Smut, Skin-flicks, and Other Dirty Pictures

“Americans today consume more pornography than movies, sporting events, and video games combined.”

I have encountered this statement many times in print and on screen, but I cannot vouch for its accuracy. I do not know the original source, and if it is a proper scientific study, I do not have the expertise to evaluate its methodology. Nevertheless, my own light grasp of film and television history gives me strong suspicions that a rising trend in viewing sexually explicit images has likely occurred over the last half century, thanks to changing attitudes and new technologies.

A number of recent documentaries aim to explain growth and transformation of the “smut business” into the “adult entertainment industry” during that time, mostly through the biographies of its pioneers, both in front of and behind the camera.

Mark Mori’s Bettie Page Reveals All (2012) might surprise modern audiences. Here, for the first time, the icon of the 1950s narrates her own adventures in nudie magazines and films. Rather than a naive young girl victimized by sleazy older men, she appears  unashamed and in control; “sex positive” long before the coining of the term. Likewise, her employers, a hodge-podge of local camera clubs, short filmmakers, and magazine publishers, seem like honest, supportive, and utterly ordinary citizens of Eisenhower America, save for their openness toward human sexuality. Page did suffer one horrible sexual assault in her life, but never at the hands of the men and women who photographed and filmed her. Nor does she attribute her sudden mental breakdown and subsequent religious conversion to guilt or regret about her bare frolicking; she continues to look back upon her young life in pictures joyfully. Skip or postpone Mary Harron’s altered biopic The Notorious Bettie Page (2005) and see instead Bettie Page Reveals All instantly on Netflix, Amazon, and iTunes.

Wiktor Ericsson’s A Life in Dirty Movies (2013) portrays Joseph W. Sarno as another “pornographer” who defies stereotypes. From the 1960s through the early 2000s, Sarno inserted intense personal relationships and artful images, both modeled on the work of Swedish director Ingmar Bergman, into low-budget sex films bound for adult theaters on New York’s 42nd Street and other red light districts around the world. The results are astonishing: stories that revolve around female characters, shots of women’s faces and the sounds of their breathing as the ultimate expressions of eroticism, and depictions of social and psychological consequences, often grave, for our sexual choices. Sarno’s happy marriage of more than fifty years to collaborator Peggy Steffans is just as remarkable. The business relationships between Sarno, his stars, and producers appear healthy too. Marvel at the lovable Joe and Peggy Sarno in A Life in Dirty Movies, available instantly from Netflix.

Fenton Bailey’s and Randy Barbato’s Inside Deep Throat (2005), on the other hand, documents the transformation of softer sex films into hardcore porn. In the most infamous skin flick of the ‘70s, the worst suspicions about the flesh trade became manifest: a female ‘star’ mistreated both on camera and off, a male gaze fixated on shots of penetration and ejaculation, and entanglements with organized crime. Religious crusaders and pandering politicians may have behaved no better, raising a piece of local trash to national attention and packing theaters with audiences of every social class. The First Amendment furor in the courts may have been a noble Constitutional exercise, but one occasioned by an otherwise worthless artifact. In the end, Deep Throat’s director Gerard Damiano may have made one lasting contribution to cinema with his prediction that the success of his film would encourage Hollywood studios and television networks to begin incorporating explicit sex into their own storytelling, evaporating the distinction between porn and mainstream entertainment. Considering cable shows like Game of Thrones and international features like Blue is the Warmest Color, is Damiano’s prediction coming true? Decide for yourself after watching Inside Deep Throat on DVD from Netflix or instantly from Amazon and iTunes.

For those without access or the gumption to enter an adult movie theater, print porn remained readily available at a low price for private viewing at home. Hugh Hefner’s Playboy had provided cotton candy depictions of girl-next-door t ’n’ a since the ‘50s. Text written by and about mainstream tastemakers gave readers an alibi for ogling the Bunnies: “I only buy it for the articles.”

