This project

Dan Stiffler calendar-girls@mindspring.com
Tue, 29 Jul 2003 21:18:23 -0400


On 7/29/03 1:00 AM, "Peggy Wilkins" <mozart@lib.uchicago.edu> wrote:
 
> I think this is a breakthrough.

It is a "breakthrough" in one sense: Hefner has stated unequivocally what he
thinks of American society and what his response will be.  On the other
hand, we should not be entirely surprised.

For example, should it be any surprise that the bellwether publication
Hefner mentions is Maxim?  Threatened by Maxim and not having any better
ideas, Hefner hires Kaminsky.  I honestly mean no disrespect to Kaminsky,
who after all was a terrific success at editing the leading lad mag.  But it
stretches credulity to think that hiring Kaminsky was going to set PLAYBOY
on a more substantial direction.  In one of the early interviews with
Kaminsky, he said that he read PLAYBOY back in the seventies; somehow this
was supposed to give him credibility to the PLAYBOY loyalists.  I wasn't
buying it then and I still don't buy it.  I don't think that Kaminsky
understands what made PLAYBOY great in the first place and, if he does
understand it, he clearly doesn't think it will work anymore.  Again, this
is not Kaminsky's fault, at least as I see it.  Hefner hired Kaminsky to
renew a lethargic icon and Kaminsky is going to do this in the best way he
knows: "out-Maxim Maxim."

In the meantime, PLAYBOY will continue down the road of irrelevance, a road
it had traveled long before Kaminsky took over the wheel.

Dumbing down PLAYBOY for a dumbed-down America not only gives up the noble
fight that PLAYBOY once engaged but misses an opportunity to renew that
fight.  Steve Sloca recently used a Frank Rich article about Jerry
Bruckheimer to support his (Steve's) call for more a more sexually explicit
PLAYBOY.  Rich is a respected critic and I don't argue with much of what he
says about Bruckheimer's success.  But I ask the PLAYBOY reader to consider
those successes: "Top Gun," "Armageddon," "Pearl Harbor" and "Black Hawk
Down," with "Bad Boys II" and "Pirates of the Caribbean" currently in the
theaters.  Sure these films made and will make loads of money, but they are
in fact representative of the dumbing-down of American cinema.  I thought
that "Pearl Harbor" was the worst film I have seen in recent years (as did
most of the professional critics), but the American public ate it up.  Steve
Sloca apparently wants PLAYBOY to follow the Bruckheimer formula.  Give the
masses what they want, and make them feel good about paying their $7.00 a
pop.

Is it any surprise that Bruckheimer's new TV project will be on FOX?  With
the exception of The Simpsons (which would have been kicked off FOX long ago
had it not been such a money-maker in the network's early years), FOX has
carved out its position by appealing to the *lowest* common denominator of
the American TV-viewing public.  The recent spate of "fair and balanced" ads
for F0X-News would be an exercise in blatant irony, expect that FOX figures
its audience cannot get past the surface message: We present all sides of
the story and let the American people decide.  Well, I had to chuckle at
Doonesbury's take on these ads this last Sunday: We decide; you concur.

Do we really want PLAYBOY to be the FOX of men's magazines?  Maybe Rupert
Murdoch can effect a hostile takeover and put us all out of our misery.

I would like PLAYBOY to be independent of the mass public mood, to in fact
set the agenda rather than following it.  PLAYBOY was not originally
intended for the dumbed-down masses of America (in the 50s, they wore grey
flannel suits).  It was intended for the college-educated urban male, or at
least the young man who harbored dreams of sophistication and urbanity.
Hefner is right that our society has changed in the way that it appeals to
the dumbed-down masses; there were no video games or MTV in the fifties.
But the "quarter-educated" and its short attention span is a centuries old
problem, so Hefner is dead wrong to focus his magazine on that market.  He
didn't in the fifties and sixties; why should he now?  I have said it before
and I will say it again: I work with young people and have been doing so for
25 years.  Even though the general public likes to heap scorn on the public
school systems in this country, America still has the best colleges and
universities in the world, hands down.  Not all of our graduating seniors
have short attention spans, I promise you.

Back in the fifties, when PLAYBOY was first making its extraordinary mark,
the magazine bragged that it was the best selling "quality" men's magazine
on the market.  "Quality" was defined as 50 cents or higher.  Then in the
sixties, PLAYBOY was able to brag that it was compared with the likes of The
New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and The Saturday Review of Literature.
This was a huge step because PLAYBOY was no longer comparing itself to
simply men's magazines but to the best American publishing had to offer.
Then, in the seventies, as Wil has laboriously pointed out elsewhere,
PLAYBOY began to "out-Penthouse Penthouse," forgetting its heritage and
becoming obsessed with the "pubic wars."  While Wil and I disagree on
whether to call this period PLAYBOY's "nadir" (a word I find much more apt
for today's version of PLAYBOY), I think that we can both (and maybe all)
agree that PLAYBOY's deflected attention towards the upstart cost the
magazine its momentum and its place in the pantheon of publishing.  No
longer was PLAYBOY thinking of itself in the company of the best American
magazines but instead trying to figure out how to shoot full-frontal nudes
better than Penthouse.

Just because the mass culture producers, like Bruckheimer, assess Americans
as dumbed-down does not mean that we all are.  The Quiet American, a film
based on a Graham Greene novel, just made it to my town.  It's a wonderful
film that is both complex and compelling.  Michael Caine has never been
better and the film's story, set in Vietnam during the fifties and the
increasing involvement of the United States there, has remarkable echoes for
today's occupation of Iraq.  It's a timely film and, sadly, a timeless film.
It is not a Bruckheimer blockbuster, but it is the kind of film that proves
there is an audience for thoughtful and quality filmmaking.  The director,
Philip Noyce, made a splash back in the early nineties with the Tom
Clancy/Harrison Ford movies, Patriot Games and Clear and Present Danger.
Last year, however, Noyce made the critically acclaimed Rabbit-Proof Fence,
a sign that sometimes artists can find a more selective audience and still
thrive.

So PLAYBOY readers, what will it be?  Top Gun or The Quiet American?  Do we
run with the masses towards Armageddon, or take the long path home--along
the Rabbit-Proof Fence?

Regards,

Dan Stiffler