Hefner’s Bunny business bared in Playboy series
MOST Americans would hate living in a world untouched by Hugh Hefner. That’s a message from American Playboy: The Hugh Hefner Story.
It will come as no surprise that this docu-series treats its subject, the founder of the Playboy-magazine-and-beyond empire, with tender, loving care.
Co-produced by Playboy Enterprises, its 10 episodes unfold as a hagiography of Hefner, who, back in a dark age of sexual repression, put the “he” in hedonism for countless red-blooded males.
Hefner, who turns 91 tomorrow, played no on-camera role in the series. But he is seen and heard aplenty. Not only are there vast Playboy archives to draw from, but the saga is told mainly through re-enactments, with young lookalike Matt Whelan portraying Hef on-screen and voicing him for the narration.
“My magazine wasn’t just about naked women,” says Hefner/ Whelan. “It was about breaking down barriers, starting a cultural conversation about sexuality, and standing up for social justice.”
Mission accomplished. As American Playboy is eager to remind its audience, Hefner pushed back against the uptight 1950s with a magazine proclaiming that sex is fun, it’s okay for guys to like photos of nude women, and masculinity didn’t correspond directly with hunting and fishing (which men’s magazines of that day dwelled on).
In his magazine, Hefner meant to champion a lifestyle of masculine creature comforts, a full menu of everything the would-be with-it male would want to feast on – including the main course of beautiful, seemingly compliant women.
Creating Playboy in his own vision, Hefner masterminded an intoxicating mix of rebellion, aspiration and pleasure. With his inspired formula, a few thousand borrowed dollars and, as his first centrefold, a nude calendar photo of precelebrity Marilyn Monroe, Hefner launched Playboy in 1953.
It was a smash, and so was he, “the guy who has it all: lavish mansion, legendary parties, and, of course, the women”, says Hefner/ Whelan, kicking off the tale of how he redefined manhood.
American Playboy airbrushes Hefner’s image as much as Playboy airbrushes its centrefolds. It shows how his magazine advanced a new Age of Enlightenment – the notion that virility could encompass civil rights and free speech, progressive politics and deep thoughts, as well as sporty cars, the right Scotch and the fine art of seduction.
But after a couple of decades, Hef ’s revolution was beginning to sputter. A victim of its own success, Playboy didn’t seem so cutting-edge. As American Playboy shows with flair, Hef helped blast the world into a new per missiveness. – AP