Holmes, Sweet Holmes

With Valentine’s Day focusing a spotlight on love (or at least a love of chocolate in Japan) and having gone to a movie theater to see a film for the first time in decades over the weekend, I got to thinking, which can often be a dangerous thing.

Growing up when I did, I became accustomed to barriers breaking down as the conservatism of the 1950s gave way to the counterculture of the 1960s and moved onto the freewheeling 1970s.

It was natural for me to see society become more progressive and permissive, as well as more diverse and inclusive, and I assumed that would continue to be the case over time as humans became more enlightened.

Not too sure it’s worked out quite that way, though.

D&I have certainly made great strides and the world is clearly a better place now for those who don’t fit into what society regards as the mainstream norm.

And we, especially men, can be more honest and open in expressing feelings and emotions.

But it sure seems like people are lot more prudish than they were back in the day.

I grew up at a time that was regarded as the Golden Age of Porn.

It was common to see explicit movies advertised openly and stick flicks like Deep Throat, Emmanuel and The Devil in Miss Jones screened at local theaters alongside regular Hollywood fare.

Actors like John Holmes, Harry Reems, Linda Lovelace, Marilyn Chambers, Maud Adams and Sylvia Kristel and authors like Erica Jong and Xaveria Hollander, to name but a few, were household names, even in country Australia.

Anyway, the politicization of religion, starting with the U.S. and spreading globally, the AIDS scare and massive proliferation of information that dispersed peoples’ focus changed the times, I guess.

I never really paid a great deal of attention to porn as it was so openly available that the allure of the forbidden was taken away. There’s all sorts of good and bad about it, and I’m not here to make a judgment other than to say it was a different era, and for some reason this came into my mind today when thinking about something to write up.