Drawing the Line : Generic Boundaries of the Pornographic Film in Early 1970s Sweden

The article focuses on the advertising for, and reception of, sexually explicit films following the removal of the obscenity clause in the Swedish penal code in 1971. Many films released at this time have gone down in Swedish film history as “more or less” pornographic, although from a present-day perspective they would most probably not be described that way. While pornographic films – so called “stag films” – had been produced since the early twentieth century, it was nevertheless not until the 1960s that sexually explicit material could be shown publicly and not until the 1970s that pornographic films became available to a wider audience. As a film genre then, pornography underwent an important transformation at this point in time. If, prior to this point, it had been clearly defined by its forbidden and clandestine circulation, and more or less exclusively directed towards a male audience, in the early 1970s, those clearly defined boundaries dissolved under a more relaxed attitude from authorities. This led to a re-negotiation of the genre, which is discussed in the article with the aid of film scholar Rick Altman’s theory of how genres are shaped and how they develop, through mutual and complex processes in which producers, audiences, and critics are involved. Mapping the use of generic labels in advertisements, articles and reviews, and censorship records for a few case studies such as for instance More From the Language of Love, Anita – Swedish Nymphet (Anita – ur en tonårsflickas dagbok, 1973), and Flossie (1974), as well as exhibition practices, the article traces the development of the pornographic film as a genre during the first half of the 1970s