The 12th June marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Deep Throat. Often seen as a breakthrough in pornographic cinema, the film is sited as one of the major productions of the Porno Chic era, where porn was openly discussed, reviewed and enjoyed not just by men, but also women, many of whom regarded it as an extension of the sexual revolution and a branch of second wave feminism. It may not have been the first film in what some describe as the Golden Age of Porn, but it is perhaps the most well known, thanks to the high media profile of star Linda Lovelace (who over time went from pro-pornography advocator to anti porn campaigner), its high box office gross and subsequent legal battles.
Awarded a certain level of kudos for having a plot and relatively high production values, by today's standard it's still a fairly cheap affair and one that plays the themes for laughs as much as anything The concept is admittedly ludicrous, Lovelace plays a sexually frustrated women whose clitorus is uniquely located in her throat, making the eponymous deep throat action her only means of climax. Cue blow job-a-rama for the best part of an hour. While there are arguments that it explores issues of female liberation, in reality you're left in no doubt of the motivation that went into creating the character - a woman who needs no other stimulation than that of performing oral sex on on a man. Ironic? Hmmm, if it is, I doubt everyone is in on the joke and I've always thought it was given far more props than it deserves in this respect. After all, its main aim is still arousal and there is the risk that hard core sex scenes are going to bury any sort of commentary, especially in the light hearted manner that Deep Throat approaches the subject - I mean, how many people are realistically going to be questioning the complexities human sexual compatibility when the are getting their rocks off to chaotic Dr Harry Reems banging his nurse over a table, or Lovelace introducing the masses to the money shot? (Actually, one or two it seems, as the 'dangers' of promoting a clitoral orgasm - yes, the kind that a woman doesn't need a man to achieve - where just some of the issues raised during one of it's obscenity cases). But that reactionary point aside, the film remains about titillation first and foremost and I'm not going to try and lend it any more depth than that.
So if Deep Throat isn't quite the fountain of profundity its supporters would have us believe, and is simply a dirty movie to be enjoyed as such, is this necessarily a bad thing? In theory, perhaps not. Adult cinema for responsible adults, in the regulated theatre environment of the time, could have been a viable reality, were it not for the meat grinding process behind any porno sausage. It's incredibly hard to take the 'harmless' approach when you know more about Lovelace's feelings on her involvement in the film. Bullied into pornography by an overbearing and violent husband, any discussion of 'liberation' is soured by the fact that you are witnessing by her own admission some years later, rape on film - and it was due to present day knowledge of this, that I chose not to re-watch Deep Throat for the purposes of this article. For despite the cool credibility afforded the film at the time, the seedy flip side of the industry that produced it is never completely out of the picture. I want to believe the film makers of the era's claims that there was a genuine desire to explore and combine straight cinema and real sex. I do believe that erotica, nudity and sexual acts (yes, even the unsimulated kind) can have a place in cinema, but the objectification of women in porn makes this ideal harder to realise. Mob money (from the same vein as drug dealing and prostitution), the lack of female talent and input behind the camera, the reduced interest by women's groups after the initial hype - all these issues and more would prove unrecoverable stumbling blocks against achieving any real equality. It was then, as is now, very much a boy's club, and watching the 2005 documentary Inside Deep Throat, there is a noticeable conflict between the footage of the film makers reflecting with an almost joyous nostalgia, with those segments from Lovelace's family and friends recounting her relationship with Chuck Traynor, her subsequent discrimination when attempting to move away from the Lovelace image and her eventual death, broke, and seemingly unable to make peace with her exploitation, both at the hand's of the industry and the anti porn lobby.
