Summary Of The People Vs Larry Flynt

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In the film, The People vs. Larry Flynt the movie explores the life of Larry Flynt and the beginning of modern pornography. It also takes on a few other issues such as desecration of the flag and the protection against awarding damages to public figures of emotion distress. At this time in history there were laws against what could be shown in different types of media, in this case a magazine. This film goes to make the point whether pornography should be a type of media protected by the first amendment. Media law teachers and lawyers emphasize that the First Amendment is intended to protect controversial speech, not speech that remains unchallenged. According to Jacqueline Myers (1997), ‘This same idea is summed up in a line Flynt utters in …show more content…
The film tries to make the point that how is porn worse than war? At the time Playboy had already been around for quite awhile. Larry had become frustrated with the content, and decided that he would give the people what they really wanted. He began to publish his magazine, Hustler with more explicit content showing genitalia of females, which at the time this was unheard of and was not done even by Playboy. This is the beginning of the storm for Larry. The film shows the beginnings of a group of conservative people meeting to discuss the content of his magazine and the the possible effects. From that point, things begin to go downhill and Larry Flynt is …show more content…
One of the best defenses being that we live in a free country, and that it comes at a price. At times we must allow some of the bad to coincide otherwise we risk opening up the possibility to other freedoms being impeded upon based on what we may find questionable. To quote Woody Harrelson, “Do we ban the sale of Budweiser because a kid takes a drink in a tavern?” (Stone, 1997), which resonates with many of us. How can we try and hold the publishers of certain types of content responsible for which they have no control of whom the content may fall into? I find myself agreeing with this reasoning’s the most because while there may be many things that are said on a daily basis that I may find offensive or reprehensible. Like its been said, in order to truly have FREE SPEECH, we sometimes have to allow the bad to come through even when we may not agree with it. That is the price of freedom of speech and it is a worthwhile cost, as many do not have those freedoms around the world. Another point that is made in the film that I find myself also resonating with is when Woody Harrelson begins on his speech about how sexually explicit material supposedly corrupts the youth while politicians start these wars. How spilling your guts and killing is heroic, yet sex is obscene. So which is more obscene, sex or war? This also begs the question how this work would be seen in a different

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