TONGUES ON THINGS THAT SHOULD NOT HAVE TONGUES

May 15, 2012 10:07 AM

Eveready Harton in Buried Treasure, from 1928, is considered to be one of the first pornographic cartoons. It is certainly one of the strangest (NSFW)
posted by The Whelk (30 comments total)

Well, 23 skidoo and horsefeathers too!
posted by Avenger at 10:19 AM on May 15, 2012

This cartoon is not anatomically accurate w/r/t certain species of animal.
posted by shakespeherian at 10:24 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I like how much humor there is in vintage erotica, pre-WW2 drawings and movies. So much modern porn is so grim and direct, functional without much levity or joy. The bit with the wheelbarrow is great.

The vintage live action porn collection "Polissons et galipettes" (aka "The Good Old Naughty Days") has a lot of humor in it too. It's available for
free download, I think being out of copyright. This Guardian article's commentary talks about the levity thing

These films were made as a joke by people who had no idea of performing to the camera, and you can tell: the way they carry themselves is entirely natural. By the 1930s people realised that they could make money with these films and they became another thing entirely. The charm and innocence was gone.

posted by Nelson at 10:27 AM on May 15, 2012 [6 favorites]

I have no idea how he got his ______________ wedged into that ________________, or why.
posted by louche mustachio at 10:29 AM on May 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm betting my grandfather probably saw this at some K of C smoker.
posted by Thorzdad at 10:33 AM on May 15, 2012

Heh heh....Well that certainly covered all the bases with regards to types sexual activities.
posted by lampshade at 10:37 AM on May 15, 2012

If your browser supports HTML5, watch the Wikipedia copy of the movie. The Youtube version linked in the post has been practically destroyed by video compression.
posted by ymgve at 10:37 AM on May 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

I'm 37 and what is this
posted by Spatch at 10:41 AM on May 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

I like the part with the fuckin'.
posted by beaucoupkevin at 10:44 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

As with other animations of the period, there was a witty, surreal quality to the proceedings that really elevated Eveready out of the realm of mere porn. Charming! Thanks for posting this.
posted by kinnakeet at 10:44 AM on May 15, 2012

I'm surprised at the inclusion of gay sex and homosexual undertones (even as it's played for laughs). But maybe it's just that when you created something pornographic back then, you were so far beyond the border of acceptability in society that it was basically "anything goes" anyway.
posted by ymgve at 10:48 AM on May 15, 2012

I believe there is only one meme response to this...

I have the weirdest boner right now.
posted by AngelWuff at 10:56 AM on May 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

People sometimes tell me I should get it permanently attached,
but I don't know.
Even though sometimes it's a pain in the ass,
I like having a detachable penis.
posted by phirleh at 10:57 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I'm surprised at the inclusion of gay sex and homosexual undertones (even as it's played for laughs). But maybe it's just that when you created something pornographic back then, you were so far beyond the border of acceptability in society that it was basically "anything goes" anyway.

Eh when I was doing research for my Victorian porn parody (Hi I'm the Whelk I wrote a parody of Victorian erotica narratives) homosexual acts turned up a lot and 9 times out of 10 it was done for laughs, although Albee's "My Secret Life" has a hilariously stuffy very Victorian account of his first homosexual experience at his mistress' urging.
posted by The Whelk at 10:59 AM on May 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

ymgve, despite the grand awakening we've had culturally since "the pill", it seems like social repression of sexuality goes in waves. The '20s had "petting parties", the term "free love" (with the current meaning) was a phrase popularized in the '60s and '70s... The 1860s and '70s.

I remember an English teacher in the '80s in Tennessee trying to tell the class that Romeo & Juliet couldn't have been about premarital sex, because people didn't do those things back then. I'd read Chaucer, though.

We tend to re-cast history largely in the most repressed eye we can, and I suspect that within the era there was a hell of a lot going on that gets glossed over in the next wave of repression, so that all we remember is what the blue-noses allow to be published.
posted by straw at 11:01 AM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

We tend to re-cast history largely in the most repressed eye we can

That's a really interesting insight. It's echoed in this Salon article about Buchanan, the first gay president of the US.