In cinematic terms however, it is perhaps best to view Deep Throat's legacy as one of the driving forces in nudging 70s studio cinema in taking further risks; Deep Throat, along with The Devil in Miss Jones and Behind the Green Door, made money at a time that mainstream production was looking far from financially healthy. Suggesting a public appetite open to alternatives to a sanitised Hollywood, they did produce some genuine cross over contenders. In fact, The Devil in Miss Jones that followed a year later from the same director, is perhaps one the finest examples a porno's story being more fulfilling that the sexual content, and demonstrates that films containing graphic sex scenes can achieve a higher subtext. A genuinely successful grasp at merging the mainstream and adult cinema styles, the film follows the fate of a middle aged virgin sent to limbo for the sin of suicide, who bargains a chance to return to earth and earn her place in hell by engaging in numerous sexual encounters. For the most part an utterly un-erotic affair (I may not be the target audience for this I understand, but I've heard others observe this too), it can be harrowingly bleak, and is definitely not for the faint hearted, but perhaps because of the detachment from the obvious turn ons, it succeeds in raising some interesting questions regarding sin, punishment, damnation, and the pursuit of gratification. Georgina Spelvin, as the titular Miss Jones also gives a fantastic performance, in what is an essentially heartbreaking role, lending the film further credibility. Miss Jones showed the potential for merging of industries, and had the reception from the authorities been as warm as some of the critics and movie going public, there might have been a very different porno industry by the late seventies; one that could potentially have been regulated and monitored and its performers protected far more than they were at the time. Whether it still could have survived the video and AIDS age in such a form remains open to speculation; I suspect not, but as an experiment of the early 70s, it was an interesting failure.
But where to go from there? Did pornography as adult cinema open the flood gates for more extreme taboo breaking? Was sex simply enough? From hard core roughies such as Waterpower and Forced Entry, to more tongue in cheeks films such as Super Vixens, the porn and sexploitation industries went on to explore rape and violence more openly that ever before; but even more mainstream efforts that are today revered as classics, films such as Clockwork Orange (as early as 1970), Taxi Driver and Mean Streets, all touch on the violent face of mysogony, perhaps not for the same kind of kicks (on contrary, they are condemning of the practices), but they still highlight a preoccupation that is perhaps reflective of 1970s cultural mindset. The sexual revolution of the 1960s and the women's movement, was followed by a period of more cynical, hard edged, aggressive rebellion, that marked a stark contrast to the love-in of the hippy set. In the US, men were drafted and returned home jaded, or worse, mentally and physically damaged by the traumas of war. The rape scenes in Forced Entry are spliced with horrific images of the Vietnam war, making a correlation between man's brutality against man, and that against women. In many ways the 1970s is a decade characterised by violence against women on film, especially in the B movies and exploitation genres, but also as a shadow cast on so many other films - all the hate, resentment, feelings of disenfranchisement and social detachment make their way on to the big screen. Hell, it's surely no co-incidence that from the mid 70s onwards we really start to see the blossoming of the slasher movie, where young women, often those of a sexually liberated nature, are sliced up good and proper by some improbable boogie man. I think it would be overly simplistic to say that the porn of the early 70s inspired this, but I certainly think it helped pave the way for a new type of female victim, one whose new found sexuality could be used against her.
Rebecca Volley
Interesting piece. A great read. I don't agree with everything in it, the roots of the roughies for example pre-date the 70s. As do the slashers if you want to take it back to things like Psycho and Peeping Tom. But I think the woman in sexual peril thing has been a part of genre fiction in all forms for quite some time. If you go back to the covers of pulp magazines in the 30s, you'd often have scantily clad women in bondage, being leered over by a big bad intent on rape and torture. I don't think the extremes in some cinema were always a reaction against the woman's movement. I think it's partly taking imagery that had always been part of genre fiction and using the fact that the limitations that were imposed on depictions of sex and violence were being lifted during the 70s. That borderline rape fantasy was part of, for lack of a better term, "women's fiction" as well. If you think about all the old bodice-rippers and even the imagery in mainstream romantic cinema where the heroine would slap the hero and he'd grab her and kiss her and she'd fight for a while before melting in his arms. I think a lot of the reason that imagery was used so much was because of the taboos on women showing sexual interest, if the man is overpowering women to an extent, it's the man showing the desire rather than the woman. But it gives off the weirdest messages that can then so easily be read as that hateful thing about the woman coming to love the assault.
