Pornography – The Secret History Of Civilisation (Documentary)
Picture: C+ Sound: C+ Extras: D Episodes: B+
Can sex
and sexual material be discussed without giggles? A recent cycle of programs about XXX material
and human sexuality has been underway for a few years now and the programs have
been very impressive so far. From the
directing/producing team of Fenton Bailey and Randy Barbato, responsible for
some of the best mature documentary programs of the last few decades, comes the
longest and most ambitious project yet. Pornography – The Secret History Of
Civilisation (1999) is a European TV mini-series taking on no less than the
rise and rollercoaster ride of visually sexual material.
The Road To Ruin shows how the lost 18th
Century city of Pompeii was discovered with shocking images abounding of
sexuality all over the place. Instead of
the supposed reasons the city collapsed (homosexuality, mass murder, mass
suicide, some lack of morality); it was a volcano that abruptly ended their lives
en masse. When the city was dug up, the
materials were restricted to a secret, highly restrictive museum!
The Sacred & Profane is the oddest installment showing
the odd ways some civilizations dealt with sexual representation in art and
their various societies. As in the case
of the previous episode, various scholars explain in excellent detail with
great historical context what was really going on. It helps this section, which is the most
bizarre in the series.
The Mechanical Eye shows how still photography began
a permanent revival of sexual imagery as photochemical image capture became the
graven image that would not go away.
Sometimes the images are charming, others look simply amateur, but all
are historic and the new aggressive censorship is the result.
Twentieth Century-Foxy covers how the softcore skin film
movement developed into the hardcore XXX industry of the 1970s and how it
eventually imploded for more reasons than Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights ever showed. An increasingly lost history that needs
recorded for its interesting parallels to Hollywood, the counterculture and
American filmmaking, all climbing to an excess that would peak by 1980.
Sex Lives On Videotape goes from the fall of XXX cinema
to amateur XXX on cheap analog video.
More than neo-conservatism, AIDS or even the XXX film industries own
excesses, VHS and other home video formats were the ultimate juggernaut that
ended the XXX moviehouse era; a peak long since gone. Further ruined by the AIDS crisis, the
industry was never the same again and expansion turns out to water down and
thin out an already repetitious as profits increase and a new version of the
industry expands.
Pornotopia brings in the cyber-age of PC,
Internet and other digital representations that were unimaginable. Even more than the VHS-era, this shows the
industry growing by leaps and bounds, but as Boogie Nights reminds us without the energy or political
empowerment that made XXX cinema the peak of the history covered here.
Overall,
this is surprisingly thorough with excellent interviews in each segment and
though some of the participants were more full of it than expected, the series
goes beyond the U.S. (and Europe where it was produced) to look at other
influences and exchanges of materials after rediscovered civilizations. I should say that it is still incomplete (Radley
Metzger is skipped) in some of the international XXX history it covers, but
offers clips and interviews you will see nowhere else. Pornography
– The Secret History Of Civilisation lives up to its name and is highly
recommended.
The
anamorphically enhanced 1.78 X 1/16 X 9 image originates on digital High
Definition, but detail is sometimes an issue here and there. On the other hand, the footage of XXX
classics like Deep Throat, Behind The Green Door, Insatiable and The Devil In Miss Jones comes from surprisingly good film elements
likely embarrassing actual video copies currently on the market of them
all. Interview footage is not badly shot
and editing is smart throughout. The
Dolby Digital 2.0 Stereo is also not bad, though fidelity can vary like the
picture since this is a documentary.
There are no extras, but this all runs over 5 hours and is a mature
must-see.
Among the
many must-see programs covering this territory, we have the following for your
consideration:
DEBBIE
DOES DALLAS UNCOVERED
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3432/Debbie+Does+Dallas+Uncovered+(Documentary)
FLESH
GORDON
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/240/Flesh+Gordon
INSIDE
DEEP THROAT (NC-17 version)
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/2834/Inside+Deep+Throat+(NC-17/Documentary)
SEXUAL
INTELLIGENCE
http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review/3431/Sexual+Intelligence+(Documentary/Kim+Cattrall)
- Nicholas Sheffo
