Hustler Magazine. We all know this name. We know who Larry Flynt is and perhaps many of us have seen the film The People Vs Larry Flynt. How much do we really know about Larry and his empire? Well, what I'm about to show you may not be news to some. But if horrified me.
DISCLAIMER: WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO SEE IS SEXUALLY GRAPHIC!!!
SEND THE KIDDIES OUT OF THE ROOM!
From "The Birth of A Nation" to "Black Studs"
Theorists such as Wiegman (1993) and Snead (1994) have traced the beginnings of the image of the black man as sexual monster back to the late nineteenth century, as the product of a white supremacist ideology which saw the end of slavery as bringing about an unleashing of animalistic, brute violence inherent in African-American men. D.W. Griffith's The Birth of a Nation (1915), was, without question, the first major mass circulation of this image in film and was to become the blueprint for how contemporary mass media depicts black males.
The notion of the black male as sexual monster has been linked to the economic vulnerability that white working-class men feel in the face of a capitalist economy over which they have little power. Guerrero (1993), in his discussion of the emergence of this new stereotype in the novels of Thomas Dixon, suggests that the economic turmoil of the postbellum South served to undermine the white southern male's role as provider for his family; thus he sought to inflate his depreciated sense of manhood by taking up the honorific task of protecting White Womanhood against the newly constructed specter of the "brute Negro" (p. 12).
Hard-core pornography similarly depicts black men as more sexually dehumanized than white men. This would seem surprising since in pornography all participants, men and women, are reduced to a series of body parts and orifices. However, studies that compare the representation of white men and black men in pornography (Cowan & Campbell, 1994; Mayall amd Russell, 1993), have found that it is black male characters who are granted the least humanity and are most lacking in ability to be intimate. Moreover, in movies and magazines which feature black men, the focus of the camera and plot is often the size of his penis and his alleged insatiable sexual appetite for white women. Movies with titles such as Big Bad Black Dicks, Black Stallions on Top, Black Pricks..White Pussy, and Black Studs, draw attention to the black male body and in particular the penis, a rare occurrence in pornography targeted at heterosexual men. Movies such as The Adventures of Mr. Tootsie Pole (Bo Entertainment Groups) feature a black male and white female on the cover. The text beneath the picture says "he's puttin his prodigious pole to the test in tight white pussy." In Black Studs (Glitz Entertainment), three white women are shown having sex with three Black men. Above the pictures, the text reads, "These girls can't get enough of that long black dick." The penis becomes the defining feature of the black man and his wholeness as a human being is thus rendered invisible.
The image of the black male as sexually aggressive is a regular cartoon feature in Hustler, one of the best-selling hard-core porn magazines in the world (Osanka, 1989). Cartoons which have as their theme the sexual abuse of white women by black men began appearing in the late 1970s and by the mid-1980s, Hustler was running an average of 2-3 such cartoons an issue. Hustler was by no means the first to produce such as image but it is probably the first mass-distributed cultural product (albeit in caricatured form) to visually depict an enormous black penis actually doing severe physical damage to the vagina of a small white women.
Flynt regularly stresses that the cartoons' boldness is not limited to sexual themes but rather also to their political content. Indeed in his editorials, Flynt regularly stresses that, "We are a political journal as well as a sex publication" (Flynt, 1983: 5). In an editorial responding to critics of Hustler cartoons -- titled, "Fuck You if You Can't Take a Joke " Ð Flynt tells his readers that his critics are not upset with the sexual content of the magazine but rather with his satire which carries "the sting of truth itself" (Flynt, July 1988: 7). Flynt continues by arguing that he will not allow his critics to censor what is in effect the political content of his magazine since "satire, both written and visual, has ... been the only alternative to express political dissent" (ibid).
Article from http://www.hustlingtheleft.com/CRAPP_E_LIB/dines.html
In Addition....
Dwayne Tinsley, close personal friend to Flynt, and the creator of the Hustler cartoon "Chester the Molester," which depicted pre-teen girls of all races being molested, was convicted in 1990 of sexually abusing his daughter. When he was released from prison, after serving his time, Flynt hired him back on at Huster. In February 1996, Hustler publisher Joe Theron was arrested in Britain with 400 videos imported from South Africa, many of them depicting child pornography.
