Sex Scene suggests that what we have come to understand as the sexual revolution of the late 1960s and early 1970s was actually a media revolution. In lively essays, the contributors examine a range of mass media—film and television, recorded sound, and publishing—that provide evidence of the circulation of sex in the public sphere, from the mainstream to the fringe. They discuss art films such as I am Curious (Yellow), mainstream movies including Midnight Cowboy, sexploitation films such as Mantis in Lace, the emergence of erotic film festivals and of gay pornography, the use of multimedia in sex education, and the sexual innuendo of The Love Boat. Scholars of cultural studies, history, and media studies, the contributors bring shared concerns to their diverse topics. They highlight the increasingly fluid divide between public and private, the rise of consumer and therapeutic cultures, and the relationship between identity politics and individual rights. The provocative surveys and case studies in this nuanced cultural history reframe the "sexual revolution" as the mass sexualization of our mediated world.

Contributors. Joseph Lam Duong, Jeffrey Escoffier, Kevin M. Flanagan, Elena Gorfinkel, Raymond J. Haberski Jr., Joan Hawkins, Kevin Heffernan, Eithne Johnson, Arthur Knight, Elana Levine, Christie Milliken, Eric Schaefer, Jeffrey Sconce, Jacob Smith, Leigh Ann Wheeler, Linda Williams
 

"[Schaefer has] assembled a stellar lineup of academic authors who know their stuff. That their stuff includes everything from MPAA ratings flaps and 'party records' to the (ahem) rise of porn chic and how TV’s The Love Boat struggled to hint at cabin couplings, means the book is like a class you wish existed, just so you could audit the entire semester. Collectively, the text is the smartest person at the party without also being the snobbish dick at said soirée. . . ."―Rod Lott, Bookgasm

“An important contribution to late 20th century history and will be of interest to scholars in media and cultural studies as well to historians.”

 ―European Journal of Communication

“[A] remarkable collection of essays about the ways in which media disrupted and recalibrated assumptions about sex and sexuality in the US during the late 1960s and early 1970s. . . . An important collection for anyone interested in media history, sexual regulation, and political activism/social change. Highly recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty.”―T. E. Adams, Choice

“The text is a strong contribution to the field of pop and media culture and is a great resource for those whose research interests explore the intersections of politics, media, and sex during the tumultuous period of the 1960s and 70s. But the book is also written in an accessible manner, engaging in thoughtful criticism without becoming bloated with jargon. For those who are a cineaste or have an interest in the provocateurs whose works have changed the landscape of film, Sex Scene is a great read.”

 ―Rebecca Lynn Gavrila, Journal of Popular Culture

"In providing a detailed history and analysis of media and sexual revolution in the middle of the twentieth century, Schaefer’s expansive book offers a timely reminder that our current concerns may be understood as an extension of longstanding debates around sexuality, visibility, privacy, and technology in American culture."―Andrea McDonnell, Journal of American Culture

"Focusing on a wide range of topics and media, Eric Schaefer’s anthology Sex Scene offers a complex and comprehensive history of the sexual revolution. The collection is a massive contribution to the study of sexual representation in the 1960s and 1970s." -- Jon Lewis, author of ― Hollywood v. Hard Core: How the Struggle over censorship Saved the Modern Film Industry

Eric Schaefer is Associate Professor in the Department of Visual and Media Arts at Emerson College. He is the author of "Bold! Daring! Shocking! True!" A History of Exploitation Films, 1919–1959, also published by Duke University Press.

Sex Scene

Media and the Sexual Revolution

Duke University Press

Contents

Rate It X? Hollywood Cinema and the End of the Production Code

CHRISTIE MILLIKEN

We will oppose these intrusions into a communications art-form shielded and protected by the First Amendment. We believe the screen should be as free for filmmakers as it is for those who write books, produce television material, publish newspapers and magazines, compose music and create paintings and sculptures.

... I have urged film creators to remember that freedom without discipline is license, and that's wrong, too. I have, in the many meetings I have had with creative people in film, suggested that the freedom which is rightly theirs ought to be a responsible freedom and each individual film-maker must judge his work in that sensible light.

JACK VALENTI, MPAA, "Motion Picture Production Code and Ratings Program: A System of Self-Regulation," personal statement of Jack Valenti, 1968.

