Rant #1,627: Sex

Gotcha!

I will bet that you saw the title of this Rant and your heart rate increased, jumped, went into levels that you are not used to ...

Sex sells. It always has, but it took many years for people--your average John Q. Public--to acknowledge this fact.

Sex has sold for eons, and it really was first acknowledged in pop culture, whether you are talking about people like Rudolph Valentino, Jane Russell, Marilyn Monroe, Raquel Welch, or any of the other actors and actresses over the ages who have been portrayed as sex symbols to the masses.

Of course today, everything all hangs out--literally--and sex sells more than ever, but there was a time where our social awakening was just beginning to come out of the closet, and into the mainstream.

It was the late 1960s to early 1970s. Movie censorship had pretty much gone down the tubes, and nudity was everywhere, a new device to get you into the movie theater. Although mainly women, some men bared themselves--or really, part of themselves--in films of the day, and these were in major movies, not necessarily "grindhouse" films, but major movie fare.

But then you had adult movies. They had been around seemingly since the movies began, in the late 1800s and early 1900s. These weren't even ready for the grindhouses; many were usually shown on the fly to beat any morals charges that they would garner by municipality.

You had the higher-level adult films, like the Russ Meyer opuses, which showed off the female anatomy in a way that it had never been seen before, bringing the Playboy centerfold literally to the screen, and that was pretty much it.

And you had the raunch, the stuff that showed it all, and these were pretty much shown in X-rated movie theaters and under the table.

In the late 1960s and early 1970s, these two genres kind of melded, and suddenly, middle America was going to the movies to see real sex on the screen.

These movies took the XXX banner, their own creation by the way, when movies started to be rated--G, M, and X were the original ratings, and then they kind of morphed into G, PG, PG-13, R and X, later gaining NC-17.

But during those early years of the movie ratings, X-rated films were making themselves very well known, led by "Midnight Cowboy," still the only X-rated film to garner an Academy Award for best film.

But XXX was itself moving into the mainstream, with films like "Deep Throat" and "The Devil In Miss Jones" getting average folk into watching porn on screen.

This seems so long ago, and it kind of is a long time ago ... but Playboy TV, the pay cable channel, has kept this spirit alive with its successful "Groundbreakers" series.

Hosted by director John Waters--who has done both X-rated and mainstream fare--the series, shown every Saturday night, highlights groundbreaking films from this period, whether it be the two films I mentioned, the X-rated cartoon "Fritz the Cat," or lesser known movies like "Aunt Peg."

This was a time when these movies were starting to be looked at as art, and they kind of have a flip attitude about the sex shown in these films.

Yes, the films are raunchy, Playboy TV shows everything but, if you know what I mean, but there is a certain carefree attitude about sex--yes, the sex drives the movie, but there are stories to be told in these films--that is kind of arresting, sort of showcasing a way of presenting a film that was very, or at least sort of, European, and something only picked up on in American movies later on when it was deemed OK by the then movie establishment.

I am not saying the movies are necessarily good--"Deep Throat" is probably one of the worst, stupidest films I have ever seen, and how people paid to see this is beyond me--but they show how the walls really were tumbling down during this period.

Waters adds his comments about the films before, during, and after they are shown, and it is interesting how many of the actors in these films actually kind of jumped over these barriers, to a certain extent, and also acted in mainstream Hollywood fare. Just as many stayed in porn for their entire movie careers, and just as many made these films and then faded off the face of the earth.

Once sex went completely mainstream in the movies, these films kind of vanished from sight. The raunch houses also vanished, and XXX films opened up a whole new genre, home video, and that is pretty much where they are today, as well as all over the Internet for anyone to gawk at.

But in the late 1960s and early 1970s, you had to go to the movies to see these films, and middle America went to see these movies, allowing a number of them to make millions and millions of dollars at the box office.

"Groundbreakers" is an interesting program, showing films from a different time and place in our history.

Even for those that snub their noses at Playboy TV, this is the one series to see, as it pulls no punches at all in what it shows to viewers while it celebrates the virtues--and limitations--of these films.

Ironically, Playboy Magazine, one of the vehicles that helped us to move out of our sexual straightjackets as a society, no longer shows nudity in its pages.

But at least it acknowledges the past, and "Groundbreakers" certainly acknowledges that past, and where it has taken us in the present and possibly even in the future.