Despite such evidence, one reason why Americans find it hard to believe Buchanan could have been gay is that we have a touching belief in progress. Our high school history textbooks’ overall story line is, “We started out great and have been getting better ever since,” more or less automatically. Thus we must be more tolerant now than we were way back in the middle of the 19th century! Buchanan could not have been gay then, else we would not seem more tolerant now.

One of the clips in Polissons et Galipettes I linked above includes a priest having sex with an altar boy. Of course, jokes about priests and buggery go back many centuries; doesn't seem quite so funny this decade.
posted by Nelson at 11:09 AM on May 15, 2012 [3 favorites]

I like how much humor there is in vintage erotica, pre-WW2 drawings and movies.

I think there was something of a class distinction going on, too. If you look at paintings and statues of naked women (or men, but mostly women), that's appreciation of aesthetics, serious business, high class stuff. But if you just want to look at some guy screwing things, that's low culture, bawdy and fun.
posted by Kevin Street at 11:12 AM on May 15, 2012

I believe there is only one meme response to this...

I have the weirdest boner right now.

Or this.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 11:21 AM on May 15, 2012

I really wonder what human society would look like if we didn't have this hard coded compulsion to put our things into our other things.

mmmm things
posted by ook at 12:25 PM on May 15, 2012 [2 favorites]

the hell did i just watch?
posted by webmutant at 1:02 PM on May 15, 2012

This is definitely the dirtiest cartoon I have ever seen, but as far as erotic animation goes, it's not the strangest. I think part of that can be chalked up to the clearly professional execution - part of the weirdness of pornographic animation can usually be attributed to a combination of witless writing, grotesque anatomical exaggeration, and amateurishness.

This installment of the Suk a Hek series is the weirdest one I have seen. It isn't nearly as good as Buried Treasure, but it has its moments. It is also very NSFW, but I am assuming you just watched Buried Treasure, which is pharmeceutical grade NSFW anyway and I already told you it's naughty.
posted by louche mustachio at 1:55 PM on May 15, 2012

I really wonder what human society would look like if we didn't have this hard coded compulsion to put our things into our other things.


I think there would be no such thing as pants.
posted by louche mustachio at 1:56 PM on May 15, 2012

Know what's frightening? I've seen this before. A bar I used to frequent didn't have cable, or even an antenna. They'd play tapes of the burning log, or Ginger Rodgers clips, or Star Trek, or old Looney Toons (from a laserdisk, so all the weird racist ones were still included). This came (heh) up on rotation occasionally.
posted by notsnot at 6:14 PM on May 15, 2012

I believe there is only one meme response to this...
I have the weirdest boner right now.

You know, having watched the video, I really doubt this.
posted by valrus at 7:00 PM on May 15, 2012

Previously [but link has rotted].
posted by unliteral at 7:22 PM on May 15, 2012

What an informative documentary!
posted by Redhush at 8:22 PM on May 15, 2012

It's me -- Mario!
posted by sneebler at 8:43 PM on May 15, 2012 [1 favorite]

I saw The Good Old Naughty Days a while back, and was similarly struck that male/male homosexuality seemed to be just one of the items on the checklist, rather than its own genre. I'm not sure if that's because there was so little porn produced, you had to fit everything in at once (errrrrr...) or if it was because the whole thing was basically a dirty joke, so nothing was off-limits even if it didn't turn you on personally.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 6:40 AM on May 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

Having watched some of Nelson's links, I'm even more shocked by the casual attitude towards bestiality! At least one of those videos has a dog being invited to perform oral sex on men and women and... and no one seems to think it's a big deal (though you can see one performer look to the director for approval before the dog is allowed near a penis). Long Ago Times are weird, man.
posted by ThatFuzzyBastard at 7:44 AM on May 16, 2012 [1 favorite]

I think all porn should come with a moral at the end.
posted by crossoverman at 1:08 AM on May 17, 2012