2 At the opening of the decade, French companies produced around twenty-two erotic (or softcore) films per year by 1978 the number of erotic and pornographic films produced reached over two hundred, not counting imported titles. The phenomenon was hard to ignore France experienced an explosion in the production of hardcore pornography in the mid-1970s. I n S eptember 1975 the cover of the French society weekly Paris Match featured three bemused-looking nuns standing before an advertisement for the pornographic film Julia et les hommes ( Julia), the image accompanied by the headline “La France Porno.” Inside, a (fully illustrated) special report agonized over the “wind that has come to sweep away old taboos.” According to the magazine, this wind originated in America, with Hugh Hefner and his photogenic entourage the prime culprits: “Eroticism and pornography are spreading, aided with the complicity of businessmen who intend to stimulate weak sectors of industry and with the blessing of intellectuals anxious to hasten the liberation of humanity.” 1 To the sensationalist journalists at Paris Match, pornography combined a number of fears floating in the French imagination in 1975, namely, economic uncertainty, American influence, and the specter of sexual liberation.
