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Friday, November 21. 2008
Bunny Love
The last installment, the final chapter, the end to all that is decadent. I like most of the things society defines as “decadent.” Well, maybe not even most of those things anymore, although in my youth I engaged in it all, anything that was taboo.
Rebellion has its price. Truly, we can all chart our own course, but are we ready to face the consequences of our actions? And more importantly, are we willing to face the consequences of defying the social codes of our family and neighbors, rebelling against nearly everything you were told was true and righteous? Better to join the church, attend every week with the spouse and kids than risk being singled out and ridiculed — or worse — attacked for being different.
Well, into this cauldron of fundamental religiosity stepped Hugh M. Hefner and Playboy magazine. Refuting the notion that fundamentally the United States is a very Christian nation, the first issue sold out its meager run of 53,000+ issues.The Christian Mothers and other religious organizations could protest all they wanted, but their fellow parishioners were buying the magazine anyway! And, Playboy wasn’t founded in New York or Los Angeles — or even San Francisco — the hotbeds of moral decay, but in Chicago, Illinois, the Land of Lincoln.
From its start, Playboy has always been more than just nude women. The magazine has featured articles on politics, sports, the arts, music, films and television. One of the magazine’s strongest features has been the interview, the very first coming in the September 1962 issue, featuring jazz musician Miles Davis interrogated by Alex Haley. Jazz had been a defining art of American culture and Davis was at the forefront of that art. Miles epitomized cool and an interview with such coolness made Playboy more than just a magazine; it became a source of relevant information.Through the years Playboy has interviewed hundreds of famous (and some now forgotten) individuals, people from Miles Davis to Martin Luther King, Jr. (January 1965), The Beatles (February 1965), Jean-Paul Sartre (May 1965) and the most hated woman in America, Madalyn Murray-O’Hair (October 1965). The list from 1966 alone is remarkable: Princess Grace (Kelly), Federico Fellini, Bob Dylan, George Lincoln Rockwell, Arthur Schlesinger, Mike Nichols, Ralph Ginzburg, H.L. Hunt, Dr. Timothy Leary, Mel Brooks, Norman Thomas and Sammy Davis, Jr.
In depth interviews conducted with tape recorders and transcribed into the glossy pages of the magazine, it gave new purpose to buying Playboy, or maybe additional purpose. If you wanted to learn something new about a newsmaker, the Playboy interview was the vehicle for that information. Tim Leary told us to “Turn On, Tune In, Drop Out” with his religious tool, LSD-25. Yeah, I’ve had several hundred — maybe several thousand — of these spiritual journeys … like Grateful Dead concerts, who can remember how many? Can’t even remember the ones I can remember going to …
Alex Haley, now one of the great non-fiction writers of America, interviewed the Commander of the American Nazi Party, a priceless moment of race relations between the most vocal bigot in America and his African-American interviewer:
Rockwell: Just so we both know where we stand, I’d like to make something else crystal clear before we begin. I’m going to be honest and direct with you. You’re here in your professional capacity; I’m here in my professional capacity. While here, you’ll be treated well — but I see you’re a black interviewer. It’s nothing personal, but I want you to understand that I don’t mix with your kind, and we call your race “niggers.”
Playboy (Alex Haley): I’ve been called “nigger” many times, Commander, but this is the first time I’m being paid for it. So you go right ahead.
The zenith of Playboy’s interviews though came in November 1976 when then-Democratic candidate Jimmy Carter was the interview. The president who admitted he lusted in his heart, a sin, before the citizens cast their votes. To be sure, President Gerald Ford was held in such low opinion by the electorate, Carter would have had to be found in bed with a dead boy to lose the election — and even that might have not been enough. Playboy, for over two decades, was at the forefront of intellectual curiosity and exploration. Unlike other magazines that clearly showed a bias either for or against an interview subject, Playboy’s writers went a little deeper, pushing the limits of their subjects, interrogating them, no matter how beloved they may have been by the public. It wasn’t about currying favor with the interviewed, but presenting the best interview of the most notable newsmakers in America and around the world.
In September 1992 Playboy presented an interview with the mother of the women’s movement, Betty Friedan, author of The Feminine Mystique, regarded as one of the greatest works of non-fiction in American history. The entire interview bares reading, but the beginning illustrates exactly why Friedan was loved and hated by anti-feminists and feminists alike.
The interviewer, David Sheff, announced himself as a representative of Playboy at one of Friedan’s feminist think-tank forums and from there the interview began. From that interview, Friedan’s view of the Playboy Bunny of yesteryear, when they were the most visible symbol of Playboy’s vast club empire:
“The Playboy Bunny dehumanized the image of female sexuality. It was part of the feminine mystique.
