Hefner Documentary Intrigues, but Rarely Critiques
Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel stands as a corrective to the caricature currently on display courtesy of the E! network. The ageless playboy’s life is far more interesting than what you see on his reality show The Girls Next Door. Hefner played an active role in the civil rights movement, the sexual revolution, and changing the culture at large, all of which is captured with vigor in this entertaining bio-doc.
Yet those who prefer he hadn’t had such influence get little attention here. Hefner is a glowing biopic, one so enamored with its subject matter that it turns even his peculiar social life into a positive. Who knew living with multiple girlfriends was a sign of having a big ol’ heart?
Hefner began as a circulation manager at a kiddie magazine, but he wanted to create a publication that would speak to the modern man — or the man he hoped to be. The name Stag Party sparked a brief legal hiccup, so Hefner settled on Playboy as the magazine’s soon-to-be-iconic name. He found quick success despite the sexually repressed mindset of the 1950s. He used his newfound clout to start up his own television show, Playboy’s Penthouse, and created other offshoot projects like nightclubs and jazz festivals.
Along the way he ran through cultural walls regarding sexuality, race relations, and birth control. He embraced black comics before the mainstream did, and used his nightclubs as race-neutral centers for adults to kick back and relax.
Hefner himself is interviewed throughout the documentary, narrating his life story with a combination of wonder and self-admiration. Watching him turn the pages of his personal scrapbook shows he cares about historical markers as much as Playmate bra sizes.
We get precious little on Hefner’s formative years, though.
“He didn’t get hugged enough,” opines Star Wars creator George Lucas, one of many Hefner chums making an appearance. Hef’s massive coterie of famous friends and supporters, from Jim Brown to Tony Bennett, do fill in some blanks. Others, like James Caan, seem forever grateful to Hefner for assembling so many gorgeous woman in one place — the Playboy Mansion.
The film trots out a few feminists to complain about Playboy Nation, but they seem overmatched — or realize Hefner long ago won the cultural wars. Radio talk show host Dennis Prager appears to tut-tut the benefits of Hefner’s sexual revolution, but the moments are so brief as to be insulting to Prager and anyone who might agree with him. It’s hard to believe the filmmakers couldn’t find a few ex-Playmates or gal pals with unkind comments to make about the man known simply as Hef. The segments involving his multiple marriages would have to get much tougher to rise to the level of the “softball” treatment.
Because Hugh is the founder of Playboy, he CANNOT enter into a sexual addiction program even if he knew he had a problem…. it would be admitting what many other men know is true. Sad.
We don’t know the untold destruction his efforts in the porn industry have taken on families, children and our culture with the normalizing of porn, but we are seeing the effects. Strip clubs, hardcore / child internet porn, sexual trafficking, brutal rapes of women / children including prostitutes…. criminals themselves attest that their looking at porn has enslaved them and created an urge that when followed again and again has lead them to commit horrific crimes.
Guys (and gals), if you are hooked on porn, get help!
I’m reminded of something I read about the movie “Star 80.” The rumor is that Fosse first wanted to cast Harry Dean Stanton as Hefner, but Hef nixed it. Stanton was too dark for Hef’s liking. The whitebread Cliff Robertson was cast instead.
Ah yes, how very edgy and unusual of him: trumpeting dignity and civil rights for racial minorities while simultaneously diminishing women to the status of . . . pieces of ass.
Funny how the one always seems to include the other — and in consequence we can enjoy the attractive sexual culture of today, with all its social benefits and virtues.
On what grounds, precisely, do you believe that Hefner’s pathetic public persona is not an accurate depiction of the man?
Hugh Hefner is also indirectly responsible for much of the poverty of the black lower classes. His avocation of promiscuity has encouraged black males to behave irresponsible. The illegitimacy rates of blacks has skyrocketed to seventy percent! This guarantees that the vast majority of their babies are doomed to live in poverty and have high arrest rates. They will not likely be strangers to the criminal justice system.
