'Lovelace' Trailer: How Will Amanda Seyfried Flick Tackle Porn?

Disclaimer: since the process of making explicit all of the intentional sexual innuendo featured in this article would make it twice as long as it needs to be, I will punctuate every instance of double-entendre in a sentence with a bracketed winky emoticon face such as this one: [;)], so the reader can properly amuse himself [;)] with them without breaking pace from the overall text.

I'm going to make a statement here that may be a shock to some readers, so I advise you to read it sitting down.

Pornography is popular.

Yes, who'da thunk, huh? And it's been popular for a long while, too. I dare say that ever since mankind figured out that you could doodle stuff by prodding under the bushes with a stick [;)] we've been creating images of people bumping uglies for the purpose of our vicarious enjoyment. Why, humans have been using dildos for at least 28,000 years as of now, it only makes sense.

No, seriously, 28,000-year-old dildos.

I hope the archaeologists who found it washed their hands afterwards.

And, not surprisingly, the invention of photography was great news for porn. You didn't even have to wear out your wrists drawing stuff anymore, you could just squeeze a little button [;)] and presto! You got your picture and fresh wrists that could be of much use elsewhere [;)]

Ever since then, for every one “normal,” family-friendly photograph taken anywhere in the world, there's probably about three hundred other pictures that feature men and women doing the horizontal bop in them, and with the internet you can now experience each and every one of those for free.

It was in the seventies, though, that porn really started to raise its flag [;)] in the U.S.

After the more bullshitty aspects of obscenity federal laws were deep-sixed with the efforts of an entire generation of free-speech advocates following the "summer of love", suddenly there was a whole new — and perfectly legal — market which was just waiting to be tapped [;)] by enterprising businessmen and artists alike.

It was during that time that the porn industry was introduced to one Linda Boreman, aka Linda Lovelace, who was perhaps one of the first real pornstars of all time. If you don't know what a “deepthroat” is, you've probably never been in contact with a website in your life, in which case you're not reading this, so I don't know why I'm addressing you, but she was the first one to do it on camera. The act was featured in a movie that for some weird reason was called Deep Throat, which to this day is one of the most famous porn movies of all time, though I've never watched it myself. Scouts honor.

It was only after the movie's success, though, that it was revealed that Linda's boyfriend, Chuck Traynor, the man responsible for introducing her to the porn world, was actually an abusive douchebag, so she took out her woes on the whole porn industry for everything her boyfriend put her through, and until her death in 2002 she rallied for the cause of making porn illegal again, no doubt using the super-smashing success of alcohol prohibition and the War on Drugs as an example of how banning things that people will always love can totally work.

Now Linda's journey is being chronicled for audiences worldwide in the movie Lovelace, starring Amanda Seyfried and set to open wide [;)] August 9 in the United States.

Now, porn has always led a complicated relationship with mainstream Hollywood. On the one hand, the Pornographers' unapologetic acknowledgment of their purpose in this world can be sometimes considered icky in the eyes of all those sensitive actors and directors who see the world from a different angle than the regular riff-raff unlucky enough to ride on the same high horses as them, but on the other hand, porn is freaking awesome, so filmmakers can't help but be fascinated by it. After all, who isn't fascinated with sex?

And so, some of the greatest Hollywood movies of all time have dealt with the subject of porn, such as Boogie Nights and ... Well, I guess Videodrome is alright, too, but the point is, there are a lot of movies about it and quite a few of them are okay.

The trailer for Lovelace looks okay as well but still, I hope they don't fall back on that old supposedly feminist argument of portraying porn as exploiting women, because, as I've tackled on a previous article, that never really jibed with me, you know? I mean, implicit in that point of view is the assumption that women are more susceptible to be exploited than man, and why would that be? Are women stupider? Weaker? Incapable of making a consequential decision in their lives? Are they so naïve that they have to be protected from themselves? Isn't that the same patriarchal view of women that the whole feminist movement is supposed to be against?

Or is porn wrong because sex is wrong and registering it for posterity is even wronger? I mean, it's been about five-hundred years since someone wore a chastity belt with a straight face and people are still stuck in that medieval mindset?

Here's the trailer for Lovelace. Here's hoping it doesn't suck.

[;)]