Birth of a (Porno) Nation

The public sphere has changed in the last thirty-five years. I don't have any hard data at my fingertips to support this broad assertion. In fact, what makes me say this may surprise you: a fleeting scene in a lurid and rather inconsequential documentary - Inside Deep Throat - about the infamous 1972 porn film. In the scene, the original playboy Hugh Hefner is quietly humbled by feminist and activist Susan Brownmiller during a nationally televised discussion on pornography. These days, it is difficult for me to imagine bitter rivals having a civilized discussion about such a complicated issue on television or anywhere else; the airwaves are instead filled with shrill voices talking over one another, unwilling to bend or to concede a point. The 1970s were truly a remarkable time.

Remarkable indeed. I said just now that the documentary was inconsequential, but only because it was a box office failure and (to my knowledge) has not been widely seen or discussed. The film's subject material, however - pornography, censorship, and the American culture wars - is as essential as any social history. The film that spawned this documentary deserves some thoughtful review in its context, and Inside Deep Throat attempts just that.

Deep Throat was the first movie made about blowjobs. It was made for $25,000 over a weekend in Florida, and went on to earn more than $600 million - perhaps the most profitable movie ever made. Moreover, a cursory bit of research shows that the only 70s films grossing more than Deep Throat are Star Wars, Jaws, The Exorcist, The Sting, The Godfather, and Grease. Pretty heady company. This statistic alone should make social historians and film critics take notice. With those numbers, can one really have a meaningful discussion about 1970s cinema and culture without mentioning this blockbuster porno?

Inside Deep Throat follows the stories of the principle actors and filmmakers during the film's notorious heyday. Though it is difficult to imagine now, forty years ago, sex was not only counter-culture but almost subversive. Blue movies were financed by seedy gray-market forces, often with ties to organized crime. Actors were attracted to the industry not for the money, but more often because they were self-described rebels experimenting with new freedoms and definitions of morality. Late in the movie, the documentary even visits with the agents and prosecutors who sought to ban the film. Deep Throat benefited from the enormous drive to censor it, and it rode this wave of censorship. It is probably not much of an exaggeration to assert (as the documentary does) that Deep Throat almost single-handedly ushered in the adult movie industry as we know it today.

I don't know if I can say much more about this film - it is better discussed among people who have seen it, rather than written about unilaterally. It is definitely worth a look. Watch it as a double feature with This Film Is Not Yet Rated, a movie about the appallingly secretive MPAA and the fawning self-censorship of Hollywood.