greenmountaineer
Literotica Guru
- Joined
- Nov 28, 2008
- Posts
- 2,442
I don't remember if I saw Tango subtitled or not at that showing. I assume it was. This would have been 1975-76, when I was in grad school. I remember the hysteria about the movie--kind of It's hot, but it's Art!--making it OK to watch. And, hey, Brando's in it. It even generated something like Holy Writ: Ste. Pauline Kael's wowser rave review in the New Yorker.
Read that. I really mean it. Read that. It will tell you about the time.
Not you, EO. You were there. I mean people in general.
New York was an interesting scene in the early seventies as far as pop culture sexuality was concerned. The "Me Generation" quickly tired of all the politically significant stuff of the preceding babyboom generation but retained interest in the drug and sexual norms and some would say improved upon them.
I recall New York erotic filmmakers were "mainstreaming" porn with supposedly relevant plots and character development. They even went so far as to develop something analogous to the Academy awards for their industry (something which was later wonderfully spoofed in the film Boogie Nights.)
By 1976 the Tall Ships came to Manhattan and many believe brought the beginnings of the AIDS epidemic with them during America's Bicentennial Celebration. No matter what the origin of the virus was, I recall it had a chilling effect on the notion "if it feels good, do it." Porn films started to become popular again in the eighties when videotapes became part of home entertainment, and now, of course, there is the internet. Sex and religion: two powerful human appetites that ebb and flow according to the situation.