Commercial American movies are at last beginning to talk about sex with pertinent and refreshing candor. But although they are outspoken, most of the new movies are less revolutionary than they look. Traditional puritanical attitudes are often concealed beneath the kinky contemporary trappings, still dictating rewards and punishments for the characters. Only the language of the sermons has changed; now they are phrased in the up-to-date psychoanalytical lingo that the "permissive society" understands.

STEPHEN FARBER, "A Film That Forgets Sex Can Be Fun ...," New York Times, 1971.

Historians have described the period from the late 1960s to the end of the 1970s as one of the most tumultuous and transformative in American film history, perhaps second only to the coming of sound. In addition to the myriad pressures that rocked American society at this time, the decision on the part of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) to finally abandon the increasingly obsolete Production Code in 1968 in favor of a voluntary age-based rating system enabled the possibility of making more adult-themed Hollywood films that could explore, in unprecedented detail, formerly regulated topics such as sexuality and violence. Given the profound changes in sexual and cultural mores from the time of the establishment of the Production Code Administration (PCA) in 1934, this transformation was a long time coming. Although the dramatic shift in the treatment of screen sexuality was embraced by some as a sign of Hollywood's belated willingness to deal with more culturally relevant, mature subject matter, others objected to many of these new films and lamented the demise of the family audience. It is clear that the MPAA, straddling both sides of this divide, introduced the new Code and Rating Administration (CARA) largely as a public relations ploy to help Hollywood's faltering box office, to refresh the organization's image, and to answer the demands of the fragmented film going audience, particularly its most lucrative demographics: the increasingly well-educated adult audience, and the youth market.

This chapter examines this transitional period in film history, using the backdrop of shifts in the social, cultural, and sexual climate of the era to consider debates about sexuality and sexual representation in a number of films made at this time. My emphasis will be on those films made immediately preceding and after the implementation of the rating system through 1973–1974, when this new system was largely consolidated and Hollywood had recovered from a period of severe economic crisis and instability. I will concentrate on films that were controversial for their sexual representation, whether in the courts, through the MPAA's regulatory constraints, or through the media. Before discussing this period, however, brief background on Hollywood during the years preceding the adoption of the rating system will provide context for this transformative move from the PCA-era model of "harmless" entertainment suitable for all to one that allows for discretion and distinction on the basis of age appropriateness, a system promoted by Jack Valenti as "responsible" entertainment.

Code and Law: Postwar Challenges to the PCA and the Changing Legal Status of Motion Pictures

In the postwar period the Hollywood studios were forced to forego their oligopolistic control of the film business when a Supreme Court ruling in 1948, U.S. v. Paramount Pictures et al., required them to divest of their theatrical holdings. Along with the dramatic decline in film attendance that began in the late 1940s and continued into the 1960s, production costs increased significantly, fewer films were made, and more money was invested in a smaller number of films with the hopes of realizing large financial returns. Challenges to the Production Code increased significantly during the period, as the PCA-enforced morality collided with changing audience demands and industry conditions. Foreign films, notable for addressing adult themes, began to make inroads at the box office through the proliferation of art house theaters.

A foreign film became the subject of a groundbreaking legal case that changed the status of motion pictures in American society. Il Miracolo (The Miracle) was one portion of an anthology film, L'Amore (1948; The Ways of Love). Directed by Roberto Rossellini, it was the story of a peasant woman (Anna Magnani) who believes that a stranger she sleeps with is Saint Joseph, convincing herself that the baby she carries is the product of an immaculate conception. The film sparked controversy in its native Italy and was deemed blasphemous by the Catholic Church both there and in the United States. It also was condemned by the Catholic Legion of Decency, becoming the subject of localized pickets in New York City, where it opened in December 1950. Although The Miracle performed well at the box office, the New York State Board of Regents revoked its license in response to various pressures. When the film's distributor, Joseph Burstyn, appealed the regents' decision and the New York State Supreme Court upheld the ban, he took his case all the way to the Supreme Court and won.

