More Vidette Rantings

So, I'm once again turning into that crank who constantly writes letters to the editor of a paper, telling them how bad their paper is. Seriously.

Today, I wrote another letter to the Vidette (they usually print 2-3 of mine per year). What was I so incensed about that I wrote this letter? Well, for the past two days, the Vidette has run articles about an upcoming documentary over Deep Throat. No, not the Watergate informant. Deep Throat the 1970s porn movie about a woman with her clitoris in the back of her throat that became a cult classic.

Why am I so bothered by this? Well, these articles are very glowing. They talk about the documentary, and how the movie changed culture, everyone went to see it, celebrating pornography, yada yada yada. They leave out something I think is very, very important to the story of that movie. You see, Linda "Lovelace" Marchiano, the unfortunate starlette of Deep Throat, recounted her experiences with the making of that movie many times in the 1980s. According to her, she was kidnapped to be in the movie. She was systematically beaten to subdue her and to get her to perform. They threatened her life and the lives of her family should she have attempted to escape. She even says they hypnotized her, so as to get around the natural gag reflex (let's leave it at that for now).

That is not a story worth celebrating. And yet both of the articles mention nothing about it. It would seem that the documentary doesn't even include it! If it does, the makers don't consider it a very crucial aspect of the story. I don't know who wrote the stories, but they were distributed by AP. My quarrel is threefold: The makers of the movie show great callousness in ignoring the horrible abuse Linda suffered in making that movie; the Associated Press shows utter irresponsibility by not including that in their far too complimentary articles; and the Vidette shows both by running two articles about the same thing two days in a row and yet not adding anything of their own discussing the dark side of the movie.

I'm not what people would consider a feminist, but I think I'm justifiably upset in this case.