Laura Kipnis Does Hustler

As the clip of Lary Flynt's Presidential candidacy speech shows, Flynt’s “career as a pornographer spilled out into the political arena” (K p. 123). Flynt, the creator and editor of Hustler magazine, has shown the American public for years how pornography is a vital tool of resistance against the repression of sexuality and free speech by the government.

As Flynt said in his speech, he is devoted to "moving the massive repressive hand of government from the crotch of the American people." As Kipnis discusses, Flynt fulfills his mission through the pages of Hustler in which we can see historically precedented amount of skin and pink, as well as political satire, both which challenge the conventions of what the female body is supposed to look like as well as societal behavioral norms; Flynt's "favorite tactic was to systematically and extravagantly violate, in the most profoundly offensive way possible, each and every deeply held social taboo, norm, and propriety he could identify” (K p. 123).

For starters, as Kipnis informs, Hustler was one of the first adult magazines to actually show the full bottom of the female, including her inner "pink". Flynt has been in too many legal disputs to name, but this was one of them. In each dispute, at the cost of fines and contempt charges, Flynt has won for the American public, more and more free speech rights; “pornography-via Larry Flynt- that has had a decisive effect on expanding the perimeters of political speech in this country” (K p. 123).

Hustler was always the first to "out smut" the competition. Kipnis reviews some of the key difference between Hustler, Playboy, and Penthouse. For one, Hustler keeps it real, showing a variety of female body types, sizes, ages and sexualities, even male-male sexuality has been shown. "The sexuality Hustler delivers is far from normative, with the most polymorphous array of sexual preferences regarded as equivalent to ‘normal sex,’... Hustler's body is often gaseous, fluid emitting, embarrassing body, once continually defying the strictures of social manners and mores" (K p. 131-132). In comparison, Hustler's competition represents a cleaner, glossier cover girl, one that reflects a "higher class" of pornography, one which sends the message that you don't have to feel as guilty to consume; Hustler "is neither the airbrushed top-heavy fantasy body of Playboy, nor the slightly cheesy, ersatz opulence of Penthouse, whose lingeried and sensitive crotch shots manage to transform female genitalia into ersatz objects d’art" (K p. 131-132).

With an analysis that is more than skin deep, Kipnis underlines how Hustler's first showing of the female bottom wasn't just to challenge its competition, it was to challenge class anxieties surrounding the body. The top half of the body and its senses represent the upper class. Facial beauty, in seeing, the breasts, all more acceptable areas of beauty. A little cleavage is always ok. In contrast, the lower half of the body- the genitals which are conveniently located next to the "organs of elimination" represent the lower class, the things which disgust the upper class and should not be caught in action in the public, let alone duplicated in print and circulated. By illuminating the lower part of the body, Hustler places the lower class on top; “The body and the social are both split into higher and lower strata, with images or symbols of the upper half of the body making symbolic reference to society’s upper echelons-the socially powerful-while the lower half of the body and its symbols (Hustler’s métier) makes reference to the lower tiers- those without special power” (K p. 134).

So, the next time you pick up a dirty magazine, remember, its not just about getting off, its about getring revolutionary!

Laura Kipnis, "Disgust and Desire: Huslter Magazine," in Bound and Gagged: Pornography and the Politics of Fantasy in America, New York: Grove, 1996, 122-132.