When porno was chic
My first exposure to adult movies was Betamax tapes of late 70s and early 80s pornography. Transferred from film, it had a grainy, low-budget, dated look–but still patently hot and sexy. Today’s adult movies have the luster, but they don’t have the artistic quality that made golden age film of yesteryear great. Time magazine’s Richard Corliss has a great commentary that longs for the good old days of adult cinema:
“There’s a lot of porn out there. But nobody’s calling it art. Or even, technically, film. (The industry has been virtually all-video for a couple of decades.) Porn is a commodity, with no more pretension to art than the most mindless kiddie show. For the weary businessman it’s just a combination Viagra and Ambien.
How drab this seems compared to the heady days of the early 70s, when ‘There was something exciting about pornography,’ as Norman Mailer says in the new documentary Inside Deep Throat. ‘It lived in some mid-world between crime and art. And it was adventurous.’ Porn films preoccupied critics, cops and the courts. Often financed by Mafia families, they attracted the crusading instincts of local, state and federal prosecutors, who shut down the films and secured the conviction of one actor. They were directed by men who could fancy themselves as artists, and starred off-Broadway actors as well as the occasional gifted ingenue —like Linda Lovelace, star of the movie that created the craze (and the phrase) ‘porno chic,’ Deep Throat.”
David :: Mar.31.2005 :: Uncategorized :: 2 Comments »
