If you haven’t heard about it, there is a new show coming in September to HBO which is titled ‘The Deuce’. Namely, this show will deal with the beginnings of the legalization of the porn industry, starting with its shady origins and ending with it becoming one of the biggest industries in the US. While the show will be centered around two main characters (one of them is a famous actor James Franco) who ran bars at the New York’s Time Square which were basically fronts for the Mafia, it is poised to show us what the porn was back in the early 70’s.
It is no wonder that HBO will be doing this show, mainly because the shows produced by them have introduced porn and sexuality to the small screens in the previous years. Yes, I am looking at you Game of Thrones. While most people connect Game of Thrones with porn (and violence), and rightfully so (some of the actresses in it were actually pornstars, Sibel Kekilli having the most screen time among them), there are a lot of shows on TV that have started doing the same thing on the wings of this show and some, even prior to the release of the Game of Thrones (read True Blood, another HBO creation). Scenes of sexual intercourse have become more ‘real’ and we as a society seem to accept that now more than before.
Porn is a driving force – it is a huge industry that has millions upon millions of consumers from all over the world. So, it is no wonder that there will be a TV show which will present to us how it got legalized. While the creators of ‘The Duce’ were not that into making a TV show about porn, once they actually got in touch with the real people about whom the story is, they got hooked. Apparently, their stories were so good and so interesting that the creators and producers unanimously decided to make this show happen. And, HBO picked it up immediately. Starring big names such as James Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, it is bound to attract a huge audience. And, since George Pelecanos and David Simon (The Wire) are the show’s creators, we just might be in for a hell of a ride.
It will be interesting to learn about the story of porn and it is thanks to the liberalization of the TV audience by the aforementioned shows that this has been made popular. People are more open about porn nowadays (they were more open about it in the 1970’s, but that has changed in the 80’s – I do hope that they show this as well) and this show wouldn’t have been possible 15 years ago. The story of the legalization of porn should be an interesting one and I for one cannot wait to see how it really was back in the day. I really do hope that the people who made the show took into consideration just how big the adult industry has become and that they will successfully contrast its beginnings to its current state.