Lar on the origin of XX

Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports
1

This post is in reference to http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mxxx.html by Lars.

I and a friend had been attempting to research this very item, at least in respect to it’s use to describe porn, not booze. You can imagine the futility of an Internet search, and I’m just too lazy to drag myself to the library. I was thrilled to get a hit searching the Dope archives… until I read the response. 600 pounds of books aside, a vague reference to a term coming into use in the 70s is not the kind of thorough response I’ve come to expect from the SD. I’m too young to have a chance of remembering X-rating coming into common parlance, so I beseech the Teeming Millions - we can come up with something a bit more specific, can’t we? The concept of “X” getting expounded to “XXX” by one-ups-manship I think we can except at face value. But I’d die happy if we could pin down from whence the original X spawned.

(This is my first post to this board, so please forgive if the link is mangled beyond recognition.)

2

Golly, people. I’m hardly the Search Engine Maven of the Western World, but Google Hit #12 brought up this.

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“X” was for “explicit”.

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Thanks, Duck Duck Goose. I’m not sure how I avoided both the linked article, or the more informative article on the MPAA site… which I had already attempted to search. Sheer incompetence, I guess. The article you link in your post claims the “X” and other ratings were loosely derived from a similar system in the Catholic church, anyone know the validity of that?

From the MPAA site…

That seems to pretty well wrap up the “mystery” of the “XXX” for porn. I’m still interested in the Catholic origins for the X rating, if there is one.

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The Catholic Church was a big source of political clout that produced the Hays Code and got it put in place.

6

Thank you, Irishman, for telling me that. I had always wondered, actually.

“Hays Code Catholic” brought up Marymount’s website. That’s a Catholic school, right? Here’s an interesting look at the Catholic background of the Hays Code (warning–it’s got some mighty big academician-type words in it.) The part about the founding of the Code is about halfway through–scroll, scroll, scroll.

http://www.marymt.edu/~hopper/film103/precode.html

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Wasn’t X the ancient Greek christians secret code or symbol for Christ? Hence Xmas?

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Not particularly secret. X represents the cross. Get it? Hence “crossmas”.

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It’s even simpler than that. In Greek, the first letter of “Christ” is chi, which looks like the Latin “X”. The second letter, incidentally, is rho, which looks like a “P”-- Hence the symbol in many churches which looks like a P superimposed on an X. This symbol, the “chi-rho” (creative, no?), is said to be the symbol that Constantine saw in a dream, with the message “By this sign will you conquer.”. He subsequently put it on all of his flags, and did, indeed, conquer, and so converted to Christianity.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled hijack, already in progress.