Last night I watched a 1970s nostalgia piece that celebrated a phenomenon it called the Golden Age of Porn. A string of ageing hippies were brought out to rhapsodise about “classics” such as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door – which – their makers claimed, at least – attempted to bring genuine artistry to their romping. In the minds of these auteurs of obscenity their films broke down the stale conventions of yesterday’s moralists and introduced the world to, er…
What? Well, that’s where the nostalgia collapses beneath the weight of its own revisionism. Because “porno chic” was only groundbreaking inasmuch as it plumbed new depths of sleaze. As far I can tell, it combined the worst of pre-1960s power relations with the worst of post-60s liscentiousness. Deep Throat, say, was premised on a woman who gets satisfaction from an act that, in reality, can only pleasure men. It was, in other words, a pathetic male fantasy – performed by a woman who was being tormented by her sleazebag husband and financed by the Mob. It’s been a cause celebre of libertarians but the fact that something challenges authoritarianism needn’t be to its credit – I’ll defend the rights of neo-fascists but that doesn’t mean that I admire the guys.
What rankled was how smug the veteran pornographers were about their transgressions. Yet transgression is hardly a virtue in itself – it’s the form a virtuous act can take. Anyone can flout conventions; it’s flouting a bad one that’s important. Sadly, the gaze of many hippies seems to have drifted from the world and to their own navels (or, perhaps, a different orifice).
August 28, 2011 at 3:21 am
I imagine there are lots of women and gay men who disagree about the alleged non-reciprocity of the act which you think “can only pleasure men.”
August 28, 2011 at 10:45 am
Hrm. Well, I don’t see how, but this is no place for a debate concerning the mechanics of deep-throating. (A point, of course, that begs the question — where is?)
August 28, 2011 at 2:01 pm
It doesn’t require much imagination to see how! A person can certainly gain pleasure from kissing and licking various things, such as an ice lolly, another person’s lips or indeed any other part of the body (depending on what they personally enjoy). I do agree with the general *ahem* thrust of your argument; perhaps if these 1970s porn movies had featured a man gaining satisfaction from pleasuring women orally they could genuinely be said to have challenged conventions and broken new ground.
I’m sure Google could swiftly provide an answer to the question you’ve RAISED (sorry for being snarky but I find the incorrect use of “begs the question” rather irritating) concerning the superlative online forum to discuss deep-throating.
August 28, 2011 at 3:11 pm
I just came to comment on “a woman who gets satisfaction from an act that, in reality, can only pleasure men.” but it looks like people have got in before me.
I think it’s obvious that a woman isn’t going to orgasm from felatio but thankfully human beings get pleasure from an almost infinite number of things that fall well short of making them, well, you know. I know i do.
Agree with the post’s main point though.
August 30, 2011 at 9:42 am
I think it’s obvious that a woman isn’t going to orgasm from felatio
…except when through some mysterious quirk of physiognomy – sorry, plot twist in the film – she has a clitoris at the back of her throat…
August 28, 2011 at 3:45 pm
A person can certainly gain pleasure from kissing and licking various things, such as an ice lolly…
True, but they don’t ram an ice lolly down their throat.
August 29, 2011 at 8:22 am
Hmmm.
August 29, 2011 at 4:15 pm
True -
http://bensix.wordpress.com/2011/08/28/screw-the-hippies/#comment-3628
My point, though, was about general preferences, not, er – minority interests.
Great choice of song, by the way!
August 28, 2011 at 3:46 pm
(Not in polite company, at least.)
August 29, 2011 at 2:06 am
Just think that your assertion of definitive non-pleasure really detracts from an otherwise great argument.
You’re not the arbiter of other people’s pleasures. How could you possibly know that, out of billions of people, there isn’t a sizable percentage of the population which enjoys things you find objectionable?
I cannot imagine doing any number of things which tops/bottoms do. Doesn’t mean the doing of it is irreversibly, declaratively and universally unpleasant for them.