Barry Avrich’s Filthy Gorgeous: The Bob Guccione Story (2013) traces the rise and fall of Hefner’s rival in print and persona. In the late ‘60s, after failing to earn living as a fine art painter, Guccione began filling the pages of Penthouse with chiaroscuro images of full-frontal female nudity. A senior staff composed almost entirely of women was revolutionary for a publication of Penthouse’s size then and now. Guccione’s private life resembled less Hefner’s cultivated character of the Swinging Bachelor than the Italian patriarch in a tragic opera. A series of failed efforts to expand his publishing empire into a luxury hotels and New Age-y science (fiction) projects, as well as devastating personal losses and the public’s move away from print porn, left him a struggling painter in the end. Filthy Gorgeous is available instantly from Netflix, Amazon Prime, and iTunes.

Michael Lee Nirenberg’s Back Issues: The Story of Hustler Magazine (2014) makes clear that Larry Flynt had neither the hipster nor romantic aspirations of Hefner and Guccione. From the beginning, the irascible, Libertarian bar-owner-turned-publisher aimed to put his thumb in the eye of anyone who might deny him his freedom and success. Hustler deliberately crossed every line of mainstream good taste, landing Flynt in courtrooms, a jail cell, and finally a wheelchair, after a White supremacist shot him over a magazine spread showing interracial sex. Hustler’s most offensive and culturally valuable content, however, may have lain between the rude photos of naked women: there, caustic articles and biting cartoons exposed the excesses and hypocrisies of every social, political, and religious institution in America. This material aligns Hustler with modern publications like Charlie Hebdo, the French satirical journal championed in democratic countries around the world after the murder of its staff members by fundamentalist terrorists. Skip the whitewash of Hollywood biopic of The People vs. Larry Flynt, and, if you dare, watch Back Issues instantly on Netflix, Amazon and iTunes.

Even without the poor management and investment decisions of Guccione and Flynt, the end of print porn and adult theaters became certain with the arrival of home video and the internet. VHS tapes, then DVDs, and finally online video have brought an endless stream of sexual images into the house and onto mobile devices. There appear to be no barriers— in geography, cost, or matters of taste — between consumers in the wired parts of the world and cinema-quality images of people engaged in every conceivable sex act. 

Jill Bauer’s and Ronna Gradus’ Hot Girls Wanted (2015) explores the modern frontiers of porn. What they discover is a widespread, highly sophisticated industry that locates, lures, and exploits “barely legal” girls in the rough sex that attracts the largest market of straight, male viewers. Rather than survey this landscape from afar in a systems approach, full of experts’ talking heads citing the latest studies and statistics, the directors wisely take a personal approach, following a small group of girls from their homes in dead-end towns, through their dreams of fast money and fame in the big city, to the revelations of some — but not all — that they have stepped into a terrible trap. See who escapes and who chooses to remain in Hot Girls Wanted on Netflix instantly.

The picture of porn that develops at the end of this series of documentaries seems relatively clear. The Mom-and-Pop era, whose evils uptight ‘50s and ‘60s America might have exaggerated, gave way to hardcore films and magazines in the ‘70s that more often met the accusations of immorality and criminality leveled by critics. Since the ‘80s and the development of new home-bound devices, remorseless capitalism has made that exploitation ever more efficient and commonplace. In this way, adult entertainment has become like other modern industries—food, health care, energy: economies of scale and increasingly sophisticated technologies have produced cheap, convenient, but unsatisfying versions of genuine products and services at enormous costs to laborers and the environment. These systems create enormous quantities, but less quality, and often at people’s and the planet’s expense. In this way, Hot Girls Wanted bears a strong resemblance to other cultural warning documentaries like Food, Inc., Tapped, or even An Inconvenient Truth. And the remedies for the evils of Big Porn may be similar too. As much as the internet empowers large businesses to do more harm, it also gives smaller operations, who count their ethics as important as their profits, additional opportunities to find like-minded customers. A “Slow Porn” movement sounds a little silly, but at the very least, people of all sexual orientations and interests today might begin to treat their adult entertainment like any other product they plan to consume: know the source, support the most reputable providers, and shun the worst.