“It was the image of a woman solely in terms of her sexual relation to a man, in this case as a man’s sex object and server of his physical needs. In other cases it was as a man’s wife, a mother and housewife. That is why it was objectionable. The Bunny may have been cute and fluffy, but it denied the personhood of women. That was the feminine mystique, when women were second-class people, less than human, more akin to children or bunnies. It denied the whole previous century, when women had fought for rights, including the right to vote. “When women are supposed to serve men, sexually and otherwise, they have no other identity. There is no place for career women or for women who have lives that are not about pleasing men. Since the culture views women that way, women necessarily view themselves that way. The Playboy Bunny image of women’s sexuality was an extreme Rorschach for a culture that completely denied the personhood of women.
“Sexual liberation is a misnomer if it denies the personhood of women. The first wave of so-called sexual liberation in America, where women were passive sex objects, was not real liberation. For real sexual liberation to be enjoyed by men and women, neither can be reduced to a passive role. When a woman is a sex object, it limits a man’s enjoyment, too. Maybe some people still haven’t caught on, but the best sex requires a deeper, more profound knowledge of oneself and the other person. In the Bible, sexual love was to know. It suggests something deeper. That is why the women’s movement had to happen for sexual liberation to be real.”
From it’s beginning, Playboy’s editorial philosophy had been to lead the publishing world in the areas of political and social discourse. All of its interview subjects, be they wayward sports and movie stars to the movers and shakers of politics and societal shifts, like Friedan, had something to say on the subjects and in that philosophy Playboy has presented an accurate picture of the American zeitgeist.Currently, it can be argued that the intellectual edge of the magazine’s editorial content has dropped considerably since the heady days when the soon-to-be president was interviewed, but it is in deference to the audience of today, which Playboy expects to be in the age range of 18-25 primarily, a demographic that many believe to be uninterested in the political, social and artistic discourse that made Playboy’s name in the written word, that the current Playboy interview subjects are chosen.
The list of interview subjects so far this year bears little resemblance to the prominence of the magazine’s early years. Probably the most notable would be comedian Bill Maher or actor Bruce Willis, but probably more important is energy tycoon T. Boone Pickens, who plans to bet his company’s future on water. That interview, for anyone wondering where the millions will be made in the future, is a must read. Bill Maher is a political comic primarily, so his interview really falls into that mold created in the 1960’s.
But, to answer to the social irrelevancy of today, other subjects include actors Jeremy Piven and Chris Tucker, Simpsons creator Matt Groening, basketball star Steve Nash, and the real idol of American Idol, Simon Cowell. Maybe all are interesting, but how relevant to the issues slowly engulfing our nation today? Maybe I’m just not open-minded enough. As we have seen in recent months, political activism is on the rise once again, most notably for the environment. So, maybe Playboy’s choice of subjects will shift as well.
The term “socially irrelevant” isn’t a knock on the interview subjects themselves, Piven’s portrayal of Ari Gold on Entourage often carries that show, but what Playboy is really doing is dumming down to it’s audience, or what it perceives its audience to be, according to demographic surveys. But Playboy must change with the times if it is to survive and the days of interviews like Jimmy Carter and Betty Friedan may be over. Piven, Tucker, Groening, Nash and Cowell are popular figures in American culture and they are the names that could lure the younger readers. Still, it would have been interesting to read an interview of new French president Nicolas Sarkozy, said to be a pro-American leader in a country that has a low opinion of this nation.
The best known feature of Playboy magazine may be its models, in particular, the “Girl Next Door” epitomized by the centerfold Playmates, but what carried it beyond just another men’s magazine was (is?) it’s robust intellectualism. Magazines like Time and Newsweek may present facts and figures, with a smattering of opinion, but Playboy offers thoughts and ideas along with the facts and figures … you know, that pun wasn’t intended, but the figures are always perfect … In today’s America, the virtue most under attack has been thoughts and ideas, especially in the realm of personal freedom and the right to speak one’s mind in the marketplace of ideas.
For nearly six years, to have an opposing view of the president’s policies was to be labeled “un-American.” Playboy (among others) pushed back against that stifling of speech and if the editors and owners of Playboy continue that philosophy, the magazine will continue to hold it’s relevant place in American culture. And as long as we still get a centerfold, men will still be interested in buying it and young boys will still be obsessed with getting their sweaty little hands on a copy — and the women who wish to pose will continue to line up at the door for their chance to be featured as Playmate of the Month.This installment has run nearly 2,000 words and I haven’t even mentioned the contributions of Norman Mailer, Kurt Vonnegut and Arthur C. Clarke, among others. And I love the fiction Playboy has published over the years. The point is, Playboy will be around in it’s hard copy version for decades to come.
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