Monday, October 20, 2014
Secrets '71
43 years ago this month, the October 1971 issue of Secrets (Vol. LXX, #5) hit stands with another batch of wonderfully lurid, titanically trashy tales of sex, sin, and all the wild 'n wanton debauchery you could ever hope to handle. To be honest, you really don't even have to read the stories, as the titles and photos alone are enough to get a serious amount of crazy, cheap-thrill fulfillment. The back pages are full of titillating ads as well... maybe we'll take a peek at some in the next post!
god these are hilarious!
ReplyDeletebut why are the husband and wife in the second story at the drive in in separate cars? and why would she want him if he can't stop blatantly looking at other women anyway? perplexing!
i love the little dancing on the beach pic in the next story too!
Y'know, in the seventies and eighties I avoided these kinds of mags like the plague--true crime and romance rags, scandal sheets, all that low-quality hyperbolic sleazy fiction--I just kind of hated it. I somewhat flipped my opinion of fake topical weeklies like the National Inquirer and the Weekly World News in my proto-ironic hipster twenties, kind of negatively appreciating the spectacle as much as enjoying the credulity of some perceived target audience that was not as enlightened as myself (as if). Now I've flipped all the way, and I genuinely think this shit is art. I'd love to obtain and frame some original print layouts. The creativity and punk (or gangland) verve of this total trash aesthetic is quite beautiful and the immediate, a crafty DIY revolution of all-inclusive entertainment, like OP Art or Dada. Absolutely the same thing as early political and skate zines. Starting in the lurid fifties with men's and adventure mags and up through the eighties with junk I regrettably eschewed, here is the original reservoir of fanfic and weird pocket fetishism that created the internet. This right here.
ReplyDeleteI love the two color printing. I can just smell the pump paper coming off the screen.
Actually the smell here is something more along the lines of cheap cigs and damp, moldy antique store basement (where I bought it yesterday), but yeah, everything you said definitely rings true about these rags, Mr. C!
ReplyDeleteMy fave is I'll Never Know My Sins too, CPC-- fortunately though in real life I have all of my sins well documented and listed alphabetically in organized folders so I never forget em!
Mr Cavin makes an excellent point, that these cheap, sleazy and exploitative magazines were to be avoided so we wouldn't seem lowbrow, and now they are collectors' items for the very reasons we eschewed them at the time.
ReplyDeleteIn their own way they represent an alternate history of the twentieth century, much as we look now at the cheap junk, dime novels and such, that came from the nineteenth as a look at the popular culture of the time.
Well everyone will be happy to know that I found a huge stack of these at an antique mall the other day-- more sleezy Secrets on the way! :)
ReplyDelete