This paper opens up with a comparison of a weeping bourgeois feminist poet and an unknown working class (chicken butcher) author of a letter to Hustler. This sets the stage for the analysis of both Hustler content and the feminist anti-porn critique of Hustler.
Hustler demonstrates all of the sins of male domination and exploitation including: S/M, lesbians, fantasy realms. The misogyny of Hustler is considered monumental. The question of class also appears relevant for both Hustler and its critics. The market has Playboy concentrating on breasts, Penthouse sensitively lingering on the soft focus cs, Penthouse sensitively lingering on the soft focus crotch shot and Hustler exploring the limits of both the female and the male genitals. Hustler knew no bounds of age, race, gender and even presented amputees preoperative transsexuals and pregnant women. The Hustler body was unromanticized. The cartoon body of Hustler is embarrassingly unpleasant with vapours, liquids and solids emitting into all area/venues of society. Hustler is laced with political humour and disrespect, adds against war, smoking and venereal disease. Thus, Hustler serves as mass circulation porn and mass circulation class-antagonist.
Newsweek once commented, 'Hustler can be downright frightful... The net effect is to transform the erotic into the emetic'. Is Newsweek reacting to Hustler transgressing bourgeois ideas of proper or is it the violating of the convention of men's magazines? The power of grossness is predicated on its opposition to high discourse. Dominant ideology works to enforce opposition producing class differences, somatic symbols and culture. High culture is structured through the obsessive banishment of the low, grotesque body. The classical body is a laminated service that is orifice free. Hustler is active orifice focused.
The history of disgust runs parallel with the bourgeois need to remove the distasteful (dead animals, violence and sex) from the sight of society. So a parallel of bourgeois disgust and anti-porn feminism is revealed.d anti-porn feminism is revealed.
Hustler's knack of finding and attacking the jugular of a culture's sensitivity could be a strategy of transgression to expose the unspeakable issues (breast cancer, AIDS, child abuse). It is made clear through excrement, race and homosexuality, male readers have equal opportunity to taste offensiveness.
A discussion of Freud�s analysis of the joke and how it relates to class and Hustler further strengthens the social analysis of the publication. A brief history of publisher Larry Flynt outlines some of the social issues like Freedom of Speech and Press and unjust legal system that eventually find their way onto Hustler's pages.
An analysis of the Jacqueline Onassis nudes and their relationship to 'Beaver Hunt' is an example of violating the rigid social distinctions of class hierarchy.
In conclusion, a theory of representation that conflates bodily representations with real bodies and symbolic sex and violence with real sex or violence is needed for adequately criticizing Hustler. Hustler itself is irreverent comment on bourgeois sensibilities and a countercultural force, but it is muddled, banal, inconsistent and often distastefully stupid. With a substantial circulation this maniacal voice of discontent should be studied and understood.
Kipnis is very accurate about the inconsistency of Hustler. This could be a semiotic message to try and bring credibility to the publication in the eyes of the disillusioned and disenfranchised who see the world this way. Juxtapose the consistent messages, anti-smoking, children are in danger and anti-war against muddle and flesh, a power statement emerges. Did this happen by chance or is by chance or is this the likely product of blue collar rage? Larry Flynt may hate women but probably no more he hates anything else, including himself.
Page Created April 2, 1998
Page Last Updated April 14, 1998