Hidden histories and subverted homo culture are at the core of a new exhibition from Kilkenny artist Breda Lynch at the RHA a series of drawings that re-work 1960s lesbian pulp fiction titles. These pocket paperbacks were hugely popular in the early ’40s to late ’60s, after the introduction and enforcement of the Hays production code, which censored the American film industry. The books, aimed at a male audience, provided a peek into perceived scandalous, erotic encounters between women, and as a result garnered a big following with isolated lesbians at a time when there was no discernable queer community.
Lesbians were depicted in pulp fiction as sexual predators into Satanism, witchcraft, BDSM, or even more fantastical grotesques that even came from another planet. Most of the characters were eventually confined to lives of frustration and bitterness or even death by madness or suicide, so it’s safe to say these ‘novels’ were hardly a ray of light for the queer psyche.