"Deep Throat" - was oral sex really such a hetero-revelation?

Cafe Society
41

Oral sex: no. Deepthroating: yes.

As an inexperienced teenager in 1972 (although I didn’t actually see the film until a few years later) I knew about oral sex, but neither I nor any of my friends, including much more experienced grown-ups, had heard about the deepthroat technique. I grant that the number of people with whom I discussed the film is a small sample, but the main reaction from every one of them was disbelief that it was even possible. (Sadly, to this day, I’ve never been the recipient of the technique.)

These days six-year olds know all about the most advanced sexual techniques, but in the 1970s, pre-Internet, pre-DVD, pre-VCR, pre-Hustler, sexual practices much beyond the missionary position were shrouded in mystery for a large portion of the population. There just weren’t many ways to find out about them, unless you had an experienced, imaginative, and willing partner.

BTW, there’s a documentary called Inside Deep Throat that does a pretty good job of explaining the unusual cultural/political landscape of the early 1970s that allowed Deep Throat to become the amazing landmark it did.

42

It’s a mouth on a cock. That’s oral sex by definition. The cock being erect is not part of the definition. If you don’t think it’s sexual, would you kiss your grandfather’s cock? What is this place coming to when people actually want to argue about whether a mouth on a cock is a pornographic image. Of course it is. Why expend any energy in denying it. It’s a more exlicit image thn is normally even seen on Skinemax. It’s a softcore image (no pun intended), but it’s still pornographic by any reasonable definition. You certainly aren’t going to see on network TV.

This is not the Pit, by the way, so you don’t need to insult my wife.

43

[Hank Hill] Oh,* Gawd*! Do we have to drag him down in this gutter? If anybody mentions Tom Landry, I’m gonna kick thier ass! I tell you what![/Hank Hill]

44

Edit: Nevermind.

45

Don’t know if anyone believes her now but I’ve been doing a lot of reading on porn/feminism in the 80s, the Meese Commission and all that, and apparently a lot of feminists did take her quite seriously. Her co-stars in the film seem to think she was pretty willing, though.

46

Lovelace never claimed that the director or her co-stars abused her, but that her boyfriend/suitcase pimp Chuck Traynor was abusive. The anti-porn folks ignored that Traynor was not involved in the film in any manner.

47

She did say that every time we watch “Deep Throat,” we’re watching her being raped, though.

48

AIUI, that’s because Traynor forced her into the porn business in the first place. And AFAIK, none of her co-performers knew that she was pretty much there against her will. I’m not trying to say her point’s not valid–just that people who watched it when it came out, when (I assume) nobody other than Lovelace and Traynor knew the real story, shouldn’t feel bad just for watching it at the time.

49

As she’s now dead, does that mean we’re watching necrophilia?

I’ve seen “Inside Deep Throat” and Harry Reems was quite adamant that when Traynor wasn’t around Linda was happy and enthusiastic, and that the director contrived to send Traynor on some errand every time he rolled film. Sadly, the film didn’t have any input from Carol Conners, who played the blonde nurse. After she left porn, Conners became a competitive body-builder and raised a family including daughter Thora Birch.

50

<Tom Lehrer>
To be smut it must
be without redeeming social importance.
</Tom>

51

There is a book by Joe Bob Briggs (yes, he got the use of the name back) on significant cult movies, with a chapter on Deep Throat. Link.
It seems a lot of Deep Throat was assembled from loops, with the Lovelace plot used to stitch it together. No one expected it to be big, but for some reason it became acceptable to see. I saw it as a fundraiser for the Young Democrats at the U of Illinois.

It’s not at all clear that Lovelace was truly coerced, Briggs gives some evidence against. It was a very useful position to take in the '80s, especially after she was born again.

As for the question, I certainly don’t recall being shocked by oral sex in the movie, or surprised.

52

Abusive, absolutely. The other two sentences are probably wrong.

The Other Hollywood, by Legs McNeil & Jennifer Osborne, has a chapter on Deep Throat, all of quotes by participants, some from their interviews, some from older newspapers or books.

Gerard Damiano, Deep Throat’s director, says flatly that “In Chuck’s mind, anybody who did look at her was grounds for taking Linda back to the hotel and beating the shit out of her… The next day she’s appear on the set black-and-blue.”

If there’s any doubt, Chuck Traynor himself says: “Did I beat her up? Well, yeah, I wouldn’t bullshit anybody.”

That she was in an abusive relationship with her husband isn’t the same thing as saying that any sex she had on camera was rape. The testimony from everybody else is that she enjoyed making the movie, liked Harry Reems, and was more comfortable on set doing sex than speaking lines. Reems says this was true in earlier loops she did with him as well.

It’s probably not true when she was forced to give blow jobs to the Mafia guy that financed the movie to show him what deepthroating was. A new variation on the casting couch.

It’s also not true that Traynor “was not involved in the film in any manner.” He worked the mafia connection to get the money for the movie and pimped out Lovelace when Butchie Peraino wanted a blonde with big tits to star. They drove down from New York to Miami in the same car. Traynor was the production manager for the movie. Everybody hated him and the director kept sending him on errands to get him away from the set so that Lovelace could relax, but he was intimately involved in every way but intimately. (He couldn’t get it up on set, says Damiano.)

A number of people also give opinions for why *Deep Throat * took off. Al Goldstein claims credit for publishing a review in his *Screw * magazine that called it the best porn film ever made. Other more mainstream papers reviewed it favorably. One person says that it was only doing so-so until Mayor Lindsay did a porn crack down and confiscated the print. That made it a media sensation, and everybody lined up to see it after an injunction got the print released. Sammy Davis Jr. takes credit because he rented out a sleazy theater in Santa Monica, cleaned it up, and hired limos to take all his show biz friends there.

My favorite theory is from an FBI agent who was investigating the organized crime/porn connection. He says it’s because J. Edgar Hoover died in 1972. If he had been alive he would have gone berserk and made sure that every theater was prosecuted.

Linda Lovelace, curiously, says it was because it was a comedy, but another early porn filmmaker says she’s an idiot for thinking it was because of anything but the deepthroating.

I still say it was the right film at the right time. Deepthroating and comedy, both.

53

You left out the most important word!

*To be smut
it must be *ut
terly ** without
redeeming social importance

Daniel

54

It was Gwen Stacy, actually. Clearly she was a harlot who deserved to be thrown off a bridge. :wink:

55

I was all set to post a rebuttal, claiming that namby-pamby good girl Gwen Stacy would never suggest going to a “dirty movie,” but (assuming that IMDB vetted the entry) IMDB backs up that it was Gwen. Oh Gwen, you dirty, dirty girl.

56

See, I don’t think it’s obvious that it is “a mouth on a cock.” It’s a mouth near a cock, which could perhaps be touching it, but could also perhaps not be. Sorry, but in a bazillion years you will never convince me that this particular image is in any way porn.

I don’t think that wiping shit off your ass is sexual but I wouldn’t want to do that to my grandfather either. Nor would I pick his nose, even though I don’t think it’s sexual. I wouldn’t smack him on the butt playfully as he walked by, which I would do to my son, for example. What is appropriate to do with one person vs another has no bearing on whether it is porn. And I wouldn’t be at all surprised to see an image like that on something like PBS, if you consider that network tv.

I’m doubly sorry to hear that your wife is a “past lover” though I realize sexless marriages are somewhat common. (And yes, I kid, but you did leave that wide open.)