Fireworks and Scorpio Rising in the courtroom: The struggle between part and whole in the obscenity trials of Kenneth Anger’s short films

This article examines the obscenity trials against Kenneth Anger’s short films Fireworks and Scorpio Rising . I offer an analytical framework, undergirded by an iteration of Edgar Allan Poe’s concept of ‘unity of effect’, to understand the claims the prosecution and defence made about Anger’s films. I explore the interpretative difficulties the films, as short queer films, posed for the legal actors as they grappled with the ‘taken-as-a-whole’ stipulation of obscenity law.