ReplyDeleteI also have problems with the credibility of Lovelace when it comes to saying how much she hated doing the film. I think she was a very damaged individual who would say what would get her the most attention from whichever side she was with at that time. So when she was doing porn it was the greatest and most liberating thing ever. When she wasn't doing it she was abused and forced into. I actually believe that she fully believed both those statements when she made them, but the real truth about it has been lost somewhere down the line.
Oh I know the 70s films weren't the first to touch on the subject and that's why I used the term 'blossoming' rather than start of the slasher, when it became less of a niche interest or underground thing to show these images in more detail and in what was relatively mainstream environment, same for the roughies. There's no way these films would have had as big an audience even ten years prior, as you say, the boundaries were lifted.
ReplyDeleteI do think that the 70s slashers were a response to a new kind of female image though; after the liberation, came the 'know your place' mentality. Have sex and face the consequences - it wasn't just about being in peril, it was a peril of your own making (in Psycho it's there, but rather than directly blaming sex, it's theft which put's Janet Leigh in danger) and I'm sure a certain right wing conservative audience would have approved of such retribution at the time. As Craven points out in Scream, keep your clothes on if you want to survive. We really don't see the same kind of 'responsibility' payback being visited on men until much later.
As for Lovelace, I agree with much of what you say, but I think there's enough evidence to support her claims of Traynor's violence. Even Marilyn Chambers has acknowledged that he wasn't opposed to raising a hand or fist to a woman, and there's nothing to suggest she harboured the same resentment towards him. Lovelace just strikes me as a tragic figure and probably someone who was coerced into porn, to regret it later in life.
I think with the roughies, the understanding that there was an audience for feature length films with explicit sex scenes helped. Before that, it was mostly loops. And the loops catered for everything. You have to remember that this was a time when you had a certain European company openly making and distributing child sex material, all with the justification that they didn't make any child-rape material, it was "gentle" stuff. It really was a time of anything goes, because the barriers in the mainstream had come down, and it kind of led to a running wild mentality. Stuff like Forced Entry and Waterpower still weren't getting a huge audience, they still flew under the radar, same for later work like The Taming of Rebecca. The really nasty stuff still hit the smaller audiences. But the flipside is that the attitudes in more mainstream stuff wasn't exactly enlightened, or even a case of being porn for couples. But I also think that much of what was being made was an attempt to make art, because there was a genuine belief in some circles that porn and mainstream would cross over, which is why you get films like Inserts.
ReplyDeleteWith regards to sex and the slasher, there definitely was the last female stereotype, and she was the virginal one. But honestly, I've never been convinced it's all about some kind of regressive sense of morality. In some cases, without a doubt. But there's still that hangover of the woman in peril. And I think you have the situation where you're given a female lead, because of the basic strength and size comparison to the killer, going with the belief of the time that a woman couldn't match a lunatic man in a battle of strength, so you get the set-pieces where she tries to escape. Female lead, likely to have female friends. They're going to get killed to heighten the sense of danger for the lead. Someone is at their most vulnerable when they're naked, so let's kill them after they've had sex. Like I say, I don't doubt that in some cases it really is about punishing them for having sex, but I think it's a bit more complex than that. Plus, horror films were often aimed at teenage guys, throwing in sex means throwing in nudity as well.
(in Psycho it's there, but rather than directly blaming sex, it's theft which put's Janet Leigh in danger)
I'd say sex is definitely an element in Psycho. The very first shot of the film puts the audience in the position of playing voyeur on Leigh after sex. Plus it's not the theft that leads to her death, it's her sexuality. It's the theft that puts her in the motel, but the killer doesn't strike because of the money, that's not even known about. The killer strikes after seeing Leigh naked getting ready to shower. I think there's definitely a link between the penis and the knife in Psycho.