August 29, 2011 at 2:38 am
Who said I object to it? There’s loads of things I don’t find pleasurable – eating sprouts; listening to Adele; being whipped – but that doesn’t mean I think people who feel differently are bad.
Still, I concede the point. The imagination is rich enough to translate just about any experience – yes, even consuming sprouts – into pleasure, and the fact it seems hard to comprehend doesn’t mean it is for everbody. Mea culpa. On the other hand, I think it’s fair to say that a scenario that has a woman who can only gain pleasure from an act that’s typically more pleasing for a man is liable to be a male fantasy. Or, in other words, that Deep Throat was about as liberating as a delegation from the IMF.
August 29, 2011 at 4:00 am
I read the description as an objection. My apologies, Ben.
Otherwise, no other point of contention, especially on male fantasy and the reproduction of idealized, and therefore dehumanized, women through the use of the camera angle.
We see it also in disaster and war porn, and in the pornography which is not treated as such, because the object-woman has her clothing on: see, anything which has Jennifer Aniston as the capture prize for [insert Gerard Butler, Vince Vaughan, Jason Bateman, Adam Sandler, Aaron Eckhart, Ben Affleck, Steve Zahn, Clive Owen, Ben Stiller, Jim Carrey, Jake Gyllenhaal as the instance requires it].
August 29, 2011 at 4:17 pm
Ah, yes, the eternal formula of bad directors: X overcomes Y to attract Z.
August 30, 2011 at 9:50 am
“Anyone can flout conventions; it’s flouting a bad one that’s important.”
The ‘bad’ convention for at the time was the restrictions on sexually explicit films/books/magazines, if not on sexual behaviour at the time as well. What of course it didn’t quite cover was equality of sexual freedom for women (see feminism), sexual minorities (see gay liberation) or even sexual acts (see BDSM). In other words, the hippies look sleazy now in the light of what has happened since. And since sexual conservatives of any and all political backgrounds keep wanting to ‘do something’ about sexual speech, the ‘edginess’ of transgression persists.
August 30, 2011 at 8:59 pm
Oh dear. Now I’m going to show myself up as having an interest in old smut. Oh well, here goes.
I’m not going to disagree with you on Deep Throat hardly being the high point of the “golden age”, or even that great a film. A far better example is Damiano’s film from a year later, the Devil in Miss Jones, which both has a better lead (Georgina Spelvin) and a far better storyline: depressed spinster kills herself, and faced with the prospect of going straight to hell or spending the next few days really earning her entry to damnation she opts for the latter. Spelvin was even then not exactly the obvious choice to be the star in a hardcore flick, but she can act, has charisma and it shows. Don’t take my word for it: Roger Ebert says much the same thing.
Unfortunately due to the period much of the funding did initially come either from the mob, or from disreputable characters at best; otherwise, it was directors pitched an idea to those with cash on the hip looking to earn a quick buck, and they then hired the equipment and then shot the entire thing over a weekend.
For the most part, the “golden age” was just that though: sure, it’s lead to the incredibly unsexy, dead-eyed “gonzo” we have today where every scene has to end in exactly the same way, but that’s as much down to our continental cousins in Private as it is to the Americans. There’s also no denying that there was an even nastier undercurrent running through some of the flicks shot back then; “roughies” often featured rape, incest, etc. If you take a look at a couple of trailer compilations however, like Smut Palace Insanity or 42nd Street Forever XXX, then just how much better most of the films were back then is obvious: storylines, actors who weren’t parodies of themselves, either muscle bound pinheads or surgically enhanced to the nth degree, actual body hair, and quite often, genuine eroticism combined with decent cinematography. At worst there were a lot of honourable failures, which can’t be said for the vast majority of today’s output.
August 30, 2011 at 9:44 pm
I will admit, actually, that The Devil in Miss Jones looked far more intriguing than the other films it profiled. The ending with Damiano and Spelvin looked nightmarish (and was the only indication of people trying to produce real cinema – no one’s getting off on that). I also note that Damiano wrote a satire* about execs. paying off a loan from the mob, so I’ll grant that the dude had wit.
[*] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Let_My_Puppets_Come