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The Left Inadvertently Destroyed Playboy Magazine
“Moral values, and a culture and a religion — maintaining these values are far better than laws and regulation.” — Swami Sivananda
Playboy Magazine announced to its readers (viewers?) that they will no longer publish nude photos of women. While the announcement states that “times have changed,” Playboy’s CEO Scott Flanders made a more detailed comment to the New York Times about what exactly changed with time: taste. He conceded that Americans now have a taste for things more lurid and graphic:
“That battle has been fought and won. You’re now one click away from every sex act imaginable for free. And so it’s just passé at this juncture.”
See what happened there? Pictures that would at one time shock the conscience as obscene is today simply “passé.” The “battle” he is referring to is the culture war. Make no mistake the left has won the culture war over sexual acts versus manners and modesty in public view.
Turns out those Playboy pictures really were just about sex, not art, after all.
Note too that Flanders didn’t talk about losing to changing “business models” or paper magazines versus the Internet. Playboy is on the Internet. They are a savvy business company. What changed is American views toward obscenity and our willingness to endure more public view of it, including in front of our children. We have become culturally jaded regarding public sexual content.
There was a time when folks thought we could keep America cleaner by fighting for traditional values. Those folks lost, and the standard-less, free-love, anything goes minions of the left now have their way.
Many years back Jerry Falwell tested Puritan virtue against Larry Flynt, Hustler Magazine’s purveyor of smut. Smut won. In Hustler v. Falwell, 485 US 46 (1988) the Supreme Court held you could say all the nasty, ugly sexual things you want about a public figure so long as you were just joking and not making any false statements.
The battle between Jerry and Larry wasn’t the defining law on obscenity. As with most issues involving public mores, it took a number of decisions to get where we are, and where we are is not a finish line, rather a resting place between Supreme Court interpretations of the First Amendment.
A good roundup on where we are with obscenity laws is found here. Through the morass of “Supreme Court tests” to determine what is and is not legally subject to punishment for being too smutty, the most memorable quote about what is pornography came from Justice Potter Stewart’s 1964 concurring opinion in Jacobellis v Ohio. He said of pornography, “I know it when I see it.” What Justice Stewart was telling us is that issues concerning how a community defines obscenity should not rest with the court, rather with a community itself.
For that reason the law does not recognize a “national” community standard for what is illegally obscene.
Unfortunately, even at the local level there is still a tug of war over what is too explicit to be seen in public. Take New York. The area of Times Square at one time was squalor while 42nd Street was synonymous with drugs and sex shops. The era of Mayor Giuliani and the broken windows theory of policing and cleaning up neighborhoods made Times Square a family place again. Now there is a tug back in the other direction, with the big issue in the Big Apple being what to do with all the naked ladies.
On a nationwide scale, the issue becomes problematic when we deal with media available everywhere, like movies, magazines, broadsheets, broadcast, cable, and Internet. It is exactly in these areas were the left has been so successful in pushing American values into accepting evermore prurient images of sex.
It wasn’t that long ago that we stepped into the eyebrow-raising world of Mike and Carol Brady sleeping in the same bed together (not the first TV couple to do so, but it was still quite the risky television move back in 1970). That was a leap forward from Barbara Eden never showing her navel in “I Dream of Jeannie.” You can imagine a picture of a nude woman in Playboy was very racy compared to that.
As the envelope was pushed further and further, people who rallied against it, like the Family Research Council and Focus on the Family, were marginalized as religious bigots imposing their view. With each battle they lost, America raised her hem and plunged her neckline even further.
So where are we today? Last week’s episode of “American Horror Story” had people being sodomized to death. Last month’s episode of “South Park” had people being sodomized to death. A picture of a naked woman in Playboy is tame compared to that. Our public values have clearly changed.
I don’t really have to bring up those horrid exemplars to make the point, do I? Even the simple and everyday stuff can be unnerving. Every parent who has watched TV with their teenage daughters or sons, and was suddenly shown a commercial about a four-hour erection, knows what I’m talking about. It’s uncomfortable enough when you wonder if they know what is being sold — it’s more uncomfortable when you know that they do.
No channel is safe. Even Disney Family thinks it has to tackle every teenage sexual issue to be relevant. Sitcoms are a mess of sex. Every cop and medical show seems to have rape and sex thrown in. Surf through the cable channels looking for something to watch and you’ll pass more naked people having sex than a Hollywood casting party.
I understand a parent has to broach sexual issues with their children at some point. Does it have to be every damn day? Good grief.
The Internet is a cesspool of weird sexual imagery. I decline to list examples, but I bring it up only because Playboy’s CEO blamed the extreme content of the Internet for killing Playboy’s pictures. He’s wrong. The loss of the culture war killed Playboy’s pictures. We’re too “extreme” for them now.
I understand freedom. But some freedoms should have at least time, place and manner restrictions on them so they are not thrown in view of everyone else.
One might wonder, why not declare victory over the death of cultural muck like Playboy’s naked pictures, even though the left took them down when the right couldn’t? That would have been great in 1970. The fact that it died because it was replaced by something far more terrible is a reason to cry for our culture, not cheer.
Published in Entertainment
Great article. The issue for me is not whether these images are banned or not, but whether I can keep my kids from seeing them before they are ready to comprehend and deal appropriately with them. Porno prohibition in the digital age? Let’s be real. But, I should be able to take my daughter to Times Square without having to deal with public nudity. A politician who was willing to advocate for carving out public spaces of decency without going all Carrie Nation on the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue could get some traction.
I call it sustainable liberty.
