The Decade of Decadence #2: Porn Chic

A few months ago, I published a post called "When Movies Were Gratuitous" which dealt with the fact that movies during the 1970's routinely contained explicit and gratuitous nudity.  By 1984, sexual content, especially the gratuitous kind, declined sharply.  That post had some very long, in depth comments which tackled the issue of why this occurred which really made me reflect on the subject further.

You might ask: Isn't there better things to do with your time than wonder why films show less T&A? Sure. But if you're a regular reader of Retrospace, you know there's a certain pleasure in looking at trends and cultural climates of the times. It's a history lesson in popular culture - and the great thing about studying the past is that it sheds light on aspects of the present day. Plus, I like to get inside the times, read the newspapers, watch the movies, browse the catalogs - not just read dates and lines in a textbook.  And like it or not, if you want to get inside the 1970's, you're bound to get a little dirty.

Dirty indeed.  The 1970's were truly the golden age of the porno.  This is the only time in the history of cinema where pornographic films were semi-legitimized. "Porno chic" was in full effect - Behind the Green Door was shown at Cannes and Debbie Does Dallas and Deep Throat were raking in untold millions, and big name celebs like Jack Nicholson and Johnny Carson were in line to see these films.  Legislation was extremely permissive at this time, and pornographic theaters and bookstores were popping up everywhere.

Deep Throat was released in 1972 and was made for about $23,000.  The movie quickly became the most profitable movie of all time (and still is today), pulling in over $600,000,00!  In the 1970's, it was a commonly expressed belief that the porn industry would actually meld with Hollywood. Bob Hope was even making jokes about it: "I went to see Deep Throat cause I'm fond of animal pictures. I thought it was about giraffes." [insert laugh track]

Of course, it's not as if there were no obstacles to pornography whatsoever.  There were tons of lawsuits filed against the so-called smut peddlers, and it was an uphill battle for guys like Larry Flynt. In fact there was actually LESS pornography than there is now ($57 billion annually worldwide)- the big difference is that it was more blatant, the shame was gone. No more anonymous males in trench coats at the Pussycat Theater - now it was trendy and hip. "Porn chic" made it cool. Today, two-thirds of all hotel movie purchases are for pornos [source], but it's not the same - the sexual revolution was thrilling and controversial in the seventies; today, it's just a drab commodity no one really wants to acknowledge in the red states. (yawn)

So, what happened? A combination of things in the early 1980's ended the Golden Age of Porn:
(1) VHS recorders allowed people to watch pornography in the privacy of their home
(2) AIDS ended the notion of hedonism without consequences
(3) The cultural climate became much less openly permissive

If you have something to add to this discussion, please drop a comment, I'd love to hear your take.

[Note:] In 1968, the MPAA created the G, M, and R ratings - the "X" rating was not trademarked. Movies that fell outside these ratings literally gave themselves an X rating. There's a big difference between a movie like Midnight Cowboy and Deep Throat, although both were rated X. Subsequently, the NC-17 rating was developed by the MPAA in 1991 to help the situation.