Porn in the USA
With props that include cold potato soup, eroticism is in short supply in The Deuce.
The rise of the porn industry in 70s New York. I wasn’t sure I could be bothered. To watch television drama these days is to encounter more ladies of the night and obligatory bored pole dancers used as a backdrop to business than any human being should have to endure. But this is David Simon, who created five powerful seasons of The Wire and the rich, humane and beautiful post-Katrina elegy, Treme.
In The Deuce, the nickname for 42nd Street in the days when Times Square was not a place for tourists, Simon is still picking his way through the rubble of the American Dream. We know what to expect: multiple characters, intersecting storylines, dialogue so street as to be sometimes incomprehensible and a game in which everyone is a player.
How do we know everything is interconnected? Early in the pilot there’s a scene where a couple of pimps hang out at the Port Authority bus depot discussing, yes, President Nixon’s foreign policy. Most of it is unquotable because, well, language. But, as one says, “Nixon know what he doin’ in Vietnam, bruh. He know the game.” It’s about a show of power. Like when you threaten to cut one of your girls to show who’s boss.
We also get James Franco, twice. He plays twin brothers whose twin 70s moustaches are unfortunate in more than just an aesthetic sense: it’s near impossible to tell them apart. Cue useful plot device: beleaguered bar manager Vincent is the one who gets whacked on the head when he is mistaken for his brother Frankie, a feckless gambler with a lot of bad luck and even more enemies. At the least for the pilot, Vincent is the one with the bandage.
But here’s a challenge. Simon is at pains to make a show about exploitative sex that isn’t exploitative. Is that even possible? It’s in the detail. Shoes feature a lot. We see working woman Darlene walking painfully up the stairs to a job in her ridiculous stilettos, taking them off to go barefoot when she can. It’s in the paradoxes. Darlene gets roughed up by a client who pays $20 extra to play out violent scenarios. But the lonely old guy who just wants her company while they watch A Tale of Two Cities together has to pay double. It’s a long movie.
In Simon’s world, in the end, everyone is being done over by the system. But there’s an attempt to present strong women. Philosophy student Abby has sex with her professor. When he launches his post-coital “I shouldn’t be doing this” speech, she laughs at him and expertly critiques the logical fallacies in his argument.
She ends up in Vincent’s bar, informing him that his “innovation” – putting the waitresses in tight leotards to sell more drinks – is objectification. “Objecti-who?” says Vincent. But you can tell he’s going to be a fast learner and that smug Abby could get annoying.
Maggie Gyllenhaal as Candy does the heavy lifting when it comes to trying to have some agency in this world. She works for herself. As she tells a young guy whose friends have bought him Candy for his birthday, “This is my job.” The sex scenes are as deliberately awful as any in Girls. As for the porn, the second episode offers scenes so unrepentantly unerotic – one involving cold potato soup – that it’s a wonder this industry ever got off the ground.
This is worth a look. Times Square of the 70s may have been cleaned up, but nothing much really changes. At the end of episode two, the cops arrive yet again to pick up the girls on the street. “The hos go in, the hos go out,” says a pimp. “Like sweeping leaves on a windy day, ain’t that right, officers?”
The lonely guy who just wants her company while they watch A Tale of Two Cities has to pay double. It’s a long movie.