ABSTRACT
Deep Throat is believed to be one of the most profitable US films released in theaters, despite, or perhaps because of, its independent production well outside the mores and morals of the Hollywood establishment. It brought unprecedented cultural visibility to pornography, screening in over 60 cities, garnering extensive coverage in the mainstream media, and even playing an incidental role in President Nixon’s downfall. Nora Ephron, a magazine columnist who later became a Hollywood director, recalled hearing that Deep Throat was “not only the best film of its kind but actually funny.” Not only did obscene humor figure prominently in the discourse around the film, it is arguably key to its specificity as an object of study. The ribald plot centers on a woman whose clitoris is congenitally misplaced in her throat and can only attain pleasure by performing oral sex on hung men. The central gimmick – the star’s eye-popping renditions of the titular erotic act – is insistently repeated as much for laughs as for titillation. While Deep Throat draws from a tradition of using humor to make the accompanying eroticism alternately less and more pointed, it also seems to be exploring how to create a superior amalgam of comedy and erotica, optimizing the pornographic film’s capacity not just to arouse viewers but generate distinctly cinematic sexual humor as well.
