Dominic Dongilli is working as the Public Archives Intern at Public Space One. The organization merged with the former Public Access Television (PATV) to make the Media Arts Co-Op. Dongilli is working with the organization to process, establish, and activate a PATV archive to document the impact of community-based media in Iowa City and lay the groundwork to support a vibrant future for the media arts. He is currently searching for the recording of “Exile on Stupo Street: Porn No. 5” – a show that sparked a free speech controversy in 1995.
The floating macrame owl was standard for PATV (Channel 18). One could say the 2-hour soundtrack of squealing rodents was unique, but not surprising. The digitally obscured genitals of a vintage pinup before the 10pm primetime cutoff — well, that crossed a line.
The repeating imagery of “Exile on Stupo Street” was playing on the Iowa City Public Library’s television (PATV’s physical home) and ICPL director Susan Craig was receiving complaints. She tried to get through to PATV staff, but no one was picking up their phone.1 At approximately 7:30pm on that fateful Saturday night, July 1, 1995, she pulled the plug on the “Exile on Stupo St.” The rodent chorus went silent and nude pinup disappeared as the screen went black.
Later that evening, PATV’s director René Paine received several home phone calls from Iowa City’s Mayor Susan Horowitz.2 Why was pornography playing on the library’s television? And why was it being aired on Channel 18 for all Iowa City cable subscribers to see?
The show’s creator Ralph Barton, a 24-year-old theatre student at the University of Iowa, was not a part of these phone calls and conversations. But he threw his own log into the fire when speaking to reporters the next day. While city leaders were concerned about pornography in public – the TV was in view of the children’s section, after all – Barton uttered the word “censorship” and the media took note.3 Four Iowa newspapers would publish coverage within the week.
By Monday afternoon, a copy of “Exile on Stupo Street: Porn No.5” was on its way to the office of Johnson County Attorney Patrick White. Tasked with viewing the full 2-hour rodent and nudity-filled macrame extravaganza, White had to decide whether or not it was “offensive content or speech” protected by the First Amendment, or just plain “obscenity.”
The defining standard in question was the Supreme Court’s ruling in Miller v. California (413 U.S. 15 1973), which had established a decidedly vague “when you know, you know” rule of judgement:
“Whether ‘the average person, applying contemporary community standards’ would find that the work, taken as a whole, appeals to prurient interest…b) whether the work depicts or describes in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by the applicable state law; and c) whether the work taken as a whole, lacks serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value.”
Cue the debate: Does Public Access Television and its homegrown community content preclude “serious” value? If the majority of the Iowa City community found the (blurred and obscured) nudity obscene, did that make it so?
For one community member who emailed PATV their thoughts, it did: “Public Access TV is a valuable resource, and there is enough fairly good and interesting programming (even controversial and unpopular ideas, e.g. Louis Farrakhan) to make up for all the fuzzy out-of-focus no-brainers that you show. But Burton’s video, clearly indecent if not legally obscene, has no place in daytime or evening programming when children may be watching… We are not interested in hearing pious platitudes about ‘censorship.’ We are interested in responsibility to the community which supports you.”4
PATV, the Iowa City organization responsible for administering the city’s public access channel, was a private non-profit unaffiliated with the government. However, its entire purpose was to facilitate the expansive use of what the Federal Communications Committee considered a type of public utility: access channels on cablecast television. How could a private organization dictate what could or could not appear in a virtual town square?
The staff and leadership of PATV did not want to restrict the content that local creatives were submitting. If anything, the situation was publicity that clearly illustrated PATV’s impact. Yet, that publicity didn’t mitigate community hostility or the organization’s liability for the potential obscenity of its community-produced contents. They weren’t alone.
