of the experience that you could write from in writing the story of J. Edgar Hoover is knowing what it's like to be closeted because you grew up in a Mormon family and didn't want to admit to yourself that you were gay for a while, let alone to anybody else. I mean, you were afraid you were going to go to hell.
BLACK: Sure.
GROSS: So, I mean you know what it's like to have this secret that scares you and that you know would scare other people even more - and that you could lose everything if they found out. So did Eastwood ever want to know from you, what is it like to be in the closet and to be afraid of your own feelings?
BLACK: You know, Clint never asked, and we had long conversations. We spoke for hours and hours and hours on end over the phone and then in person and then on set. I was there each day, and he had every opportunity to, and he just didn't need to. And I think Clint knows plenty of gay men who - of his generation - and I think he's heard the stories now. He knows what that was.
And it was one of the great benefits of doing this with Clint is I didn't have to describe everything. He lived the history. He got the Post Toasties box with the FBI badge in it when he was a kid, so I didn't have to describe that.
For me, the challenge was not projecting my own feelings onto it. And I knew that would be a challenge. I knew I did not want to project my pain of having been closeted onto J. Edgar Hoover and Clyde Tolson. And so I had to constantly ask myself, am I doing that, and make sure that I wasn't.
At the same time, as it became clearer and clearer to me who these men were, you know, I do draw on my own personal experience, and I do probably understand it on a level that many wouldn't, especially of my generation, because I grew up in an atmosphere, in the Mormon Church, in the military, where I also had to stay closeted for my own survival.
GROSS: So did you and Clint Eastwood agree on your interpretations of Hoover and his motivations, the reasons behind his paranoia?
BLACK: Yes, we did. And yes, we do. But we have a generational divide in terms of vocabulary, which is often fascinating in the interviews because people ask him, well, do you think J. Edgar Hoover was gay? And he says, I don't know.
And for a man who just directed this film, that's a surprising answer because I think the audience walks away with a clear impression. But for Clint Eastwood and his generation, and - to be gay means a sexual act. And for him to know, it means he would need proof of that sexual act.
And I've had this conversation with him, and I said well, you know, for my generation, you don't ever have to have sex to be gay or lesbian. It's a part of your nature. It's who you are. It's who you are attracted to, it's who you bond with, who you fall in love with. And so we had a divide in terms of vocabulary. But we were always absolutely talking about the same thing.
GROSS: Well, Dustin Lance Black, it's really been great to talk with you again. Congratulations on the film, and thanks so much.
BLACK: Oh, thank you for having me.
BIANCULLI: Dustin Lance Black, speaking to Terry Gross in December. He wrote the screenplay for "J. Edgar," which has just come out on DVD. I'm David Bianculli, and this is FRESH AIR.
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