Burstyn v. Wilson (1952), also known as "The Miracle decision," reversed the precedent set by the 1915 Mutual v. Ohio case (regarding D. W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation), which denied First Amendment protection to motion pictures. In the Burstyn case, Justice Tom Clark overturned the ban on the film, describing cinema as "a significant medium for the communication of ideas" and concluding that "the importance of motion pictures as an organ of public opinion is not lessened by the fact that they are designed to entertain as well as inform." The Miracle decision effectively argued that films should not be subjected to censorship simply because they are produced by an industry conducted for profit (as was the press, in any case). Although the case was about a foreign film made beyond the purview of MPAA restrictions, the effect of this decision on Hollywood filmmaking was enormous. By dramatically modifying the legal status of local and state censorship boards, Burstyn became a "watershed moment" for future films about politically sensitive and controversial issues.

One significant outcome of the studio divestiture was that MPAA members no longer had guaranteed exhibition outlets for their products. The autonomy of theatrical exhibitors coupled with film's new First Amendment privileges eliminated the necessary collusion among all parties required for the survival of self-regulation. The MPAA could no longer effectively police film content through the Production Code. As a consequence, independent producers and distributers—whose numbers rose dramatically as a result of industry restructuring—began to risk offering more adult fare in American motion pictures. For example, producer and director Otto Preminger released his provocative film, The Moon Is Blue (1953) through United Artists (UA) without obtaining a seal of approval, providing an early test of the waning relevance of the PCA. The "scandal" of The Moon Is Blue, adapted from a successful stage play, focused on its risqué dialogue (including the use of the previously forbidden word "virgin"). Despite its lack of a seal and its condemnation by the Legion of Decency, the film was a financial success.

Other studios and filmmakers were willing to tackle more sensational topics to draw people back into theaters and to push against the constraints of the PCA in a variety of ways. In turn, the PCA responded with increased flexibility and by revising the code several times, beginning in 1956. Some films reflect this flexibility: From Here to Eternity (1953), for its more liberal attitude toward adultery; The French Line (1954), with its revealing costumes on Jane Russell; and Preminger's The Man With the Golden Arm (1955) and Tea and Sympathy (1956), dealing, respectively, with the previously forbidden topics of drug use and homosexuality. Another controversial project, Elia Kazan's Baby Doll (1956), based on a notorious one-act play by Tennessee Williams, received a code seal to the surprise of many observers but was nevertheless condemned by the legion, which targeted theaters exhibiting the picture in its campaign against it.

Sex Scenes and Ratings Rumbles

Theaters became a primary target for contestation of controversial material at this time. Although the Paramount decision enabled theater owners to book films in a more open and competitive "free" market, they were also no longer supported by a studio oligopoly that had historically been willing and able to defend them from public pressures by lobby groups such as the Legion of Decency. The MPAA member studios had no direct financial interest in the success of newly independent theater owners and consequently adopted a policy not to intervene in local censorship issues that arose in the distribution and exhibition of challenging material. With virtually no financial or public relations support from the MPAA, many exhibitors frequently capitulated to the pressures of local activists and censorship boards. A few theater owners, however, fought back.

One such case involved a Cleveland Heights, Ohio, art theater manager, Nico Jacobellis, who defied a local police order and was arrested for exhibiting Louis Malle's film Les Amants (1958, The Lovers) in 1959. The film chronicles the unhappy marriage of a young woman and her older husband, featuring partial nudity and a long sequence in which she meets a young man, falls in love, and presumably has sex with him. The theater owner, Louis Sher, and Daniel Frankel—president of the distributor Zenith International Films—decided to challenge the obscenity ruling in a suit that took five years to make its way through the courts. Jacobellis v. Ohio (1964) proved to be a crucial test case both for the regulation of film content as well as state censorship in general. In the ruling, Justice William Brennan contested the use of "community standards" as a measure for labeling the film obscene, for a time redefining community not as a local jurisdiction but as "the society at large," "the public, or people in general." He argued that though obscenity might have "a varying meaning from time to time," it should not vary substantively "from town to town or county to county." Interestingly, Brennan supported an age-based model to help distinguish among degrees of adult entertainment, something the MPAA would subsequently adopt. Revision of this ruling became crucial to the ways in which obscenity cases would be reconceived almost a decade later.

