LOS ANGELES: On July 30th, I attended the premiere of Academy-award winning director Brigitte Berman's new documentary, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel at Los Angeles' Nuart Theater. Both Hefner and director Berman were in attendance, and they did a brief Q&A after the film. Not just for those with a fondness for Playboy magazine, the movie was made for anyone interested in human sexuality, law, social justice, censorship, publishing, and, well, of course, pretty girls. At this point, Hugh Hefner is no longer defending himself against the obvious enemies he had in the 60s. Then, it was the conservative Christians, the censors, the people who were out-and-out afraid of crass depictions of sexuality. That the feminists of the time (Susan Brownmiller, and Gloria Steinem, famously) also vilified him is fascinating, since he thought he was working on the same project they were. They accused him of objectifying women, when the thought he was liberating them. In Hef's view, Playboy allowed “normal girls” a forum to show that they, too, enjoyed sex, which was of course a brand-new cultural message of the late 1950s. To the feminists a decade later, these “girls next door” in the Playboy centerfolds were nothing more than a male fantasy of feminine sexuality: the vamp in schoolgirl clothing, who seems demure but will bare it all. Berman's film captured this disagreement with aplomb. Hef's situation in American culture is even more complex now. The people who scoff at Hefner are a generation (or two) removed from his, and they know little to nothing about his heroism of the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. They only see the caricature of male sexuality he's become. They don't care about the way he flouted racist convention, and in some cases actual law, to have black performers on his show and in his clubs. They don't care that he published Charles Beaumont's “The Crooked Man,” a short story that questioned homophobia directly, when no one else would. Hefner said during the Q&A that he thinks most people nowadays don't acknowledge “the other half” of his life. While a crowd of baby boomers sagely nodded their heads, I looked around and realized that I was one of the youngest in the crowd. The implication of “the other half” here is heavy: one half of Hefner's life is women/sex/silliness/parties and the other half is intensely focused intellectual, creative, activist work. Much like the way they were presented in Playboy, Hef thinks of the naked girls (models, as well as his girlfriends) as a very separate experience from the work of the mind. The magazine is serious. It is political, philosophical, artistic, and edgy. Or, it used to be. Berman's film doesn't quite address the issue of how Playboy changed over the years from a reputable literary magazine with semi-nude pictures to a thin sheaf of glossy photos with the occasional piece of entertainment reporting. This is such a puzzle to me. On the one hand, it seems like Hef should have the right to be a sexual adolescent, to love big boobies and blondes. He's a grown man with consenting women, after all. Who cares if he spends his days in silk pajamas at his Mansion? On the other hand, I agree with the criticism that Playboy became, in some very important ways, a dictator of sexual taste, and that it presents a limited view of what is sexy. What's clear from the film is that this restricted taste, which has become so ubiquitous, is actually Hef's. His current girlfriend attended the screening with him, and she looked exactly the same as every other knock-out blonde he's been with since his divorce. However, it doesn't seem as though Hefner had a mission to tell readers what they “should” like. He was a brilliant business man who happened to know exactly what HE liked. That Americans are sheep, media consumers, and easily told what their preferences should be based on what they see around them, is their own fault. Someone with Hugh Hefner's acumen for business and a different aesthetic might have changed the course of a generation's sexuality. Maybe. Or maybe Hef's desire for a certain hour-glass gal is just so mainstream because it is also a basic biological imperative the way symmetry in the face seems to be in cross-cultural studies of beauty. Certainly a particular waist-to-hip ratio (.7) has been theorized as a beauty ideal in many cultures. If Hef was just tapping into some heterosexual evolutionary biology, what exactly could the feminists expect? Berman film implies this question, without ever asking it directly. What's beautiful about Hef's current incarnation as an 84-year-old business tyrant (he's buying the magazine back from stockholders to, one imagines, exert some more creative control), strangely self-effacing lover, and general eccentric is that he still seems happily committed to being authentic–he really does exactly what he wants to do, no matter what. This I respect I great deal. I don't share my generation's disdain for the grandfather-aged patriarch of The Girls Next Door, because the sheer volume of good he's done simply outweighs the potential damage caused by his perpetuation of certain boring sexual aesthetics in pop culture. Berman's film does include a few detractors but is, overall, a very tender and loving portrait of a man she clearly respects. Again, I break with my generation in applauding this, because I much prefer to know a filmmaker's position, to have it laid bare (pun intended). Those who pretend to “objective” documentary-filmmaking seem naively unaware of the fact that their politics will filter through, no matter what. Hefner, Berman, and many of those interviewed for Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist, and Rebel, were refreshingly frank about their opinions. I think ultimately these might be the greatest gifts of Hugh Hefner and Playboy: the providing of both debatable content and a forum for debate. BM
