Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex: "Is it Really All That Important?" (1971)

Since Ed Wood wrote an article about it, I'm guessing the answer is yes. (Illustration from Black and White)

NOTE: This article continues my coverage of Ed Wood's When the Topic is Sex (BearManor Media, 2021).

The article: "Is it Really All That Important?" Originally published in Black and White (Pendulum Publishing), vol. 1, no.3, October/November 1971. 

The Green Pastures (1936)

Excerpt: "The front end of the bus was going to the same location as the back. But he didn't see why he had to be the one who sat in the back all the time. And he couldn't see why there was one entrance to restaurants and markets, etc., for blacks and another for whites. After all that could mean perhaps one day there might be several other entrances, like one for the yellow race, or one for the Indian race, or the Mexicans, and if the space probes find there is life on Mars, there might even be entrances for the Martians. Far fetched? Ask any black man if that seems so far fetched."

Reflections: We are now entering a section of When the Topic is Sex that I have been looking forward to for quite some time—Ed Wood's opinions on various social and political issues. Because the topic doesn't always have to be sex, despite what it says on the cover of this book. Take the 1971 article "Is it Really All That Important?" as an example. This one is Ed's take on race relations in America.

Now you might be preparing to cringe. Ed Wood, after all, is the man who included incredibly offensive footage of blackface performer Cotton Watts in his film Jail Bait (1954). And Eddie's "Rocky Alley" novels, Watts... The Difference (1966) and Watts... After (1967), have been criticized as racist as well, tastelessly capitalizing on the Watts uprising and playing on the paranoia of white readers. Eddie even defends segregationists in his book Drag Trade (1967) and makes integrationists the villains. In fact, whenever civil rights workers show up in one of Eddie's books or articles, you can bet they'll be depicted as Northern agitators, perhaps even communists, who just want to stir up trouble. Black characters are rarely if ever featured in Eddie's movies.

However, "Is it Really All That Important?" is a more nuanced (by Ed Wood standards), sympathetic take on the struggle of African-Americans to be taken seriously and given equal economic opportunities. This is Eddie in no-research mode, and his approach to the topic is wide-ranging and scattershot. No books, articles, or specific historical events are cited. Ed mentions a few prominent black entertainers (Rex Ingram, Ethel Waters, Hattie McDaniel, Louis Armstrong, Stepin Fetchit, and Eddie "Rochester" Anderson) and names the one all-black production he can think of, The Green Pastures (1936). But names like Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. are absent.

Eddie wrote this piece in 1971, the same year that Melvin Van Peebles' Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song ushered in a whole new era of black-centric films that would continue for the rest of the decade. It must not have been on Eddie's radar when he wrote this article. Nor does Eddie seem aware of the tradition of so-called "race films" made specifically for black audiences for decades, ending in the 1950s. Again, only The Green Pastures, a mainstream Warner Bros. production, crossed Eddie's transom.

Ed writes vaguely of blacks being treated as "second class citizens" by whites for decades and finally responding with violence. "Perhaps at times his move was much too violent," Ed writes. "But through the violence he was heard." So now that the black man has the white man's attention, what does the white man do about it? Try to sell the black man things, naturally! Whites marketed everything from soap to cigarettes to the newly-powerful black consumer. 

As I've made my way through When the Topic is Sex, I've learned that Ed Wood viewed nearly every issue, from racism to censorship, from an economic perspective. To Eddie, it's all about who profits from what. I guess, when you're a penniless writer struggling to pay his meager rent, money is on your mind all the time. This obsession with money leads to passages like this:

Big business has finally realized that with the millions of blacks there are many more millions of dollars in his pocket and they want to keep getting their slice of the black pie. 

"The black pie." Now that's a classic Wood-ism.

Apparently remembering that he was writing for an adult magazine, Eddie eventually steers "Is it Really That Important?" toward the topic of sex. In this article, he acknowledges the longstanding sexual stereotypes about black men:

The white man has always been frightened, because of sexual stupidity, that the black man was built sexually more powerful than he. Therefore his woman, the white woman, was always in danger of being invaded by the black man's sexual prowess. It has been a bug-a-boo for centuries and in many places still is. And for a time, while the black man was coming out of his rut, he was seen with many of the white girls who really wanted to see what it was all about. 

This topic must've fascinated Ed because he wrote about it at greater length in the book Black Myth (1971). He may've also written A Study of Black Sexual Habits and Techniques (1970). But Eddie says that younger black men are now being encouraged to marry black women and create "a civilization among themselves which everyone can be proud of." Even here, though, Eddie can't resist getting in one more comment about money:

Everything on the outside is costly. But he then looks to his woman and realize that sex in this way is still free. Or perhaps, the best things in life are free.

 Typically, when confronted with the phrase "free love," Ed Wood will concentrate on the "free" part.

Next: "Not So Easy—This Life" (1972)