That’s a HUGE stretch there, David…and I don’t think it’s accurate. The problem with Black fathers and families was there before Hef and was hardly exasperated by Playboy magazine’s nude pictures. I can think of a dozen more reasons that have nothing to do with Playboy.
Hef was a product of his time, and just stayed in that “neverland” of a hedonistic college fraternity kid, forever partying, forever going with younger and younger women as girlfriends as he grew old, and his magazine (for the most part) has stayed geared toward that white 20-30 year-old, WHITE demographic.
He made it “classy” (again, for the most part) to enjoy the female nude figure, took porn out of the back-room Stag parties and peep-shows, and took on the role of the Prince of Pleasure, the ultimate American-male fantasy-life made real… and he has stayed true to his “calling” all these years.
All the other crap of the 60′s and the sexual revolution would have happened just as well without Hef…he just rode the wave for all it was worth!
I believe a Bob Guccione documentary would be far more interesting than Hef’s.
Albeit Guccione made HORRIBLE investments, decisions the latter 20th Century, his interest in science, science-fiction (Omni magazine) at one time an impressive art collection, bold business model put Penthouse far ahead of Playboy for a great deal of time.
Not to mention Guccione is far more interesting, well-spoken compared with the hedonistic, phony Hef.
Hef is a caricature, a prisoner of his own doing. JMO..
You, perhaps unwittingly,contribute to the very narrative you ostensibly deplore.
By describing the 1950s as characterized by a “sexually repressed mindset”, you fall prey to a cultural stereotype. You assume conjugal sex is somehow restrictive, stultifying, and that anything short of a more libertine approach signifies one is “repressed”.
Studies show the contrary, however: greater frequency and a higher degree of sexual satisfaction among married couples.
There *was* a baby boom in the 50s for a reason, you know…..
Really good point about the author’s use of “repressed” and it’s insinuation.
There *was* a baby boom in the 50s for a reason, you know…..
——————–
And the baby boom that began right after WWII was a factor of … what?
To reuse an old cliche, denial is not a river in Egypt.
Hefner had the right idea at the right time and as a result he has lead a unique, enjoyable life for himself and made a difference to our society. He doesn’t rank up with Walt Disney or Bill Gates, but his impressive and indelible contributions to American society are undeniable. In the ’50s and ’60s, America was ripe for sexual revolution, and Hefner was willing and able to lead the charge. Overall, this has resulted in greater freedom. Conservatives may focus on the negative effects the Hefner-lead revolution, but they should not ignore that increased freedom of thought and action were positive results.
To paraphrase John Donne. “This man’s life diminishes every man’s life”.
Hefner was not a cause of the sexual revolution. He was a symptom. I grew up during that period, was in college during the early to mid-Sixties. What I saw was kids who never read or even heard of Playboy who were experimenting sexually and freely. It was the time. America was on a rise, felt good about itself, and kids, like me, who were raised in relative wealth were having a great old time. Hefner was irrelevant to my sense of freedom. As I grew older I found his entire thing exploitive. I still do. His girl are so heavily photoshopped they have nothing to do with real women. How the hell is that emancipating to women?
Larry Flynt once said, “try as he might to make Playboy out to be some kind of Time or Newsweek, he’s a pornographer just like me.”
As America’s first super-rich, super-famous pimp, Hef was ahead of his time. Thanks for that contribution to our culture, Hef.
Whatever “Heff” may or may not have been at one time, he’s now just a repulsive old degenerate making a disgusting ass of himself. He should be euthanized.
You can polish a turd all day long, but it’s still a turd.
A hundred glossy documentaries will not change what Hefner did to destroy this country and the average American family. Hefner is an old man and time is ticking away towards his eventual and inevitable rendezvous with the almighty.
As for his legacy, I have to raise my children in a country and world in which he and people like him have destroyed the moral fabric that held society together. “His” society that made “wrongs” right and what’s right “wrong”. I have to raise my little girl in a world where I’ll constantly be worried, not about what I’ve instilled in her as acceptable, moral behavior, but what others have instilled in their children as acceptable moral behavior.
