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ASPECTS OF THE SOCIAL SCENE 27
popularity, and the very close and personal influence it must exercise. It is unbelievable that any one should want to read the sort of intimate details made available unless they have some deep personal interest in the persons concerned. Moreover, what can be the real reason for thousands upon thousands of young girls collecting every possible sort of photograph of their favourite and putting them all over the walls of their bedrooms, for the more violently demented of this strange and enormous cult actually to found clubs bearing the name of a particular actor or actress? The reason, I believe, is not far to seek but hidden by a wellnigh impenetrable barrier of taboo. The stars constitute a symbol for sexual liberation. Whether it is taken to a physical end or not, it is, of course, impossible to say ; the white-hot enthusiasm with which star-worship is taken, however, particularly with the lower classes, would seem to indicate as much. D. H. Lawrence, in his famous pamphlet Pornography and Obscenity , says :
The pornography of to-day, whether it be the pornography of the rubber-goods shop or the pornography of the popular novel, film, and play, is an invariable stimulant to the vice of self-abuse, onanism, masturbation, call it what you will. In young or old, man or woman, boy or girl, modern pornography is a direct provocative of masturbation. It cannot be otherwise. . . . Sex must go somewhere, especially in young people. So, in our glorious civilization, it goes in masturbation. And the mass of our popular literature, the bulk of our popular amusements just exists to provoke masturbation. Masturbation is the one thoroughly secret act of the human being,