Smutty Little Movies: The Creation and Regulation of Adult Video, 1976-1986.

Abstract

This dissertation examines the cultural and legal efforts to regulate, contain, limit, or eradicate pornography as the adult film industry transitioned from celluloid to home video. Beginning with the Panoram visual jukebox of the 1940s, through the peep show booths of the 1960s, and into the adult motels of the 1970s with their closed-circuit television systems, I trace the pre-history of privacy in terms of pornography and spectatorship, and then identify the key people, companies, and films involved in the early period of adult video in the late 1970s. The regulatory efforts against pornography signal larger cultural anxieties surrounding “appropriate” gendered and sexual behaviors for women. The industry self-regulated by appealing to narrative as a marker of “quality” and “respectability,” values that are central to the cultural battles over pornography and women’s sexuality. I explore how this historical struggle played itself out in a number of key texts and moments, including "Adult Video News," the first adult video trade journal, the formation of Femme Productions by former adult film performer Candida Royalle, and the establishment and consequences of the Meese Commission in 1986, which attempted to shift the national discourse on pornography. Drawing on a wide variety of material, including newspapers, mainstream and adult magazines, industry publications, trade journals, interviews, and other discourses to locate this somewhat liminal history, I de-center the film text in favor of industrial histories and contexts. In doing so, this dissertation argues that the struggles to contain and regulate pleasure represent a primary entry point for situating adult video’s place in a larger history, not just of pornography, but media history as a whole.