Another significant court case pertaining to sexual representation on screen and the issue of "obscenity" took place in 1957 with Excelsior Pictures Corp v. New York Board of Regents, a court decision involving a low-budget, nudist/exploitation film: The Garden of Eden (1954). When the case found its way to the New York State Court of Appeals, the presiding judge, Charles Desmond, ruled that the nudity depicted in the film was not obscene. Excelsior v. Regents was one of the crucial decisions that "effectively ended the ban on nudity in motion pictures and also contributed to breaking the New York censor board." This led to the proliferation of other nudist movies and to the rise of sexploitation cinema generally, as classical exploitation films were surpassed by more daring fare, beginning with Russ Meyer's The Immoral Mr. Teas (1959; figure 1.1). The influence of exploitation film on mainstream Hollywood would certainly begin to show over the course of the 1960s and into the 1970s, leading one historian to label the new group of Hollywood filmmakers coming of age at this time as "the exploitation generation."

By the end of the 1950s, interpretation and enforcement of the code were relaxed. The changing legal status of motion pictures with their First Amendment protection meant that debates about obscenity on screen gradually became the primary criterion for banning a film's exhibition. The PCA was increasingly pressed to confront the murky issues around this ill-defined concept as a way of continuing to self-regulate its product in a new era of "permissiveness." The idea of classifying films based on age appropriateness gained currency by the late 1950s, since its implementation could enable the MPAA to deal with the disparate demands of audiences. That is, some sectors were seeking more adult fare, and others—such as religious and civic groups—were increasingly upset by the lax enforcement of the Production Code. Since 1936, the Legion of Decency had such a system in place with its A1 (Unobjectionable for general patronage), A2 (Unobjectionable for adults), B (Objectionable in part), and C (Condemned) categories. The United Kingdom, notoriously more conservative than the rest of Europe, also had a rating system. Yet there was division among MPAA members and within the PCA about the merits of swapping the code for a classification system. In the early 1960s the MPAA president Eric Johnston fought against the legion's lobby to get the MPAA to endorse a classificatory scheme, arguing that such a system would be undemocratic because it would supersede parental authority and decision making. Various historians, however, have countered that this line of reasoning is specious and that Johnston and his supporters were far more concerned about the box-office repercussions of classification.

Clearly something had to be done to cope with the changing cultural climate that demonstrated a significant market for more adult fare. The inability of the PCA to adequately control studio product led to a situation in which, by 1966, only 59 percent of all films shown in the United States had an MPAA seal (compared to 95 percent compliance before the Paramount decree). Moreover, between 1963 and 1965, thirty-nine films by MPAA-member companies were either not submitted to the PCA or were released through subsidiaries after being denied a seal. Censorial action against specific films—including local boycotts, arrests, prosecutions, confiscations, and license revocations—increased tenfold. By 1965, roughly 60 percent of the films in general release were met by some sort of local censorship action, virtually all of it targeted at the nation's exhibitors.

To help broker the problems, after Eric Johnston's sudden death in 1963, the MPAA instituted a revised Production Code in September 1966 that Kevin Sandler describes as "a prototype that two years later would morph into a classification system." The first "trial run" for this new system was instituted by Jack Valenti, the newly appointed president of the MPAA in 1966, in his handling of the controversial Mike Nichols film, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? (1966). Released by Warner Bros., the film obtained a PCA exemption in order to secure an MPAA-sanctioned release when the studio agreed to label the film "Suggested for Mature Audiences" (SMA) with all advertising for the picture containing the blocked letter statement: "NO PERSONS UNDER 18 ADMITTED UNLESS ACCOMPANIED BY A PARENT." This exemption, based on the film's extensive use of profanity, left the task of enforcement to exhibitors and was viewed as a "test case" for an age-based regulatory system. Although Valenti was clear that the special code exemption offered to Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? would not set a precedent for future cases, the film's enormous box-office success certainly encouraged the accelerated production of more adult-oriented dramas in Hollywood at the time. For example, in 1967, the number of SMA-designated films rose dramatically from six to forty-four. In the twelve months preceding the adoption of the 1968 rating system in November of that year, approximately 60 percent of films released by the studios carried the SMA tag. By now the picture was clear: adult-themed films made money and helped to maintain the profile of the film industry against an increasingly competitive leisure and entertainment marketplace.