“Linda Lovelace As Herself”

It would be specious to claim that such a hastily and poorly produced film could anticipate and perhaps partially cause the events of the ensuing decade, except we know for a fact that it did. Deep Throat was perhaps the purest crystallization of the philosophy upon which the seventies were built. Afterward, when Linda attempted to unstick her symbolism from herself, she seemed to the public to be discrediting the cultural revolution she had inadvertently helped create — a revolution which, in a larger context, was soon associated not just with fellatio and miniskirts, but with Nixon’s resignation, the end of Vietnam, freedom of speech, and the monolith of women’s liberation. By disavowing her appearance “as herself,” she destroyed a keystone of one of the most important and highly mythologized periods in recent American history, and for many people active in that period, there was only one choice: to discredit, shame, and silence.

Hairpin Contributor Sarah Marshall goes blue in the current issue of Propeller with the tragic story of porn star Linda Lovelace.