Talk Dirties to Me

There were 15 Talk Dirties to Me. John Leslie starred in the first 5. Viewers made the acquaintance of the porn legend Traci Lords in Talk Dirty To Me #3. The franchise which came out in l980 represents the sunset of the Golden Age of Porn famous for films like Behind the Green Door, Debbie Does Dallas and Deep Throat—an era when porn employed esthetic devices like plot. Today you go to Pornhub which furnishes crude loops of paraphilia recalling the days when pornophiles lived in fear of being discovered in the thrall of their shameful desires. If nothing the very title Talk Dirty To Me underscores the importance of words in the history of pornography since it was words rather than images out of which early porn derived. Initially porn heeded the biblical prohibition against graven images. Canterbury Tales is filthier than most porn today. Both Boccaccio’s Decameron and RabelaisThe Life of Gargantua and of Pantagruel are no slouches. Back to the future! You have such classics as The Story of O and The Tropic of Cancer. If you attempt to excuse Henry Miller by calling his work literature (which it is), you’re depriving yourself of both the license and licentiousness. For the very delight of porn lies in transgression. If you view Hustler as a lesson in gynecology, you miss the point which is the thrill of removing the fig leaf. The French psychoanalyst Janine Chasseguet-Smirgel’s Creativity and Perversion illustrates how esthetic structures are the front men for sado-masochistic wishes. You can find anything you want on Pornhub today. If it’s been said it’s been done and vice versa. But the site is curiously tame when it comes to the bounteous artifice that characterizes the history of eroticism. Why not go to the nude beach? Why not demonstrate how it’s no big deal to strip in public. Why? It’s like inflation. You print too much currency and it loses its value. "Talk Dirty To Me" is also a clarion call of "the cancel culture."

Read "Sperm Count: Talk Dirty to Me" by Francis Levy, HuffPost