[In the following review, Fuller analyzes the public reaction to The People vs. Larry Flynt and expresses surprise that the majority of debate came from liberal and feminist groups.]

The People vs. Larry Flynt is a recent addition to the surprisingly small store of Hollywood films dealing with censorship, freedom of speech, and First Amendment controversies. Previous films featured likable, unassuming, Everyman protagonists such as Edward G. Robinson's journalist in Dispatch from Reuter's (1940), Henry Fonda's college professor in The Male Animal (1942), Bette Davis's librarian in Storm Center (1956), Spencer Tracy's lawyer in Inherit the Wind (1960), and Woody Allen's screenwriter in The Front (1976). In dramatic courtroom and lecture hall confrontations, the heroes rise above community approbation to uphold free speech and democracy. The flag-waving finales reassured moviegoers of the triumph of the American way.

The iconoclastic Everyman that viewers are asked to cheer in The People vs. Larry Flynt is the boorish, crude publisher of Hustler and other pornographic magazines and the defendant in a famous First Amendment case heard before the Supreme Court in 1987-1988, Hustler Magazine v. Rev. Jerry Falwell. Larry Flynt may be the antithesis of his filmic forebears, but the film tells us he is fighting for the same causes and so should be respected. Flynt even says, “If the First Amendment can protect a scumbag like me, then it will protect all of you, because I'm the worst.” Herein lies the film's problem: the disparity between our revulsion at Flynt's business and our sympathy for his fight for justice could and should have made this film into a powerful vehicle for viewers to reconsider the importance of guarding our constitutional rights. In true Hollywood fashion, however, Milos Forman presents Larry Flynt, not as a monster, but as a charmingly coarse “good ol' boy” portrayed by the engaging Woody Harrelson. The militantly tawdry Hustler is represented as a middle-class, genteel soft-porn magazine filled with pink drapery and models wearing pearls.

The downplaying of the most distasteful qualities of Flynt and Hustler may have been meant to secure the film a wider audience (when an X or NR-17 rating brings the kiss of death at the box office) or make Flynt seem more acceptably mainstream (Flynt himself was promoting the publication of his autobiography, An Unseemly Man, at the time of the film's release). Despite this attempt at rehabilitation of Flynt and his magazine, and in fact because of the film's depiction of what one reviewer termed Flynt's “tragic nobility,” the film, which initially was praised, soon met with sharp critical reception. The irony is, the trashing was not from the far Right, but from liberal critics. This evolving public reception of the film should interest historians of mass media and culture in the 1990s.

Influential critics such as Frank Rich of the New York Times, who reviewed the film in pre-release (October 12, 1996), gave the film high praise for its courageous, truthful, and very honest championing of First Amendment rights. Rich wrote that the film “deserves a huge adult audience because it is the most timely and patriotic movie of the year.” The film's advertising trumpeted the rave reviews. But dissenting opinions emerged upon the film's general release, most prominently in Gloria Steinem's devastating review (also in the New York Times), “Hollywood Cleans Up Hustler” (January 7, 1997). She asserted that the film deliberately ignored “the magazine's images of women being beaten, tortured and raped, women subjected to degradation from bestiality to sexual slavery.” This article and others unleashed a growing outcry from other (mostly liberal and feminist) reviewers about what they perceived as the dangers of the inaccurate and dishonest portrayal of Flynt and Hustler. The whole public discussion of the film quickly shifted from the First Amendment theme to the debate on whether heterosexual, male-oriented pornography inevitably victimized women.

A bitter battle over pornography's impact on men and women has been raging for more than a decade between antipornography groups and the Christian far Right, on the one hand, and civil libertarians on the other. The issue has deeply divided feminist scholars. Some, such as Catharine MacKinnon, view all pornography as damaging. Others, such as Linda Williams and Laura Kipnis, have seen avenues for women to use media, even pornography itself, to take charge of their own sexuality. Kipnis had previously praised Flynt's and Hustler's successful working-class challenge to circumscribed bourgeois ideals of sexual expression. Now even she is confused by the film and by Flynt's attempts to recast himself as a respectable citizen.

The director and producer were taken aback by this criticism from unexpected quarters. “It's all so puzzling,” said Forman. It was interesting that in all this debate in the national press, criticisms of the film from the religious Right were largely absent, even though they were the targets of Flynt's wrath and satire in the film and are painted in the film as the real bad guys (uptight bluenoses who can't take a joke).

The apogee of the controversy in print came when an anonymous source reprinted Steinem's review in a full-page ad lambasting The People vs. Larry Flynt in Variety, the film industry trade paper. The Southern California chapter of the ACLU (American Civil Liberties Union) responded with a Variety ad of its own, defending the film. Talk about a First Amendment flap. While it is unclear to what extent this debate impacted the film's reception by the public, despite the excellent initial reviews and the pull of its popular director and stars, it was nominated for only two major Academy awards and won neither. Also, the film did much more poorly at the box office than its producers anticipated. The film's release in European markets has been dogged by similar problems.

On the surface, then, The People vs. Larry Flynt is a rousing tale of an unlikely Everyman of the 1970s and 1980s fighting for freedom of speech and expression, and it may be useful in the classroom. On another level, the critical reception surrounding the film makes for a fascinating case study of cultural controversies about sexuality and gender politics in American society in the 1990s, which may be even more illuminating.