Bloomsbury
Global Exploitation
Cinemas imprint
Published December
2021
222 pages
10 bw images
ISBN: 9781501333019
Hardback
RRP: £86 (a more
reasonably-priced paperback will be available soon)
Review by Adrian
Smith
In a world where
every possible sexual proclivity and desire can be sated at the click of a mouse
button, the idea of pornography only being available at an illicit party in a
hired hall, where the gathered men watch black and white amateur footage
projected onto a wall whilst half-expecting to be raided by local law
enforcement, seems difficult to imagine. Yet according to this fascinating
study by historian Dan Erdman, this was indeed the situation for decades, from
the early days of cinema through to the 1950s when home projector ownership
finally meant that people could receive illegal pornography through the mail
and watch it in the privacy of their own homes. As things began to change in
the 1960s, individual film-viewing booths became available, where for a dime a
customer could get access to a few minutes of hardcore pornography. Ultimately
by the 1970s hardcore went mainstream and husbands and wives could go to the cinema
together for screenings of Deep Throat or Behind the Green Door
and the stag film fell out of fashion.
But just what is a
stag film, I hear you cry innocently? Erdman, drawing on his own research as
well as the writing of others, explains that they were short films, often made
by amateurs and usually shot on 8mm or 16mm film, in which hardcore sex acts
took place, they were anonymously made and presented, and undated. One would
have no idea whether the film you were watching was made last year or thirty
years ago. They were effectively “orphaned films”, in that no records were
kept, and no information was provided about who was in the films, who directed
and produced them, and who was even making all the prints. They were screened
at private parties, or “smokers” as they were sometimes described, which would
often be accompanied by live performances, but those in attendance were
constantly in fear of a police bust. As home projection became more
commercially available thousands of copies of stag films criss-crossed America
in the postal service, with enterprising distributors using carefully compiled
mailing lists and anonymous return addresses to target customers whilst
avoiding both the police and the FBI.
Here, in this
US-focused book, Dan Erdman attempts to chart the origins of the stag film, its
growth in popularity, the people behind the production and distribution, and the
many legal attempts to shut it all down. Given that the production,
distribution and screening of these short pornographic films was illegal, and
the films were generally considered ephemeral with no historical or cultural
value, it’s no surprise to learn that the people involved in this underground
world were not really keeping records or even copies of the films. The Kinsey
Institute appears to be the main archive currently available for seeing copies
of stag films but given that even if a film did have credits the names would
inevitably be fake, the job of trying to piece together a history is a
difficult one.
It is a surprise to
discover that the other main archive is the FBI, who kept thousands of seized
films and attempted to keep records of names, dates, and places, but sadly,
again given that the films had no perceived historical value, the films were
all destroyed long ago to save archival space. Luckily the written records
remain, and through drawing on these records, alongside the Kinsey Institute,
the President’s Commission on Obscenity and Pornography (funded in the late
1960s in an attempt to provide legislation, which ultimately concluded that the
constitution’s guarantee of freedom of speech trumped charges of obscenity and
paved the way for porn’s golden age), private archives and newspaper reports,
Erdman has managed to piece together what is surely the definitive history of
this elusive subject. He also provides an excellent case study in how one can
attempt to write a history of a subject when access to both primary and
secondary sources is severely limited, and as such it should be compulsory
reading for any serious historian researching in the margins of popular
culture.
This book gives
fascinating and non-judgemental insight into the secret world of the twentieth
century American male (the audience was always male) and may also provide some
nostalgia for a simpler time before pornography became a global billion-dollar
business, and modern mainstream culture became increasingly pornified.
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