Porn classic 'Deep Throat' explored as a cultural milestone
This little 4-foot-10 Jewish grandmother, she lived with her husband, Sy. Sy and Sonia Schwartz. She comes in, closes my door and says to me, `Sy and I saw it.' I go, `Saw what?' `We saw it; we went.' `You went to what?' `Deep Throat.' `You gotta be kidding.' `No, we stood in line,' she said. `We went.' `Where?' `Hollywood.' `Well, what'd you think?' And she said, `It was quite a film.' I said, `Why did you go see it?' `Well, everyone was talking about it. ... '
"My grandmother," Grazer says, delighted both by the absurdity and the point it helps him make, "turned me on to Deep Throat."
- Brian Grazer
I've never seen Deep Throat, and I don't imagine that I ever will. The fact that it was a porn film holds little significance for me. What does interest me is that a movie that by all reports was so mediocre in plot and production values had such an impact on American culture.
Arguably one of the most profitable movies in history, Deep Throat seved as a harbinger for changing sexual mores, the reality of AIDS, and the open and easy availability of pornography for the masses.
Porn has gradually morphed from taboo to a ubiquitousness that can make the girls of the Vivid Video porn empire seem hardly more threatening than the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders used to be.
There are two ways to think about Deep Throat's role in this.
One is to dismiss the film as an aberration, a death rattle of the libertine '60s. It was the first porn film to draw mass audiences, including many married couples, titillated by the kooky theme, the obscenity prosecutions that nagged the film in city after city, and the film's relentless celebration of an act unmentionable in polite company. By 1976, Sony introduced the VCR, making private porn convenient and soon destroying the more communal experience of adult theaters. Within another decade the AIDS epidemic made the casual-sex ethos of Deep Throat a distant memory. Today many Americans get their porn on a computer, spending $1 billion a year on 100,000 sites.
The other way to look at the legacy of the film -- the way Grazer, Bailey and Barbato look at it -- is to marvel at the way it shattered sexual mores and to ruminate about the connection between that revolution and today's porn chic. When you see a porn actress running for governor, when you find hard-core porn routinely offered on televisions in middle-brow chain hotel rooms, when a sports talk-radio host invites female porn stars to make NFL picks -- when porn is that common, the filmmakers suggest, thank Deep Throat for helping to set the tone.
One could argue at some length whether or not this is a good thing, but the reality is that things have changed. Sometimes the biggest changes come from the most unlikely of places. I doubt Linda Lovelace ever in her wildest dreams thought that one cheesy porn film would cement her place as an icon in American pop culture. I suppose we all deserve to be known for one talent, eh??
