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Summary
Summary
After the sexual revolution came the sexual explosion
The six years between 1968 and 1973 saw more sexual taboos challenged than ever before. Film, literature, and theater simultaneously broke through barriers previously unimagined, giving birth to what we still consider to be the height of sexual expression in our pop culture: Portnoy's Complaint, Myra Breckinridge, Hair, The Boys in the Band, Midnight Cowboy, Last Tango in Paris, and Deep Throat.
In Sexplosion, Robert Hofler weaves a lively narrative linking many of the writers, producers, and actors responsible for creating these and other controversial works, placing them within their cultural and social frameworks. During the time the Stonewall Riots were shaking Greenwich Village and Roe v. Wade was making its way to the Supreme Court, a group of daring artists was challenging the status quo and defining the country's concept of sexual liberation. Hofler follows the creation of and reaction to these groundbreaking works, tracing their connections and influences upon one another and the rest of entertainment.
Always colorful and often unexpected, Sexplosion is an illuminating account of a generation of sexual provocateurs and the power their works continue to hold decades later.
Reviews (5)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Variety senior editor Hofler (Party Animals) weaves an engaging, informative picture of the sex-charged, boundaries-pushing era from 1968 to 1973, when artists across various media changed the face of the entertainment world, shattering long-held taboos regarding sexuality and content. In a lively, unapologetically profane narrative, Hofler looks at how "a number of very talented, risk-taking rebels challenged the world's prevailing attitudes towards sex, and in the process, changed pop culture forever." Covering landmark plays and movies such as Myra Breckinridge, Hair, Last Tango in Paris, Deep Throat, and Midnight Cowboy, he shows how these productions, and the people involved, went against the grain like never before, redefining the entertainment landscape. From the genesis of Blaxploitation films to the rising profile of pornography, the complex, paradoxically mature "Sexplosion" era is covered in loving detail. Hofler covers pop-culture figures and their creations with an expert's depth of knowledge and a passion for the lurid details, of which there are plenty, resulting in a delightful journey through a short-lived but influential period-a crazy time in which anything seemed possible and nothing was forbidden. Agent: Eric Myers, the Spieler Agency (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The author, senior editor at Variety and former entertainment editor at Penthouse, sets out to show how a number of very talented, risk-taking rebels challenged the world's prevailing attitudes toward sex and, in the process, changed pop culture forever. Thus, we have a compendium of period sex, drugs, and rock 'n' roll, much of it familiar, but which, in aggregate, demonstrates Hofler's thesis abundantly. Focusing on the brief period of 1968-73, the text presents a deluge of barrier-breaking books, films, and theater that is dizzying in its magnitude and impact. Hofler's appropriately breezy style allows his journalistic strengths to shine; it all rings true. Arranged chronologically, beginning with Hair and the movies of Andy Warhol and quickly taking in Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint, John Schlesinger's film Midnight Cowboy, Kenneth Tynan's Oh! Calcutta! (the title explained), Mart Crowley's gay-themed The Boys in the Band, and much more, with convincingly detailed context, Hofler describes in often strong language and with considerable wit what was unmistakably a new cultural reality and moral perspective in America and Britain. Although his epilogue seems superfluous, he otherwise makes his case compellingly. This is readable and enjoyable popular history for younger adult readers and deeply resonant nostalgia for the boomers who came of age during this heady half decade.--Levine, Mark Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
In "Sexplosion," the dawn of a taboo-smashing decade begins in 1968, when "The Boys in the Band" and the Broadway production of "Hair" hit stages like Molotov cocktails (even Edward Albee worried that "The Boys in the Band" did "serious damage to a burgeoning gay respectability") and Gore Vidal rattled the literary establishment with his novel "Myra Breckinridge," in which a transsexual heroine exacts her revenge with a dildo. With an eye for salacious detail, Hofler, a former entertainment editor at Life magazine and Penthouse, goes on to report on the five years that followed - years in which Andy Warhol, Stanley Kubrick and other "pop rebels" flirted with obscenity charges, turned gender norms on their heads and perfected the art of sexual exploitation. By the time the book ends, in 1973, feminists are outraged. In chapters like "Guts," "Bonanza," "Trauma" and "Fatigue," Hofler captures the arc of a generation that got drunk on pop liberation and woke up a little hung over. But if this is a story about a rebellion, the sense of conflict is missing. With the exception of homophobia (many writers from those years, including a few in The New York Times, come off as shockingly homophobic), Hofler never develops a meaningful discussion about what these artists were fighting. Without the context of the Hays Code, the Vietnam War and the history of pop culture, their accomplishments look less like revolution and more like a parade of scandals. DAMARIS COLHOUN is a freelance writer currently working for the newspaper La Stampa in Turin, Italy.
