Reading various media reactions and opinions on the passing of Playboy mogul Hugh Hefner, reactions vary between lauding the man as a pioneer of liberating sexuality in America, to condemning him as the paradigmatic sexist pig. I would judge him as more of the latter, because he succeeded in mediatizing an image of himself as the former, while monetizing a rigidly male-heterosexual sexuality into a minor empire.
Did his magazine offer substance along with the primarily white, very middle-class vision of male heterosexuality? Just enough to validate the magazine. Did this intellectual substance bleed over into other Hefner enterprises? Aside from charities, no. Did Hefner himself generate any of this intellectual material? No, like any media mogul, he just knew how to use other people, and their ideas, to his advantage.
And what about his, and Playboy’s role, in liberating American sexuality? Playboy, seen in other countries like France, was still a fairly prudish and conventional magazine. If Hefner hadn’t done it, someone else would have – he just beat everyone else to the punch. When the real sexual liberation movement of the 60s came around, Playboy quickly looked like a straight-laced relic, a phallocentric empire serving to publicize a very limited view on human sexuality. And Playboy, and Hef pretty much stayed frozen in that limited public space since then, with Hef becoming a parody of himself. And that’s how we should remember him and Playboy. Much like any media mogul, he found a niche and exploited it for as long as he could, and stayed with it far past any point of relevance, and surrounded himself with young, beautiful women, some of who had successful lives thanks to the leg up he had provided them (pun intended), and some who died. Like Dorothy Stratton. Other, more adventurous explorations of human sexuality, in media, happened throughout the 20th century, and before. Hef was just the first who figured out how to make a media empire out of sex, a Marquis de Sade minus the BDSM and any philosophical trappings, and a Marquis made for timid, puritan, WASPish 1950s American middle-class sexuality.
Did his magazine offer substance along with the primarily white, very middle-class vision of male heterosexuality? Just enough to validate the magazine. Did this intellectual substance bleed over into other Hefner enterprises? Aside from charities, no. Did Hefner himself generate any of this intellectual material? No, like any media mogul, he just knew how to use other people, and their ideas, to his advantage.
And what about his, and Playboy’s role, in liberating American sexuality? Playboy, seen in other countries like France, was still a fairly prudish and conventional magazine. If Hefner hadn’t done it, someone else would have – he just beat everyone else to the punch. When the real sexual liberation movement of the 60s came around, Playboy quickly looked like a straight-laced relic, a phallocentric empire serving to publicize a very limited view on human sexuality. And Playboy, and Hef pretty much stayed frozen in that limited public space since then, with Hef becoming a parody of himself. And that’s how we should remember him and Playboy. Much like any media mogul, he found a niche and exploited it for as long as he could, and stayed with it far past any point of relevance, and surrounded himself with young, beautiful women, some of who had successful lives thanks to the leg up he had provided them (pun intended), and some who died. Like Dorothy Stratton. Other, more adventurous explorations of human sexuality, in media, happened throughout the 20th century, and before. Hef was just the first who figured out how to make a media empire out of sex, a Marquis de Sade minus the BDSM and any philosophical trappings, and a Marquis made for timid, puritan, WASPish 1950s American middle-class sexuality.
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