Peddling Porn

by John McFetridge

It’s a question we hear a lot – how much sex is too much in crime fiction? It goes right along with, how much violence is too much?

The answer is always pretty much, “Whatever’s right for you.”

Some people have a high tolerance for violence and some for sex scenes. It’s really just a matter of taste.

Sometimes I wonder how our tastes have been manipulated.

A couple weeks ago in this space I mentioned the book 1973 Nervous Breakdown by Andreas Killen. That year there was a lot of talk about the “suburbinization” of porn, how movies like Deep Throat and The Devil in Miss Jones and Behind the Green Door were finding audiences beyond the ‘trenchcoat crowd.’

But then the FBI (on politically-driven orders from Richard Nixon, apparently) went after theatres showing those movies (starting with Deep Throat) and the resulting Miller v. California ruling Killen claims, “dealt a setback to free speech,” by allowing communities the right to pass laws banning materials that, “appeal to the prurient interest in sex,” and were deemed as lacking, “serious literary, artistis, political or scientific value.”

(don’t worry, I’m not trying to start another “literary” v. “genre” argument, even if the Supreme Court is setting it up ;)

Killen claims that in the fallout from this ruling more “serious” movies with sexual themes such as Last Tango in Paris and Carnal Knowledge had fewer theatres willing to risk showing them so it became too difficult to raise money to make those kinds of movies.

As one filmmaker said at the time, “Violence will be Hollywood’s pornography.”

And sexual themes became the domain of pretty much the opposite of, “serious literary artists,” and almost entirely out to “appeal to the prurient interest in sex.”

A decade later home video came along and really cemented that and here we are.

Of course, it’s a little different with books.

In my own novels there is very little violence. People get shot and killed but it usually happens very quickly, a few words and it’s over. More words are spent on sex scenes because I think they help to develop characters more and, frankly, I like them more.

And I have a bit of a history of peddling porn, so to speak.

Back in the time of Deep Throat I had a newspaper route, the Montreal Gazette, that I delivered before school. One morning I found small pile of magazines and paperbacks spilling out of a garbage bag in the field behind Anyon Street I used as a shortcut.

Men’s magazines. Penthouse, Oui, Gallery, Club. A couple of the paperbacks were hundreds of pages long like, My Secret Life and collections claiming to be “Victorian” and there was a copy of The Story of O and a lot more pulp stuff.

I put the magazines and paperbacks in my newspaper bag and took them home. And a few days later I showed then to some of my friends. And some of those guys wanted to keep the magazines and offered me money for them.

So I sold them. Word got out at my hhigh school and I sold them all (I hung on to My Secret Life longest and today I think maybe I could sell it as a movie – Downton Abbey meets Fifty Shades of Grey).

Then I got called to the vice principal’s office. Mr. Desjardins. Very scary. He sat me down and started telling me how I was starting on a road that could only end badly, how I was ruining my life before it even started, how I was getting involved with serious criminals.

I managed to stammer that I didn’t know any criminals and he said, “Of course you do, the guy who’s selling you the drugs is a criminal.”

I said, “What drugs?”

“The drugs you’re selling!” He may have banged on the desk at that point. I’m pretty sure he was standing up and staring down at me. He may have been seven feet tall.

I said, “I’m not selling drugs,” and Mr. Desjardins said, “Don’t bullshit me.” It was shocking to hear a grown-up swear like that. Then he tried to play nice cop and said, “Look, I know you’re scared and I know when you tell the guy who’s supplying you that don’t want to sell drugs in this school anymore he’ll get mad at you. Maybe he’s already threatened you, I don’t know, but I can help you.”

I really didn’t know what he was talking about so I just sat there looking confused. Not  a new look for me at the time.

He went back to bad cop for a while, telling me how bad it would go, my involvement with drug dealers and serious criminals, until it was sounding kind of exciting and then he offered to help me again, all I had to do was tell him who I was buying the drugs from.

“I’m not buying drugs.”

“Then how can you be selling them?”

“I’m not selling drugs.”

“Then what are you selling?!”

“Porno magazines.”

Mr. Desjardsins said, “What?” and I said, “I found some magazines and books when I was delivering my papers and people wanted them so I sold them.”

“You mean magazines like Playboy?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And that’s all? No drugs?”

“No sir, no drugs.”

“Oh.” He didn’t seem to know what to do then, he sat back down behind his desk and shrugged a little and said, “Do you have any more?” and I said, “No, sir,” and he said, “Okay, well, don’t bring any more to school.”

I said, okay, and then he told me to go back to class.

I guess Mr. Desjardins had never heard of Miller v. California.

And I guess that’s when I first sold sex instead of violence.

And sometimes it seems like things haven’t changed that much. Usually when I got paid for my paper route I stopped at the record store in the mall and bought an album. Around that time one of the albums I bought was Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick and today as I write this I’m listening to, “Jethro Tull’s Ian Anderson’s Thick as Brick II.”

But I do wonder sometimes if movies would be the same today had there never been a Miller v. California.