December 6, 2006 | Sex & Society

Porn embraced as L.A. heritage

"Pornography is as old as time. But Los Angeles is the place that turned smut into gold." So begins a recent news article on pornography and American culture, printed not in an industry trade like AVN, nor in a mainstream porn mag like Hustler, but rather in the Sunday Los Angeles Times.

The article, titled "Sex and this city ... er, valley, actually," was part of a special culture section  that was published to celebrate L.A.'s contributions to the world in commemoration of the newspaper's 125th anniversary.

The article's author, Claire Hoffman, delves into Los Angeles' past as the city of origin first for soft-core, breast-baring movies in the 1950s and 60s, and later, in the 1970s, for hard-core porn flicks like "Deep Throat," which gave birth to the adult entertainment industry as it's known today.

"Theories abound about why the San Fernando Valley is now the San Pornando Valley -- sun, proximity to Hollywood, more than your average number of beautiful blond women looking for work," Hoffman writes. "But there's no question why Los Angeles became ground zero for the industry. It all boils down to a single court case, the people vs. Harold Freeman."

That case -- which involved a porn producer who was arrested on pimp charges for hiring women to have sex on film -- was decided by the California Supreme Court in 1988 and officially legalized porn production in California. According to Hoffman, it secured L.A.'s claim to fame as the unofficial home for adult entertainment.

Hoffman further traces L.A.'s role in the transformation of pornography in the 1980s and 90s from an underground activity into a legitimate business. VCRs and, later, the Internet, changed everything, she suggests, and the Valley has always been at the center of it all.

"The aesthetic of the Valley's sex films -- hairless, tan and raunchy -- has rippled through every aspect of American entertainment, fashion and recreation, down to the pole-dancing class at the gym," Hoffman writes.

She's right, of course. These days porn is popular, not perverted, so why not acknowledge its place in Los Angeles (and American) popular culture?

• LA Times includes porn in special culture edition [AVN Online]
• Sex and this city ... er, valley, actually [LA Times]