Come on, people! No one's interested in talking about blowjobs in the 70s? I need some perspective here...

I just watched this movie for the first time recently too. In fact, I caught up on a couple Woody Allen classics recently--Annie Hall, Manhattan, Crimes & Misdemeanors and Hannah & Her Sisters. I enjoyed them all very much.

I can't say I noticed a lack of blowjob discussion though. Heck, I don't even remember much frank discussion about sex acts at all.

This question is really gnawing at me now...you've never seen a discussion about modern adult sexual relationships that didn't include BJ talk? Do you mean in movies?

The only blowjob conversation I can even recall off the top of my head is from Clerks.

I'm trying to job my memory. Here's a partial list of movies I've seen that Criticker.com lists under the genre "Romance." Looking through the list, I can't say that any BJ talk comes to mind:

before sunrise/before sunset, lost in translation, true romance, eternal sunshine of the spotless mind, the fountain, the cooler, conversations with other women, punch-drunk love, rachel getting married, shopgirl, stranger than fiction, waitress, y tu mama tambien, 2 days in paris, little children, love actually, as good as it gets, chasing amy....

Chasing Amy has a fisting conversation, so that one gets a pass at least. Not surprisingly, it's another Kevin Smith movie.

I'm talking primarily about comedic movies or sketches written and directed by male comedians that are primarily or partially focused on their sex lives (a popular topic for male comedians). So Clerks is a perfect example. Rachel Getting Married or y tu mama tambien not so much.

I'm also talking about just the general cultural zeitgist. It seems that in the US, it's generally accepted that men want blowjobs. So in a movie that is in some part about sexual denial as a metaphor for emotional denial, it seemed odd that Woody Allen never even said, "How 'bout a hummer?" (or whatever the euphemism was back then) after being refused PIV. I wasn't expecting an overblown thing... it just seems like a comedic trope now that I noticed the lack. Now that I think about it, I can't think of any specific examples that aren't Ask Metafilter relationship questions...

Maybe I'm just inured to BJ chat, so I don't really notice its present or absence.

Maybe it just didn't occur to Woody to make dick jokes. I have no perspective though, but I didn't get the sense that he was holding back in that movie.

It is interesting that you'd notice that. So let's make this about you ....

Just kidding. A quick perusal of the Googles shows that Allen does make explicit references to blowjobs in multiple movies of the 90s onward, but given his candor for the era about sex, it is probably more a general issue of cultural taboo, or even studio/MPAA squeamishness. I think Allen does have a few oral sex jokes in his comedy routines.

Frankly, I was ... old enough to read pornography back then, and I don't think it's much of an exaggeration to say that oral sex was still pretty dicey for a mainstream movie. Heck, SNL waited -- what? 15 years? -- to sing the penis song. The 90s were pretty pivotal for the acceptability of sex talk in general culture -- partly the net, partly Clinton-Lewinsky, and who knows what else. But back to my exaggeration. I think oral sex, then, was roughly the equivalent of anal sex, today, in terms of what you can talk about in mixed company.

I don't think he was holding anything back... my first thought was that the 70s was a magical time when everyone was having sex, yet hadn't watched enough VHS porn to internalize the idea that blowjobs were awesome...

In the 70s, virtually nobody had seen VHS porn. The players did not become cheap enough for the common consumer until 1981 or so.

IMDB, Keyword: Oral sex, sorted by release date.

I pretty much thought that Carnal Knowledge was the first major R-rated movie to explicitly discuss oral sex. Bonnie & Clyde doesn't really count because the scene is over fast and meant to suggest Clyde's homosexuality. Midnight Cowboy was X-rated.

The next major release (other than low-budget horror and niche films) appears to be "Carrie".

I had never thought of this. It was my favorite movie for a long time. Since it was sort of autobiographically based (not all the facts, but the dynamics) on his relat. to Keaton, maybe grilled cheese sandwiches were just not something she cooked up very often, or at all.

But there were blowjobs in the '70's. I actually got a few. I can cite.

Also during the 70s, the ratings wars were occurring and the MPAA was changing its standards virtually movie by movie. Plus, blowjobs were still heavily associated with Deep Throat, so many filmmakers may have feared an X from that association.

But there were blowjobs in the '70's. I actually got a few. I can cite.

You can cite? Is there some sort of BJ ledger I'm not aware of?

Plus, blowjobs were still heavily associated with Deep Throat, so many filmmakers may have feared an X from that association.

I was thinking about this angle, but Annie Hall has a handful of lines referring to masturbation ("Hey, don't knock masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.") and even one about sex toys ("We use a large vibrating egg.").

I think you can thank "Hair" for allowing the masturbation line with its line from the cast album, "Masturbation can be fun." "Egg" draws a different mental picture than "carrot", but Allen may have went with "egg" because it is a funnier mental image.

I thought the large vibrating egg line was pretty funny. Also, at one point Allen goes to take "a cold shower", which for a long time I thought was a euphemism for masturbating (until some guy told me that it worked to cool their ardor).

(I really did like the movie, by the way - despite all this post-film bean-plating).

I don't even remember all the references to sex in that movie (I saw it when it came out.)

There wasn't as much specific sex talk in media back then. People were doing stuff, just not TALKING about it.

Is it a generational thing?

I read an article oh, maybe seven or eight years ago that talked about how the BJ has become a much more common act, especially for monogamous committed couples, than it ever used to be. The same is probably true the other way around. I'm not naive enough to say "oh, it wasn't done," but I do think it was considered more 'out there' and less of an expectation, especially for nice couples (i.e., not with a slut). This is one among many reasons why the stupid book "The Joy of Sex" blew people's minds.

That being said, I don't think mentions of a blow job are at all to be expected in a comic movie. The lack of mention would never have stood out to me.

Chevy Chase used to do this bit before Weekend Update on the first season of SNL where he'd be talking on the phone and then hang up quickly when he realized that the segment was starting. On one he says into the phone "no you suck, not blow. That's just an expression". I remember that being pretty shocking at the time but I was only like 12.

Were there any references to grilled cheese sandwiches?

talked about how the BJ has become a much more common act,

I think I actually read that via MeFi, now that I recall, so if you search you might get a historical/critical analysis of the topic. IIRC it was something found in, you know, Esquire or something like that, and was fairly annoying, but interesting as well.