There was a short period of time where pornography and the mainstream flirted outrageously with each other and we called it Porno Chic.
From the late 1960s to the early 1980s, pornography was out in the open more than ever before. Large theaters were showing films that were using more and more graphic sex scenes and less and less plot. It is very common to think this started with Deep Throat but actually, the first widely-distributed porn was the charmingly-named
Mona: The Virgin Nymph.
Our heroine, Mona, is engaged but she has promised her mother that she would remain a virgin until her wedding night. What's a girl to do? lots and lots of fellatio, obviously! Mona has a major oral fixation and uses it to keep not only her fiance happy but heaps and heaps of other men, too.
Two years later,
Deep Throat would come along and blow the barn doors off. It was the story of poor Linda Lovelace, unable to achieve orgasm. A doctor finally tells her that her clitoris is located in the back of her throat and the good doctor coaches her oral sex skills until she finally gets her happy ending. Major celebrities admitted to seeing the movie and the
New York Times ran an advertisement (though they shortened the name to
Throat). The movie was such a part of the cultural zeitgeist that the Watergate informant was referred to by the pseudonym "Deep Throat."
Other gems from the Porno Chic era include
Behind the Green Door, Debbie Does Dallas, Boys in the Sand, and
Score. After the election of Ronald Reagan and the emergence of the Christian Right, there was a cultural shift and porn was no longer considered a proper dinner party topic and Porno Chic came to an end.
