Samuel R. Delany Critical Essay | Critical Review by Wayne Hoffman

Critical Review by Wayne Hoffman

SOURCE: “Mickey & the Peep Show,” in The Nation, October 18, 1999, pp. 30-4.

In the following review, Hoffman discusses the decline of the sex industry in Times Square and commends Delany's recollections and observations in Times Square Red, Times Square Blue.

In 1980, amid debates about “cleaning up” Times Square, New York City Mayor Ed Koch warned, “New York cannot and should not become Disneyland.”

Seventeen years later, in June 1997, Disney organized a thirty-float electrical parade through the heart of Times Square to promote its animated film Hercules. The parade ran down 42nd Street past the new Disney Store, just months after the block’s last porn shops were closed by the city as part of Disney’s conditions for moving in. The New York Times reported on the “Disneyfication” of the area in an editorial announcing “42nd Street Becomes Main Street USA.”

How did the X-rated setting of City...
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