Deep Throat Shallow Plot

Before you could sit at home and watch porn on the internet, people went to stag parties and peep shows to view hardcore sex acts.  There were some movie theaters that showed XXX rated films, but these were very short, they had no plot and the patrons of these movie theaters attended wearing raincoats.  The movie Deep Throat went into wide release, on June 30, 1972, which was right after the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. burglary took place on June 17, 1972.  This Watergate scandal was reported in the Washington Post and the confidential whistle blower who did not want to be identified called himself Deep Throat.  The Watergate reporting by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein exposed a cover-up behind the burglary of the Democratic headquarters and this brought down President Nixon in 1974.

The movie became ‘pornographic chic’ as the word got around that you could bring a date with you and have an artsy date-night experience going to see this stag film.  This movie came along at exactly the right time, when hardcore filmmaking was making a bid to enter the mainstream market, when the free love sexual revolution of the 60’s had already changed many attitudes and this philosophy was heading into suburbia, and as the first-wave feminism was demanding that its roar be heard involving women’s rights which included the right to achieve sexual pleasure on their own terms.  Truman Capote advocated that you shouldn’t miss it and Norman Mailer as well as Barbara Walters admitted to going to see it and Johnny Carson talked about it on his show.

Deep Throat was different, it had a decent production budget using quality film stock, sets, costumes, music and moderately talented actors.  The big draw was Lovelace’s particular oral sex skill, which the entire plot of the film was constructed around.  It featured an appeal for women advocating sexual freedom, because Lovelace character’s was seeking the right to derive sexual fulfillment by finding a lover who could give her a clitoral orgasm.  The medical oddity of a misplaced clitoris being located in the back of her throat, catered to a male fantasy as well.

Linda Lovelace, was a woman frustrated because of her hugely energetic sex life left her unsatisfied, so she asks her friend Helen for advice.  After a sex party doesn’t provide any help, Helen advises Linda to visit a doctor.  Linda seeks medical help and the doctor notices that Linda’s clitoris is located in her throat.  The doctor informs her that she has an unusual birth defect as her clitoris is mistakenly located at the back of her throat, but there is a very simple remedy, which the doctor, and various other men, proceed to demonstrate.  The doctor comes up with this unorthodox solution that she work for him as a therapist, so she can make the best of her situation.  She performs her particular technique of oral sex which is known as ‘deep throat’ on various men, until she finds the one to marry.  Meanwhile, the doctor continues to have sex with his nurse.  Deep Throat was taken seriously, and Deep Throat did well at the box office for a hardcore movie, but according to today’s standards, I feel the plot was shallow.