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Boogie Nights: Porn
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Boogie Nights is not the best film you're likely to see in your lifetime, but it continues the pop postmodernism of Goodfellas and Pulp Fiction in an affable form. The questions it raises regarding sex and society are neither profound nor insightful, but they are memorable and pointed all the same. Particularly effective is the scene with Reynolds making an undignified video vérité in the back seat of a Limo which goes horribly wrong and reminds the participants of the choices they have made in their lives. With a kickin' soundtrack and plenty of retro vibes, the film will ... appeal simply on the level of spectacle, where it is best received. Boogie Nights is fun the way the seventies and the porno industry probably never really were deep down (check out The Ice Storm [F]or a different take on some of the same subject matter from the same year of production), and though it is not so stupid as not to acknowledge this, it does eventually wrap itself up more like an episode of The Love Boat than Mean Streets.
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Boogie Nights's nostalgia for a supposed pre-Aids Eden of disco-fuelled sexuality may be tinged with considerable circumspect irony. But the film does genuinely mourn an era when American porn was, if not exactly idealistic, at least more ambitious. Seventies porn had aspirations to infiltrate the mainstream, and movies like Deep Throat, Behind The Green Door and The Devil In Miss Jones were fashionable talking points at Californian dinner tables. This 'Golden Age' ended, Anderson says, with the advent of video.
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Boogie Nights isn't a justification or an apology for pornography. It doesn't even argue a case for free speech, as The People Vs Larry Flynt did. But the party doesn't go on forever. Things begin to spiral out of control and Boogie Nights becomes a cautionary tale every bit as strong as Trainspotting.
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[A] third aspect of the reception context for BOOGIE NIGHTS involves the nearly simultaneous release of THE ICE STORM (1997). As several critics have noted, THE ICE STORM ... refers explicitly to 70s porno chic (indieWire). In a dinner party scene which occurs near the beginning of the film, conversation turns to Harry Reems and DEEP THROAT. The reference seems simply to indicate that these bored, upper-middle class Connecticut WASPS have an accepting, non-judgmental sexual lifestyle. Sex is in the air, as it were, the times are changing and porn is part of it. As in BOOGIE NIGHTS, however, THE ICE STORM implies that because 70s sex in some manner is excessive and depraved, it demands a price. Within this context, in THE ICE STORM porn simply connotes that sex is everywhere — from the movies, to affairs, to "key parties," to high school teens and even young teens.
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"In "Boogie Nights," a Big Porn Producer is shown suffering in jail because he's a pathetic opportunistic pedophile. But in the real porn business, a producer -- and his wife, and his secretary, and his shipping clerk -- are more likely to be sitting in a penitentiary because they sold a mail-order tape to an undercover cop in Tennessee. The tape probably featured nothing more criminal than an interracial buttfucking scene between enthusiastic adults.
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[I]f any movie ever got the toxic, narcotic repellent appeal of both porn and '70s nostalgia, it's Boogie Nights. Sure, Anderson's film is exuberant and flashy and energetic -- Anderson admits that Scorsese's one of his biggest influences -- but it's ... sad and grim and unblinking. For every scene of brightly-lit disco dancing and laughter in Boogie Nights, there's another where small bills change hands in small alleys, or similar transactions where all parties involved lose a little bit of their soul. Rose-colored glasses don't just change the hue of what we're looking at, they affect focus -- when we think of Saturday Night Fever, we think of Travolta dancing in white, not the rape scene or the suicide; when we think of Fast Times at Ridgemont High, we think of San Penn's wacky Spiccoli, not the bare-bulb sex scene or Jennifer Jason Leigh's abortion. But it's hard -- in fact, nearly impossible -- to look back at Boogie Nights and separate the sizzle from the sleaze, which just demonstrates how good it is.
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