Censorship Class: Sexploitation and Porno Chic
After last week’s look at smutty literature, it was just natural to cover the turn in film during the late 1960s towards more sexually explicit material and the mainstreaming of porn. I make no secret that part of the fun of this class for me is being able to use pieces of my work that are nowhere near public release. For this week that meant introducing students to the King of Nudie-Cuties Russ Meyer. Meyer learned that you could make a lot of money in the Hays Code era by producing films with large breasts and buttocks and selling them on the exploitation circuit. As mainstream film moved further in his direction, he embraced sexploitation even more heavily.
Vixen (1968) was arguably the height of Meyer’s sexploitation successes. The film is fairly ridiculous today depicting Vixen as a nymphomaniac who has sex with random men, a woman, and even her brother, all while the flick is thinly draped with narratives of 1960s racism and draft dodging. It was given an X by the new MPAA ratings system and all of the promotional material limited access to 18 and over. None of this stopped the criticism. Partly this was driven by its success. In 2025 dollars, Vixen made about $70 million on a $600,000 investment. People flocked to this film and because of the attention police often followed. I can’t say how many police interactions there were but a good guess from the files is that more than 50 obscenity prosecutions were fought across the country.
This amount of effort seems odd from a modern perspective given how silly the film truly is. But the context is key. The late 1960s was a period of rapid change in American film and law and Vixen hit just before hardcore pornography began to go mainstream. Two years later and Vixen would have barely made a splash. But in 1968 censors were terrified at this degenerate film and targeted it widely. Part of the fun of this experience is that I have a ton of litigation files. One set of readings was from experts Meyer hired to defend the film. It gives an interesting window into how obscenity litigation played out. One expert offered testimony stressing changing mores of society and how this film was no different than an increasing number of films. But the most amusing part is that both stressed the redeeming value caused by things like an honest study of nymphomania and racism. One expert does admit that these are thin themes barely used for window dressing, but the law at the time only cared about some redeeming value.
The truly amazing testimony, the kind of testimony I just live for when spending weeks in archives, came from one of the prosecutions in Cincinnati. Psychologist Martin Anchell was a conservative activist for the censorship group Citizens for Decent Literature (CDL). He was the go-to expert for the harm of dangerous sexual material. In the Vixen case he argued that women at most had two orgasms a month and because of this Vixen was dangerous in that it gave them false impressions and expectations. This will leave “these women … disillusioned and idsappointed, they feel they’re inadequate” and some will “turn to Lesbianism because of their disappointment” with normal, straight sex. So much obscenity law is wrapped up in gendered notions of sex and this testimony speaks to it perfectly. The idea that women will get the dangerous idea that sex is fun just perfectly speaks to conservative masculinity in the sexual revolution. My students had more than a few good funny comments for this.
After a discussion of porno chic, we got into the MPAA change from the Hays Code to the ratings system. I strive to avoid making fun of Utah or treating Utah as some weird outlier because obscenity studies teaches you that this shit happens everywhere. But the role of ratings is pretty unusual in Utah. It’s the only place I’ve lived where an entire segment of the adult population do not watch R rated movies. Apparently this is because of some change in the Mormon Church a few decades ago. Friends have reported they have family members in their 40s who have never seen an R rated film. So naturally, any time this comes up the student stories are a ton of fun. But what fascinates me is that few students hold my total laissez faire views even with this background experience. They defend the system as fairly tepid on the censorship scale and about informing consumers. Where I see them as a means of dominant cultural narratives to work their way on society. I enjoy when we come to different positions like this.
Next week we take a look at stand-up comedy, Lenny Bruce and George Carlin, and the indecency regulation of broadcast medium.
