Hugh Hefner (1926-2017)

Since it seems obligatory to do so on the interwebz these days, I feel compelled to acknowledge the passing of Hugh Hefner, of pajama-wearing Playboy fame. There's been a lot written about him in recent days, from heartfelt eulogizing bordering on hero worship, to outraged demonization blaming him on all the gender-based ills ever to plague society.

Personally, I feel both takes miss the mark. I'll say that I never had much use for Hugh Hefner. I had no animosity toward him, but he always struck me as a caricature, and a seedy one at that. He's a man who started something that got much bigger than he ever expected, and started playing a particular role as a lark. Somewhere along the way that role consumed him, to the point where the original man ceased to exist, leaving only the stereotype.

The magazine he founded, however, was highbrow and aspirational for much of its run, with top-notch writing and legendary interviews and yes, fantastic photography. My wife, a professional photographer, owns several Playboy photo books of celebrities and other models, some I bought for her and some she bought herself. The nude photography featured in the magazine's pages really is of high artistic quality throughout much of its run. Much, not all. Playboy stumbled badly in the late 70s, when it stooped to competing directly with the likes of Larry Flynt and Bob Guccione, who carved out rival media empires by going the explicit route, publishing porn in their magazines as well as producing porn films. Even their written content was crude and prurient. Playboy abandoned some of it's cultivated sophistication to try to match them on their own turf, although the magazine never quite worked up the nerve to embrace porn fully (those who generally dismiss Playboy as straight-up pornography obviously have never seen actual porn with which to make a comparison). That foray into tawdry didn't work out so well, but it seemed that Playboy found its way back for a time, albeit never quite reaching the standards it had set decades earlier. Cable TV distracted. Merchandising distracted.

Playboy's nadir came, ironically, when it did away with the nudity and reinvented itself as something akin to a geriatric version of Maxim, trying to appeal to the pseudo-hip audience of that publication rather than appealing to the GQ and Esquire set. The photography was terrible. Not just questionable, but downright bad, emulating the crude, ham-fisted style of serial sexual predator Terry Richardson, and even employing the guy on occasion. The photography wasn't trendy, it wasn't cutting edge. It was simply unpleasant. Likewise, the content suffered under the newer, hipper incarnation. The stories, articles and interviews became USA Today-style briefs and clickbait listicles. The revamp was a disaster, and deservedly so. Last I heard, the were bringing back the nudity. Big whoop. I have not bothered to see what it has since become.

Although I never sold a single word to Playboy despite years of trying, it did have a profound impact on my writing career. Back in 1973 it published a piece by Larry L. King, titled "The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas." Little did I know (I was four years old at the time) that particular article had set in motion a chain of events that would eventually consume six years of my life and result in my writing Inside the Texas Chicken Ranch. For that alone, Hugh Hefner deserves at least a portion of the credit--or blame--as appropriate.

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