Hustler certainly is, but that is not all it is. Others have pointed to the cover picture of a naked woman bound like a deer and tied to the front of a car. Which leaves one wondering whether Flynt can really talk about the obscenity of violence with much integrity. Crimes which imitate pornography are well-documented. Mass. The Portuguese Gang Rape Capital of America.
Bad taste is one way of putting it.
The People Vs. Larry Flynt , for all its free speech rhetoric, isn't quite so free with Flynt's history. And while we have free speech in mind, Steinem points out that, legally speaking, the 'real champions' of the first amendment have been Ku Klux Klansmen and neo-Nazis. This film is hagiography. And while we ought to remember that the derivation of this term reveals Christians as not quite the most qualified to talk about brutal honesty in biographies, perhaps we can at least recognise its seductive power at the hands of Hollywood.