Golden Age Gooning

Is a bird in the hand really worth two in the bush? Unpacking our obsession with 1970's and 80's pornography

There is something I’ve been avoiding- and I apologize for it.

When I first started this substack, something Matt Starr suggested was to do reviews of old porn films I liked- sort of a sommelier’s suggestion of the finest vintages in my extensive cellar. It was a fun idea- something sexy for paid subscribers, more fun than the political history stuff I usually lean towards (it’s really amazing how I can take something like the porn industry and make it boring).

There’s a romance to the 1970’s and 80’s era pornography years, when the adult and mainstream industries worked in tandem. Big budgets, custom soundtracks, extensive plotlines, theatrical releases- as a porn script writer, that’s the dream!

And people love porn’s Golden Age. I can hardly go a week without someone asking if I’ve seen Boogie Nights (I haven’t and I probably won’t), I see Deepthroat’s poster graphic on magnets and t-shirts, and Playboy’s recent vintage rebrand is doing numbers.

Interestingly, I find that Golden Age releases seem to skirt past some of the criticism that mainstream, new millennium porn films run up against. When I talk to people about porn history, I often navigate the belief that it’s gotten ethically worse- that pornography’s depiction and treatment of women peaked in the Golden Age alongside the soundtracks. That the women were realistic and all-natural, fucking with their average-sized tits and their reasonable-volume orgasms.

I watch a lot of vintage porn- I really like it. But I wouldn’t say it’s a morally righteous endeavor to like Debbie Does Dallas more than Stepmoms in Heat Volume 6.

Actually, the reason I’ve been dragging my feet on the vintage porn reviews is because it’s ethically complicated in a way I’m having trouble parsing.

It’s almost impossible to avoid John Holmes, for example. Do I gloss over the fact that he deliberately concealed his HIV positive status in his last two films, knowingly exposing his co-stars? Or his extensive allegations of abuse from previous partners? How do I work in his association with the Wonderland murders?

What about Linda Lovelace, who went on to write an entire book about her negative experiences in the industry, then became a born-again Christian, then later looped back to criticize her treatment within the anti-porn, second-wave feminist’s movement?

Even just on a film-to-film, take-the-art-not-the-artist level, my own taste in vintage pornography reflects an ability to look past problematic themes and context that I’m not exactly proud of. For example, my favourite film of the era- Hot and Saucy Pizza Girls- has a scene where… how do I put this… there’s a slapstick rape with a giant chicken, played for laughs.

I can’t just send that out as a recommendation and close my laptop!

It’s funny to see people get up in arms on the belief that internet pornography is encouraging or exacerbating taboo, when most vintage films have at least one nonconsensual scene, an underage character and sometimes, if you’re lucky, women fucking themselves with glass coke bottles.

I have my own reasons why I can justify and compartmentalize vintage pornography- the same way people justify consuming mainstream, non-pornographic media from the era despite widely acknowledged industry abuse. Or maybe it’s representative of a more general moral failing of mine, I won’t argue against that. I’m not going to die on the slapstick giant chicken rape hill.

But I think it’s interesting that old porn gets a pass specifically from people otherwise put off by the industry and its products.

What is it about old porn that gets the rose coloured glasses not afforded to the other films in my collection?

At my most generous- and this still isn’t very- I think it might just be… the bushes? I remember navigating a conversation with a friend’s sister about how she thought pornography was inherently misogynistic, but that old porn- magazines and old films- were not. When pressed as to why, the only real justification she gave was “they had bushes.”

While anecdotal, I think this is a surprisingly honest revelation and reflective of- quite genuinely- how a lot of women (and some men) feel. A bald vagina has become a symbol of everything wrong with pornography- its unrealistic body standards, its focus on youth, its terrorism of the moisturizer industry. Sporting a bush has become adjacent to bra-burning in its ability to signify women’s freedom from the “male gaze.”

At my slightly less generous, I just don’t believe people are watching these movies. I think they are interacting with the 1970’s and 1980’s eras of pornography the same way they’re interacting with the 2010’s and 2020’s- that is to say almost not at all, but very loudly.

The posters look cool, the women look “normal.” That’s enough.

I love vintage porn, but I’m resentful when it’s given this moral high ground over current mainstream. The adult industry has been setting the standard for consent conversations, IP ownership rights and education for years- and while there’s lots more to do, studio pornography is at an ethical all-time high. If you want to engage with pornography in a way you can feel good about, there are thousands of options for you to do so (and many of them include bushes!)

I don’t think everything we do has to be ethical- certainly not everything I do is ethical. But I think it’s important to understand ethics, and maintain a high standard for what qualifies. Under my own definition of ethics, engaging with vintage porn “ethically” is nearly impossible. That doesn’t mean I don’t watch it- I do, in much the same way I eat Nestle chocolate and buy cheap makeup. Then later, I turn the lights off before I leave the house, and I go to demonstrations and buy my clothes second-hand. Everything in life is a back and forth- I just think it’s good to know what’s a push and what’s a pull.

To me, the pedestaling of Golden Age porn is yet another example of my biggest issue with the majority of the criticism around pornography; that it’s largely based around aesthetics instead of looking at pornography as a labour product.

Would I like to see more bushes in mainstream studio porn? Absolutely, I’m an appreciator of natural topography. But I think performers having legal rights over their image, safer standardized testing practices, and extensive consent exercises is pretty cool, too. Cooler, even. And I can’t stress enough that you can still get bushes in modern pornography. Just throw it into the search and pay for your porn.

Vote for bushes- with your dollar!

Now, while old porn doesn’t deserve the free pass I see it get- I still think it’s still worth watching, and appreciating. Pornography- like any industry under capitalism- is complicated, and interacting with it involves compartmentalization to some degree. There are amazing performances, storylines, scores, costumes- masterpieces of film in any genre or parental guidance rating. Some of my favourite movies of all time are from the Golden Age of Porn.

But it’s important to remember that good art does not necessarily make good ethics.

So all in all, this is a long and complicated announcement that yes, I will be doing old porn reviews. But I need you guys to get really good at recognizing nuance and holding complicated realities really fast. Promise?

And I’m not doing Deep Throat (but maybe I’ll do something about why I’m not doing Deep Throat).