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But Kael's revolution never actually arrived. Producing a film in the vein of Last Tango was not a risk that American filmmakers were willing to take. Moreover, pornographers quickly latched onto the uncopyrighted X label, and soon the rating, often expanded to "XXX," became synonymous with smut. As Roger Ebert noted some years later, "instead of being the first of many X-rated films dealing honestly with sexuality, [Last Tango] became almost the last." Legitimate filmmakers began releasing their work unrated rather than suffering the stigma of an X. (Today, even though pornography is freely available online, films that make explicit sex part of the plot, such as Michael Winterbottom's 9 Songs, Catherine Breillat's Romance or Jessica Nilsson's All About Anna, remain arthouse curiosities. We are apparently more comfortable watching triple-penetration gangbangs on our own computers than going to a movie theater to watch actors make sweet, explicit onscreen love.)
Meanwhile, back in the porn theaters, the ratings system had made owners more comfortable, but it had no legal standing so far as the obscenity laws were concerned. So when New York mayor John Lindsay decided in late 1972 that it was time to once again clean up Times Square, the nation's avant-garde raced to Manhattan Criminal Court to testify that Deep Throat had "redeeming social importance."
Through the magic of academic endorsement, a skin flick produced with $25,000 of Mafia money somehow became high art. "This is one of the first sexploitation films to show. . . that a woman's sexual gratification is as important as a man's," UCLA film professor and Saturday Review film critic Arthur Knight testified for the defense. "It puts an eggbeater in people's brains and enables them to think afresh about their attitudes and values," said sex researcher John Money. The court apparently agreed: "It's worthwhile to me, if nothing else happens, to have gotten this education," remarked Judge Tyler, after one witness explained to him what the "missionary position" was.
Prosecution witnesses included a semi-retired psychologist named Max Levin, who said that the film, with its "anatomical absurdity," distorted "the true nature of female sexuality," because "vaginal orgasm is superior to the clitoral." Worse than pointing out his adherence to outdated Freudian doctrine, Newsweek strongly implied that Dr. Levin, symbol of the old morality, was senile: "Dr. Levin, who is seventy-one and partially deaf, was excused from further testimony after it turned out that he had confused Throat with some of the short subjects that were shown with it." Another witness for the prosecution, a psychoanalyst named Ernest van den Haag, compared smut peddlers to Nazis, arguing that pornography caused progressive desensitization, until one would be willing to put "another person in a concentration camp or exploit his teeth and hair."
"It's worthwhile to me, if nothing else happens, to have gotten this education," remarked Judge Tyler, after one witness explained to him what the "missionary position" was. |
Alas, Judge Joel J. Tyler sided with the fogies, declaring on March 1, 1973 that Deep Throat was "the nadir of decadence" and fining the Mature World Theater $3 million. It was a hollow victory for censorship, though: Even if the Hollywood establishment was afraid to dance to Last Tango's beat, Deep Throat's box-office success had created an entire new shadow film industry. Behind the Green Door — starring Marilyn Chambers, whose wholesome likeness had previously adorned the Ivory Soap box — was received enthusiastically at the Cannes Film Festival and went on to become the second-highest-grossing pornographic movie of all time. Deep Throat director Gerard Damiano, meanwhile, achieved another success with The Devil in Mrs. Jones. Countless other films followed, beginning a "golden age of porn" that lasted until the 1980s, when the growing affordability of video-cassette players heralded the death of movies shot on film for theaters, and the rise of cheaply-produced and far cruder videos. The dirty movie in America thus went full circle: from run-down theaters patronized by the raincoat brigade, to briefly being a communal experience, to once again a private enterprise.
Just as the rebellion of the 1960s was channeled into the defanged but profitable counterculture industry, so, too, was the Sexual Revolution commodified in every way possible, from the miniskirt up. What the pornography industry produces is, after all, the ultimate in mass media as personal experience — a surrogate sexual encounter, experienced at no risk and for a minimal outlay of time, energy and capital. If sex is a steak, pornography is McDonald's. Sure, it's bad for your heart, but it's tasty and the convenience factor makes it highly appealing.
And though America has kept porn in the closet (specifically, on the top shelf of my Dad's closet, next to where he hid the Hanukkah presents), porn keeps affecting our culture. Not only has going down become so de rigueur that advice columnist Dan Savage's routine advice to men and women trapped in oral-less relationships is "DTMFA" ("Dump The Motherfucker Already"), but thong underwear and male expectations have made porn-star-style pubic waxing a standard part of pre-date grooming. Likewise, some females expect their male dates to be as smooth as they came out of their mothers' wombs — much to the dismay of those of us cursed with the Jewish Back Hair Gene.
On the plus side, porn has taught us it's okay to do what gets us off, as well some new ways to get off. Perhaps in the future, the cornucopia of bizarre smut available online will make group sex, industrial-powered vibrators and having sex while dressed up as Scooby-Doo as ordinary as the blowjob.
Or maybe it's good for some things to still be too dirty to talk about in public.
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©2009 Ken Mondschein and Nerve.com |
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