Lastly.....
Tonya Flynt Speaks Out
My name is Tonya Flynt. I am here to tell you that the portrayal of my father, Larry Flynt, in Oliver Stone and Milos Forman's movie is a pack of lies. My father, the founder and publisher of Hustler Magazine, is not a hero who has sacrificed everything to fight censorship and protect freedom of speech. He doesn't give a damn about freedom of speech. All he cares about is making millions of dollars out of the sexual exploitation of women and children.
My father is a pornographer, a pimp, and a molester of children. I say this with pain and sorrow because in spite of everything he has done, I still love my father. I also say this with fear, because my father has threatened me and my daughter. But I feel I have a responsibility to expose the truth about my father. Making Larry Flynt a hero justifies and makes invisible the harm he has done to women and children. It silences their voices and muffles their cries of pain. This is exactly what Oliver Stone's movie has done.
This is the real story behind Hustler. Before my father owned his first bar, he was a small-time pimp with a string of women. That's how he got the money to open his first bar and strip club. During the time he owned strip clubs, my father continued to pimp the women who worked in the clubs. He would make the women have sex with customers and give him a cut of the proceeds. That's how he made so much money so quickly.
Why does the movie ignore the connections between my father's financial empire and the prostituting of women and girls? Why doesn't it say that Althea was a child prostitute? Why doesn't it say that my father made his early money pimping? I guess it's easier to glorify a pornographer than pimp?
To my father, women have always been objects to dominate and control. He showed his power through sexual use and abuse. One of my father's favorite sayings was, "The man who controls pussy controls the world."
My father used his power against me when I was a little girl. I worshiped my father. Part of that worship grew out of the fact that he lived in unimaginable luxury while my mother, my sister, and I lived in dire poverty. He didn't feel any obligation to support us. We were always one step from destitution. We would go visit him at his mansions and have a taste of wealth and privilege. Then we would be back at home, worrying about how to pay the rent. The movie doesn't talk about that.
My father used his power against me in another way too. He sexually abused me. On one occasion, my Dad was angry because I wouldn't stop crying. He came in, out of control with rage, and beat me over and over again with a belt. That night he came into my room and sexually molested me. He penetrated me with his fingers. He made me touch his penis. He had oral sex with me and made me have oral sex with him. I hadn't celebrated my thirteenth birthday when he did this to me.
On many occasions, he would touch my breasts or grab me between the legs. One time he came into my bedroom, took my panties off, and fondled me.
When my sister and I visited my father, he made no effort to shield us from any of the brutal and humiliating pictures. He was proud of them. Twice he sent me pornographic Christmas cards stuffed with money. At 8 or 9, my father made me and my sister go into a go-go bar, dress up in revealing outfits, and dance for him on the stage like strippers. I can't tell you the damage these experiences did to my feelings about my body and to my sexuality. These are issues I will struggle with for the rest of my life.
My father wasn't content just to molest me. I have been told by a close relative that he makes trips to Bangkok and buys little girls there. I was also told he brought back videotapes of child pornography from Bangkok . It causes me so much pain to realize that what he was doing to me he does to little girls pushed into prostitution by poverty.
Pornography and prostitution turned my father's heart stone cold. It made him see even his own daughter as an object to use for his sexual gratification. I am the mother of a nine-year-old daughter. And when I look at her I thank God that I have been able to protect her from the abuse I was subjected to.
Hustler says it's funny and sexy to molest little girls like my daughter. And Oliver Stone says Hustler is about freedom and liberation. That's a dangerous message.
I ask you to look at these pictures and ask yourself: who benefits from them and who is harmed? Is this freedom?
Copyright Off Our Backs, Inc. Apr 1997
All rights Reserved
[Larry Flynt has publicly denied allegations that he molested his daughter however there is a tape that refutes his claim that was made by his wife that documents her confrontation of him about it.]
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