What Is Obscenity - Essay Example

Obscenity is any act or statement that offends the established morality of the time. This film is an exact story on the experiences of the Publisher of Hustler Magazine; Larry Flynt. Flynt grew up in the remote suburbs in the state of Kentucky, later he achieved in a bar business that was located in Cincinnati town, Ohio (Clark, 498). The bar was famous for striping women; and for Flynt, it was an excellent way of making income. In the year 1970, Flynt started to issue a newsletter belonging to his business and later turned into Hustler, which quickly became famous as the main sexually shocking and explicit magazine in the U.S. With assistance from his spouse Althea and his brother Jimmy Larry turned out to be the wealthiest pornographer in America and a symbol of bad taste, excess, and filth (Clark, 506).
Larry found himself in regular legal battles. The public tried to stop the sale of the publication by alleging it was lawfully obscene, and it desecrated public and ethics standards. Larry was a defiant man who was determined to defend his rights, and with the help of his attorney, Colin Issacman, the charges that Larry faced became matters of great Constitutional rule. He paid a high price for his contentious activities, and his personal life became filled with misfortunes (Cohen, 267). However, with the invariable support of his lawyer, Flynt battled for the ideologies he believed in, and in the last grand legal battle, he files his case with the Supreme Court.
The First Amendment to the US Constitution was in 1791; “The Congress shall make no law reducing the freedom of the press and of speech” (Cohen, 282). From these provisions, the American citizens were freer to communicate in more ways. Additionally, the most fervently fought subjects have been centered around pornography, and obscenity (Cohen, 277). It is a disturbing topic that does not varnish in so many traditions; the struggle over the right of scumbags like Larry Flynt to do what he does is at the heart of America's unending struggle to balance individual freedom and community sensitivities.
The movie reveals diverse themes that qualify it as a civil libertarian legal battle. Aspects of the movie show that Larry Flynt attempts to use his fortune to expose the wrong things that affect the public. The lawyer representing him reveals his client as a person interested in exposing the hypocrisy in society. The lawyer portrays Larry Flynt as someone who is working to promote the marketplace of ideals philosophy. His desire to have rights for journalists included in the First Amendment attracted attention because he used a parody that was in bad taste in relation to Reverend Falwell (Cohen, 297). The lawyer argues that the marketplace ideal is for journalists to expose what goes on within their communities. The Supreme Court determined that Flynt had a right to print the parody because it was the right of the press people to inform the public. The lawyer argued from a point of view of the civil libertarian because at the end of it the Supreme Court agreed that freedom of speech meant so much in the marketplace. It meant that people has a right to access unpopular speech presented in the press.
The lawyer argues that the state takes the responsibility for interfering with peoples’ rights. He argues that the state should not obstruct the wants of the people because that no longer allows people to enjoy their freedom. The arguments are not entirely showing what the wants depicted constituted (DeJean, 502). However, one thing that comes out clearly in the lawyer’s arguments relates to the right of every individual to speak his or her mind.
The lawyer represents his client who is arrested for obscenity and jailed for over twenty years.
These arguments disgusted people about Larry as a pornographer and as a promoter of obscenity but still have his rights for obscenity is protected. The lawyer argues that the authoritarian leadership of the country has come up with regulations that are conservative and which depict liberal individuals as lawbreakers (DeJean, 523).
The paper has discussed the movie “The People v. Larry Flynt”, which was about a mix of civil libertarian and conservatism.
The unpopular aspects of speech include parody for which Reverend Falwell sues his client. The movie also depicts some issues with conservatism laws because the lawyer argues a case for the client when he is sued for obscenity (Nowlin, 429).