Kirkus Review
Fun, fascinating examination of the moment when American and British culture seemed to lose all inhibitions. In the middle of the 20th century, the walls of censorship were battered by courtroom decisions favoring what officials had called "indecent" literature--e.g., James Joyce's Ulysses, Henry Miller's Tropic of Cancer and Allen Ginsberg's Howl. Variety senior editor Hofler (Party Animals: A Hollywood Tale of Sex, Drugs, and Rock 'n' Roll Starring the Fabulous Allan Carr, 2010, etc.) focuses on the period from 1966 to 1973, when those walls seemed to come tumbling down, not only in books, but also in film, theater and TV. Suddenly, authors, directors and producers set their sights quite frankly (albeit often satirically) on formerly taboo subjects like transsexualism (Gore Vidal's Myra Breckinridge), masturbation (Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint), male prostitution (Midnight Cowboy) and rape (Straw Dogs). Language and subject matter became more explicit in works like the 1966 film of Edward Albee's Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf and the smash-hit TV series All in the Family. Actors of both sexes began appearing fully nude on the popular stage in Hair and Oh! Calcutta! and in films like Andy Warhol's Trash and Ken Russell's Women in Love. Hofler's deep research reveals the personal (and personnel) connections among many of these projects. Most astonishing, however, are the author's chronicles of the reactionary attitudes these revolutionary works provoked in mainstream media. Readers will marvel over the ideological distance traveled since those years, particularly by the New York Times, which in 1964 fretted about "overt homosexuality" in Greenwich Village and in whose Sunday magazine in 1973 feminist Anne Roiphe clucked her tongue over "evil flower" Lance Loud, the oldest and openly gay scion of the pioneering reality show An American Family. Sparkling history of an artistically spirited age.]] Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Owing to a convergence of politics, pop music, drugs, and the antiwar movement, there was an eruption, or pop culture "sexplosion," in the United States in the years between 1968 and 1973. This book examines the forces and personalities that titillated and outraged the public during that period, in ways both profound and trivial. Hofler, a former entertainment editor at Penthouse, covers the porn scene (Deep Throat), artist Andy Warhol's Factory of "superstars," the new frankness in fiction (Philip Roth's Portnoy's Complaint; John Updike's Couples), Doors lead singer Jim Morrison's obscenity charges, the Stonewall riots and gay themes on stage and in films (The Boys in the Band; Sunday, Bloody Sunday), and even early reality TV (An American Family, the PBS series profiling the Louds, which featured a son's coming out). As the author notes, the revolution declined when "repetition and exploitation diluted the creative pool." However, the era's aftershocks are still felt to this day. VERDICT With personalities such as Gore Vidal, Truman Capote, and Oh! Calcutta! playwright Kenneth Tynan, the "sexplosion" seems more fueled by runaway egos than creative ferment. More background about the 1950s and early 1960s culture that the artists were trying to overturn would have been helpful. However, the volume is a readable review for those who lived through the madness and those who came later.-Stephen Rees, formerly with Levittown Lib., PA (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Table of Contents
| Preface | p. xi |
| Introduction: 1966 and 1967, Caution | p. xiii |
| 1 Winter 1968, Guts | p. 1 |
| 2 Spring 1968, Partners | p. 33 |
| 3 Summer 1968, Politics | p. 57 |
| 4 Autumn 1968, Revelry | p. 79 |
| 5 Winter 1969, Bonanza | p. 95 |
| 6 Spring 1969, Fetishes | p. 111 |
| 7 Summer 1969, Revolution | p. 131 |
| 8 Autumn 1969, Trauma | p. 141 |
| 9 Winter 1970, Outrage | p. 163 |
| 10 Spring 1970, Kisses | p. 171 |
| 11 Summer 1970, Retreat | p. 181 |
| 12 Autumn 1970, Arrests | p. 197 |
| 13 1971, Fatigue | p. 213 |
| 14 1972, Frenzy | p. 249 |
| 15 Winter 1973, Backlash | p. 271 |
| Epilogue: Spring 1973 and Beyond, Finales | p. 281 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 293 |
| Bibliography | p. 295 |
| Notes | p. 303 |
| Index | p. 329 |
