3. Deep Throat Influences Attitudes To Sex
The Movie: The infamous porno starring Linda Lovelace, who was famous for her titular oral sex act. Deep Throat was one of the first pornos to bother with a plot and characters, which no doubt helped it find a cross-over audience with the curious, repressed middle-class types who have probably never touched themselves in their entire lives.
The Reality: The movie was a tremendous commercial success, not just with the expected "perverts", but also with more mainstream and diverse viewers, hence the term "porno chic" being coined. With folks like Truman Capote championing the film, it soon enough became "cool" to watch porn, while some feminists even went on to adopt the film on as indicative of female sexual expression. What the 1972 film did, amid the counter-cultural upheaval, was make sex a talking point in offices and other work-places around the world, which in turn made sex less a taboo subject - which it absolutely shouldn't be anyway - and one even the more demure, middle-minded folks could discuss without being thought of as a pervert or deviant. Deep Throat changed the public's perception of both sex and pornography in subtle but important ways.