The birth of porn, the expansion of real estate and the arrival of cocaine. Corruption, addiction, and violence. All these ingredients, mixed by a great director, make us explore a world where sentimentalism has no place.

The series supposes an approach to the environment of prostitution. A world in which prostitutes move, putting a price on their bodies and exposing their lives in exchange for money. Where the pimps control women and take advantage of them by exploiting them without scruples, filling them with false promises and threats to have them under their control.

Source

But the series also explores a New York City in the 70's where mobsters also lived together, making a profit and trying to control any business related to human addiction or weakness - gambling, drugs, prostitution - and local businessmen, who moved in the fine line of legality. In many cases, a line that was crossed was a success.

The Deuce is a series of greys, nothing is white or black, good or bad, since in some moments even the most undesirable characters manage to generate a minimum of sympathy. There is a practical absence of good, since almost everything that appears is illicit and corrupted.

The recreation that director David Simon makes of the prostitution underworld is impressive because it makes women look totally empowered, especially because it distances itself from the female victimization so usual in these subjects. The whores in the series are so because they want to, it's the way to earn the life they've chosen, even they decide to be under the "protection" of their corresponding pimp. Or not. For example, Candy prefers to go on her own and not submit to the dictates of any pimp, assuming the consequences of her freedom, and managing her work herself. Proving that any woman in any situation is totally free of how to assume it, that is to say even being in a disgusting world they are able to live that disgust as they wish.

Source

The environment in which the protagonists move is eminently sexist, they are simply objects of pleasure for men, but still somehow some of them become empowered through sex. They understand that men can be puppets in their hands because they have something they want, and that's their true power. Once again it is the prostitute Candy who, by taking control of her life, discovers the alternative path of porn cinema and opens that path to her companions. At the same time the pimps lose influence over the girls as they discover that they can navigate this other world without them.

Throughout its development the series presents a social debate on prostitution through a point of view more oriented to women who are engaged in this business. The sex business is there, it moves a lot of money and it is impossible to destroy it. But what it is possible (and should be) is to give women who dedicate themselves to it the capacity to manage their lives, instead of persecuting them, stigmatizing them and condemning them to social exclusion. If there are men willing to pay for sex and there are women who decide freely to live from it, they must be able to do so with all the guarantees, and if something has to be pursued it is exploitation, pimping and the mafias that surround the business.

Source

For me this series uses the theme of prostitution, porn and addictions as a way to highlight the constant male subjugation that women have had to face in every area of their lives, where many times they are objects of debate for the decisions they should be able to take with total freedom and without the approval of anyone else.

The series so far has been a delight to me, the performances, the settings and the subplots are great and make us immediately hooked with the story, as there is no waste in the time that the chapters last.

---