HILVERSUM, Netherlands – Conservative politicians are up in arms over an upcoming public television broadcast of the 1972 porn classic Deep Throat.
“It is a historical symbol of unashamed sexual exploitation and of perverse greed,” Christian Union party leader Arie Slob told Radio Netherlands. “The film brought 600 million dollars into the box office, but it also ruined a human being. The so-called star, [Linda Lovelace], later declared that she was pressured into her acting.”
Public broadcasting corporations BNN and VPRO plan to air the Gerard Damiano feature Feb. 23 on Dutch TV channel Nederland 3 as part of a late-night block of programming about the history of adult films. The movie will be shown along with a
documentary about the movie and a discussion panel with director Pieter Kuijpers, porn actress Kim Holland and German academic
Ingo Schiweck, a historian specializing in adult movies.
“I wish American television was that progressive,” said Robert Interlandi, marketing director for Deep Throat rights holder Arrow Productions. “I know that everyone was very surprised when HBO aired the NC-17 version of Inside Deep Throat, the documentary about Deep Throat…but screening the full movie on television…wow!”
Dutch
television has always been progressive. VPRO was the first network to show a naked
woman in a prime time television program in the 1960s. In 2007, BNN
announced it would air “Big Kidney Donor Show,” in which three
contestants were to compete to be the recipient of a kidney donated by
a terminally ill woman. The show was later exposed as a hoax, conceived as a means of drawing attention to the lack of organ donors in the
country.
Online discussion groups have suggested that the
Christian Union’s efforts might be better focused on the
excessive amount of violence shown on television.
BNN television
director Maarten van Dijk told Radio Netherlands that he thinks young
people should be able to see the
Linda Lovelace classic, "[p]articularly if the film is properly
introduced by a special edition of our lifestyle program, plus a
documentary on Deep Throat."
A Radio Netherlands report on the controversy notes that "trying to stop a show before it has been aired is seen as preventive censorship, and that is anathema to Dutch political culture" and that most Dutch politicians "would rather be seen dead than censor the media."
"We at Arrow support any kind of political discussion," said Interlandi. "Right now, the Netherlands are having political problems with censorship, so their showing of Deep Throat is part of the battle against that. We also think it's kind of interesting that they can't show Islamic cartoons in the Netherlands, but they can show porn."