I fully believe that Traynor was a violent douche. But I don't really buy that Lovelace was coerced into porn. I think she was young, naive, willing to do it, and then when she turned against porn, she turned against it to the extreme that because she now hated it, she had to have been forced into it. Which is where I have problems. The violent relationship with Traynor run alongside this, and I think some of the stuff she did was probably more at his insistence, like the dog stuff. But even then, there have been sources close to them that have claimed that Lovelace was into the dog stuff away from that loop. But yeah, fully believe he was a violent dick. Ready to believe she did some stuff she didn't want to do. But all of it? Not convinced.
BTW when I referred to Psycho, I did so in the full knowledge of sexual undertones, I was making the point more that Hitchcock used a different, less obvious means of inferring, rather than being so blatant. That's one of the worst things about the remake, where Bates pulls the front off himself. I mean it's as if subtext is a lost art, and if you have to ram it down our throats (ooo, in keeping with the topic or what?) that much, then you've got question your success.
ReplyDeleteBut in Psycho I also think that Leigh's death is less about her sexuality, and more of Bates' reaction to it. Bates is relatively fleshed out for a killer, far more than someone like Michael Myers, as a result we think about the killings, his victims and his actions far more. It adds more gravity to everyone involved. In something like Halloween (one of my favourite films I might add, I'm not opposed to slashers) you have a killer so detached and monstrous that his motivation is put down to intrinsic evil, almost to the point that you feel he can't help himself. His victims almost feel like canon fodder and utterly disposable - more like feeding time at the zoo where people gather to gawp at the monster; the men and women (mostly women) he disposes of are objectified as pieces of meat, lambs to the slaughter so to speak. As you say, this was aimed at teenage boys, so T&A aside, there's some less than healthy themes on the treatment of women running under that,
Getting back to Lovelace, I suppose it depends on what your definition of coercion is. Given that both parties are now dead, we'll probably never know what went on behind closed doors.
ReplyDeleteThat's one of the worst things about the remake, where Bates pulls the front off himself. I mean it's as if subtext is a lost art, and if you have to ram it down our throats (ooo, in keeping with the topic or what?) that much, then you've got question your success.
ReplyDeleteOn the one hand, I agree. On the other, I fully believe Hitchcock would have taken it further if he could have got away with it. Look at the rape/murder in Frenzy a decade later. I think it was more the morality of the time that restrained him rather than any nods to good taste.
But in Psycho I also think that Leigh's death is less about her sexuality, and more of Bates' reaction to it.
I agree, but to expand that to its logical conclusion. We spy on Leigh following her pre-marital sex. Later she runs away after stealing money, then gets punished while naked. The punishment isn't for the theft, but it's not too big a leap to see it as punishment with a phallic object for a perceived lack of morality. Now I don't agree with that reading myself, but I can see how some would make it.
With the Halloween comments, I agree on the lack of development of the victims, but at heart it's no different to Bond taking out rival spies, war films where rows of enemies are mowed down, cowboys taking out Indians, etc. Someone is set up as being the other, and the hero can destroy them without morality entering the situation. It's the thing that was mocked in the first Austin Powers. The only difference here is that it's the characters who the audience are supposed to be rooting for that are the faceless masses. But it goes back even further than Halloween, if you think about the way a film like Texas Chainsaw Massacre treated its victims, but with TCM, it's made explicit that the killers have no interest in sex. I think you do have films where the teens punished are male as well as female. Think of the original Friday the 13th, both male and female campers are punished for sex, and it's actually a moral choice by the killer. I don't want to give away the killer's identity, but the punishments are stated as being for having sex. I think the problem is that with all genres you get hacks jumping on the bandwagon and making films based on the overt themes of the films that came before, but with no understanding of what's actually going on, so it all comes across as being about punishing "bad" girls, when it's not always the case. Of course, there are the conservative film-makers who do take the punishing women approach and run with it.
Rape is a topic that runs far back in horror literature. I've been doing a little research on horror short stories, to make sure I'm not forgetting anything when I put together my horror list. I've been reading the synopsis for a lot of short stories, just to jog my memory, and the amount that focus on rape, or sexual punishment, even going back as far as the 30s and 40s, is staggering. I think its because of the taboo aspect of it.