And any supposed “good” he has done on this Earth was probably only done on “his” terms, under “his” strict conditions and in the overall scheme of things, was equivalent to doling out bar room change. I would defy anyone to argue his wasteful lifestyle was a good thing and that the money he spent on himself massaging his ego couldn’t have been put to better use.
I hope Hefner enjoyed his pathetic, glutenous romp through this world. I don’t think he’ll experience the same in the next. And I’m willing to bet that he’ll be just as stupid, selfish, vane, and narcissistic on his death bed as he’s been his entire life.
Good-bye Mr. Hefner, and go to Hell.
Agreed, John. Read my comment below. Keep a VERY sharp eye on your daughter.
Would it be off the mark to call Hefner his generation’s Walter Duranty?
Hefner was/is a flaming liberal, but that’s not why I make the comparison. Rather, it’s because both men were, in their own ways, countercultural subversives in the guise of journalists. Both men made their way into positions of power and influence in MSM outlets, which they both then used to plant and spread the seeds of doubt about (ultimately growing into resistance to) traditional American values. For Duranty it was the notion that Stalin’s “worker’s paradise” wasn’t such a bad alternative; for Hefner, it was that sexual restraint was a sucker’s game at best, a tool of repression at worst.
Indeed, by the time the counterculturalists of the late 1960s began their long, slow march through American culture in the ’70s, it sure didn’t hurt their cause that all three elements of their famous triumvirate of subversion – sex, drugs and rock & roll – already had champions in high places. For rock & roll it was John Lennon (and many others of course, but it was Lennon who literally wrote their transnational anthem). For drugs it was Timothy Leary. And for sex, it was Hugh Hefner.
i hope you all don’t think porn started with hugh hefner, or that if you were to erase playboy from history, we wouldn’t have some of the social problems we do today
Hef’s a capitalist, if nothing else- he found a way to package a product a lot of Americans wanted- great big ol’ hooters- and made his fortune. The rest was just a scam to get himself laid.
This is true… but Hefner did more than anyone else to drag porn into the mainstream. On the other hand, if he hadn’t, somebody else probably would have done so eventually. Hefner was hardly the only cultural subversive of his day.
I know porn didn’t start with Hugh Hefner. But he made it mainstream and socially acceptable. He took it out of the seedy backroom and gave it a face lift. He’s great at marketing. He is the Steve Jobs of porn
When the police raided the home of the registered sex offender who molested my then 9-year-old daughter, they confiscated his well-read stack of Playboy magazines.
Sorry about your daughter’s attack but child molestation was not started, encouraged or promoted by Playboy magazine. Your anger is serious misplaced if you blame Hugh Hefner for anyone else’s sexual misconduct.
Indeed!
How many cases have there been (documented) with sex offenders having a well worm Bible?
Hogwash. If a “well ‘worm’ Bible” was found in their house, it was well ‘worm’ because it was used as a door stop.
Darwin claimed that man evolved from apes. Hepner and his ilk prove Darwin got it backwards…man is evolving into apes. *sarcasm off*
Secondly, I haven’t perused a Playboy in 11 years or so. Since Drew Barrymore was the face that month. With her baby fat, droopy appendages and dopey face.
As for marketing, the credit presently should go to Hef’s sister. She and a handful of others have controlled Playboy for a long time..
Commenting on the phrase above – “…investigating his darker side…”.
This would imply there is a lighter side.
We are known by our actions. The sum of his actions is as pitch as black can be.
Adoration for a man who has done nothing for the past 50 years but profit from the exploitation of women through pornography.
“For what shall it profit a man, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul?” Mark 8:36
Hugh Hefner’s advanced age coupled with his so-called “girlfriends” 20-somethings is just downright creepy; his image of wearing only a robe may have been great marketing in the 1960′s, but now, he just looks like a strange lecher who has wandered into the wrong property. Hefner has not adapted well to the 21st Century. He looks like a relic.
Hefner = CREEPY