In 1972 or 1973, I went to the circus with my friend and afterward her father picked us up. We were 9 or 10 years old, and while we had been enjoying the circus, her father and his new girlfriend had gone to see the porno Deep Throat, which at the time was a groovy thing to do. The film was a phenomenon. News accounts depicted couples cheerfully waiting in front of theaters in broad daylight, a signal of their open-mindedness. The New York Review of Books described the film’s fans as “middle-class intellectuals and bohemians and their feminist wives and girlfriends.” Film critics called the movie “porno chic.”
- The Cut