This was the era of NYPD Blue, primetime flesh, and a contentious shift in standards of decency on network television. The national Alliance for Community Media (ACM) had recently tag-teamed a lawsuit with the ACLU over the FCC’s newly proposed obscenity rules. As the controversy over “Exile on Stupo St.” was unfolding in Iowa City, PATV’s director received an email update on the lawsuit. The DC Court of Appeals had issued a stay until October; the new standards were not applicable.5
Weeks passed, but no clear answers or consensus emerged. Still awaiting the county attorney’s official decision on obscenity charges, PATV hosted a panel on community standards and free speech later that July. It included Iowa City Mayor Horowitz and PATV Board Chairperson Doug Allaire. Much was discussed as community members could call in with their questions and concerns, but little was determined beyond the fact that Barton’s show had people riled up.
By the end of the summer, County Attorney White officially announced that he would decline to press charges against either PATV or Barton. The distorted pinup photograph did not ultimately depict the “woman’s genitals,” and there was no “sex act” or “masturbation on screen.” He wrote in his decision, ”The photograph is not appreciably different than many which are widely available in other formats.”6
PATV embarked on a new set of production guidelines that year. The initial drafts went through countless rounds of revision between PATV’s lawyer, the city’s telecommunications manager, and the Johnson County attorney’s office. The city and county had a vested interest in this private organiztion’s attempts to curtail future content. On one hand, their offices could be flooded with obscenity complaints and stacks of audio-visual productions, while, on the other hand, they could be fielding complaints about First Amendment restrictions. The public nature of community access television was anathema to any attempt at curtailing the scope or contents of its airwaves.
The final results published in September more-so declared PATV’s liability rather than imposed limits to what the organization was willing to air.7 They outlined the Miller v. California definition of obscenity, required creators to accept public feedback about their content, and strongly encouraged them to have a personal liability insurance policy. The new rules would have facilitated a more efficient complaint process for “Exile on Stupo Street,” but it wouldn’t have kept it off the air in the first place.
PATV would be embroiled in several more free-speech controversies in subsequent years. By 1998, an Iowa City Councilperson was leading a full-scale campaign to defund the organization due to its “trashy” contents.
The remnants of the organization left behind – what could be described as a sparse “archive” – is primarily a paper trail of news clippings and city documents regarding cable franchise agreements. The videos and media at the heart of it all are notably absent from the files.
From one vantage point, their absence reads as disregard for the media that formed the heart of PATV – Channel 18. At the same time, it speaks to the ubiquity of media’s impact and the power of community-based creative spaces.
Community access television doesn’t need a censorship controversy to illustrate impact, but it’s a high-stakes example of how broader communities integrally shape any one creative work. From Ava Su Ganwei’s OOCIDJ to Terry Cunningham and Keith Ruff’s Access Iowa City, the PATV community had art to make and information to share. Their viewers weren’t faceless audiences across the nation but neighbors with names. Their permanence as VHS tapes or DVDs is not their ultimate legacy.
I want to watch “Exile on Stupo Street: Porn No. 5” and experience the 2-hour chorus of squealing rodents and flying macrame owl. There’s a chance the needle is in the haystack of 20-some boxes from PATV’s storage unit. But even if I never find it, working in the archives of the newly-formed Media Arts Co-Op (PATV’s successor) offers a chance to rethink the spirit of community, art and experimentation. Unlike network television, the developmental lifespan of public access television is different. It doesn’t culminate in the premiere of any one given episode, a tidy product or project. Instead, it’s the aesthetic explorations and community organizing that comes with the production and circulation. The legend of the rodent chorus and macrame owl live on.
1 Memo from Susan Craig to René Paine, “RE: Controversial Show on PATV,” 07-05-1995
2 Memo from René Paine to PATV attorney Jim Larew, “RE: Controversial Programming Issue,” 07-05-1995
3 “Producer: Show created to explore censorship, porn,” Iowa City Press-Citizen, 07-04-1995
4 Public comment emailed to PATV on 07-05-1995
5 Email from Jeff Hops to PATV, “Implementation of FCC Indecency Rules Stayed,” 07-12-1995
6 “PATV show not obscene,” Iowa City Press-Citizen; “White: TV photo of nude woman wasn’t obscene,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, 07-20-1995
7 “Public access rules to take effect Sept. 1,” Cedar Rapids Gazette, 08-18-1995
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