Nothing But a Penis: The World As Pornography In Boogie Nights, By Paul Thomas Anderson

13 mei 2022

Boogie Nights (1997) is the first film by acclaimed director Paul Thomas Anderson, known for works such as Magnolia and There Will Be Blood. The story takes place in the San Fernando Valley, Los Angeles, and focuses on Eddie Adams (Mark Wahlberg) (Fig. 3), a young dishwasher, who becomes a pornographic film star when he is discovered by porn filmmaker Jack Horner (Burt Reynolds) (Fig. 2).

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Porno Chic

Eddie Adams adopts the stage name "Dirk Diggler" and thanks to his good looking, charisma and extremely large penis he becomes a pornographic movie star (Fig. 10 to 13). The film thus follows its rise and fall against the backdrop of the pornographic industry of the 1970s and 1980s, in the period known as the "Golden Age of Porn", or "porno chic". Director Paul Thomas Anderson used as a reference to compose the character Dirk Diggler no less than porn actor John C. Holmes, who acted in more than 500 productions between 1969-1988 and who became world-renowned for having one of the biggest penises in the pornographic industry.

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John Holmes

In addition to the film Boogie Nights, the life of John C. Holmes served as the basis for four documentaries, Exhausted: John C. Holmes, the Real Story (1981), Wadd: The Life and Times of John C. Holmes (1999), XXXL: The John Holmes Story (2000; also known as The Real Dirk Diggler: The John Holmes Story), John Holmes: The Man, the Myth, the Legend (2004) and another Hollywood feature film, Wonderland. As the film Boogie Nights is not a biography of John C. Holmes, the director and screenwriter Paul Thomas Anderson felt comfortable approaching sexuality through pornography while being able to show the daily lives of those involved in this industry.

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Restricting Pornography

However, more than exposing and following the trajectories of the characters presented throughout its 2-hour 32-minute length, Anderson's film manages to analyze the 1970s and 1980s, by recreating the behaviors of that time. By focusing on the pornographic industry, the film purposely oscillates between the representation of a euphoric period, when the laws restricting pornography became flexible, and satire, when the seriousness of the situations is dismantled by the laughter and absurdity with which the sex is treated.

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