I read it once, the issue had an interview with Gary Kasparov. Can’t be all bad.
Were I in that position, I’d greatly increase the sexualized garbage we’re steeped in. Guess, we can both be content that the other isn’t international royalty.
Is it just me or does the women to Hefner’s left look like Meghan McCain?
Why Tommy, you socon. I thought only liberty mattered, not a culture capable of self governance. (I’m having a particularly argumentative month, btw.)
Another socon is born.
This is the funniest thing. I thought libertarian opinion was it is only incumbent in them in their voluntary associations to do whatever they feel like, if it’s not hurting anyone by their definition. These folks don’t strike me as aware of the world they live in…
King you mistake Libertarian for Anarchist.
Libertarians can be cultured and promote culture. Unlike the SoCon, we don’t favor the lazy evangelicalism of legislating it.
Oh, that’s great news. Tell me, what do you–whoever you are–favor & what great successes have you achieved or are going to achieve any time now?
I like this plan! The Great Conservative Exodus to the land of Beer and Hockey.
Neither do we. You mistake us for democrats and statists. We only advocate for government to act as a wall — a shield rather than a sword — where it comes to culture.
And the left didn’t inadvertently destroy culture on their own. They had plenty of support from libertarians (and libertines masquerading as libertarians) advocating for a laissez-faire approach to culture. They helped tear down the wall and are now complaining that the barbarian hordes are in the city.
I disagree. A free and relatively unregulated internet killed Playboy magazine. Yes, people’s tastes in smut may have hardened, perhaps causing a decline in interest in Playboy’s offerings. But, the real issue is competition: No one need pay Playboy for images of nude women any longer. The internet offers a virtually endless supply of such images (many of which are of equal quality and appeal to a more diverse set of prurient interests), and access to these images is, by-and-large, free. And, even if there is a charge associated with accessing the images, it’s (1) probably less than a Playboy subscription, and (2) likely to offer more interesting possibilities, i.e. video and interactive features. In short, the internet is superior to print as a medium, and print is in its death throes. This phenomenon is not unique to smut. The subscription levels for almost every magazine have plummeted in recent years.
Don’t be surprised when, in a year or two, Playboy stops publishing its magazine altogether. Dropping the nude images–which surely drive the cost of producing and printing Playboy magazine–is simply a way station on the print magazine’s express train ride to the ash-bin of history.
And you’ve gotten government good and hard. Federal bureaucracy will always trend progressive, the shield provided by federal bureaucracy will be wielded to protect progressive ideas against conservatism.
Anarchy then? Back to the Hobbesian state of war so each idea has the same slim chance at survival?
Too cold. Better the Republic of Texas.
Seawriter
Which part of conservatism is the Federal Government Shield protecting?
The government gets to decide what culture gets put behind the wall? Oh Goody….
And you provide no links?
Lots of businesses which are no longer in business were around when the net was invented. I don’t see how that refutes my argument that the collapse in the price of tasteful photos of nude women has a greater influence on Playboy’s circulation numbers than does the increased availability of explicit sexual content.
Just put “tasteful nudes” into Google.Scratch that. The search results are merely boudoir photography companies.
If you genuinely want some links, just send me a private message. I will post your PM in the thread so folk can make fun of you.
;-)
So, if Playboy is no longer publishing nude photos in the magazine and the website, does that mean they will be releasing their back catalog of nude photos into the public domain? Shurely they wouldn’t expect to accrue further profit from such material.
Not “stocky” enough for Miss McCain, cleary she is her father’s daughter. But she does have some resemblance.
Compared to our societies views and treatment of sex in the past fifty years, I’d have to say we’re doing better in some respects.
Rather than a single string, sexual morals may better resemble a series of multiple threads tightening and slackening at various rates, in the course of our compulsion to indulge our carnal desires, while dealing with the consequences of our previous excesses.
The greatest sin of Playboy may well not have been the nudity- which existed well before them and was readily available in art galleries, magazines, theaters, and other venues. The real damage to individuals and society came from the very articles people jokingly used as a defense.
It was HH’s ethos of lascivious, non-committed, non-monogamous, consequence free, love free sex that did the real damage. And He pushed this philosophy publicly with a live( nudity free) tv show and an appealing modernly designed smiling public image.
It was that philosophy of soulless wanton abandon that led to the public’s taste being sharpened for harder material well before the internet. The 70’s was largely enamored with the fetishation and sexualsition of rape. Both in print and mainstream (not just porno/grindhouse) films, sex and violence was intermingled and on display. Porno theaters and shops became prevalent and public in most mid to large sized cities. We could also go through the excesses of the 80’s and 90’s that would be unacceptable in the public sphere today.
I guess what I’m trying to get at is; as awful and dehumanizing as much of the material on the internet may be, it has actually pushed much of the worst depravities back behind closed doors. Rape is no longer a publicly accepted fantasy, monogamy smashers are generally scorned and back on the fringes and it is much more likely not to be laughed at if one proposes that sex has very real emotional and physical consequences.
Are we in anyway back to solid agreed upon moral grounding as a society? No, and we never will be without another awakening. But in the meantime lets at least be thankful we live in a time with less sexual violence, less divorce, and less teenage promiscuity than twenty years ago- while, of course, we still strive to do better.
Wait until after October 19. The polls currently have Justin “Time For My Closeup” Trudeau in the lead.
Libertarians are complaining about the removal of nudity from Playboy?
Weird.
More like Ms. McCain has styled herself in that “generic Playboy model” sorta way which appeals to a certain segment of the elderly male population.
Best description of a politician in some time–other people on Ricochet should come to this thread just to read this!