The loosening of morals in American culture was the most significant trend during the second half of the 20th century. The spearhead of this was the magazine industry, both in the good and the bad. While there were literally hundreds of publications, four magazines lead the charge, all because they moved outside the scope of just publication. Each one was lead by a charismatic, egocentric leader, to whom tragedy befell eventually.
Writing about men's magazines, a polite euphemism for girlie, skin, or simply tits & ass mags in the age of MeToo# may seem suicidal. But if we want to understand the male gaze, how it developed, where it came from, and what trends developed from it, better dive in. It is impossible to understand Donald Trump, Mitch McConnell, or even Brett Kavanaugh unless you get a glimpse of the stuff in their bottom drawer. Some other surprising conclusions come from there as well.
The acknowledged breakthrough in prurient interest came when Hugh Hefner figured out how to circumvent postal laws to successfully distribute nationally a magazine featuring tasteful female nudity. Having Marilyn Monroe as your first centerfold helped. It wasn't easy; Hef was still fighting postal regulations as late as 1963, when Jane Mansfield was featured in a pictorial that included a man in bed. Whatever you want to say about Hef, he remained at heart an old school guy, keeping Playboy a tasteful enterprise.
Indeed, you could read Playboy for the stories and interviews; I did as a kid, as well as ogling the airbrushed perfect specimens featured every month. Hefner was also a champion of liberal causes; assisting Lenny Bruce in his First Amendment cases while he was an out-of-work junkie, hiring Dick Gregory as the first black comedian to headline a white comedy club, publishing in-depth interviews with Malcolm X and Martin Luther King at the height of the Civil Rights movement, giving them a national platform. Playboy was first and foremost a guidebook for lifestyle; that lifestyle was inherently liberal. The girls of the right wing simply didn't look as good.
Playboy also diversified quickly in nightclub, 'private key' resorts, television, and eventually movies. Allowing Roman Polanski to turn Shakespeare's 'Macbeth' into a rumination about the murder of his wife, Sharon Tate, with Macbeth becoming Charles Manson, was a ballsy move. Hefner was a huge financial supporter of the liberal politics of his day, even supporting gay rights as early as the 1950s. It was only when confronted with feminism in the early 1970s that his old school attitudes made him trip over his dick, so to speak. Females demanded equal rights, while Hugh felt that he had provided them with jobs and a voice. To him, that was enough to prove his credibility. It was a generational disconnect that he never recovered from, retreating to his mansions, increasingly becoming a horrid old lecher preying on increasingly younger women.
There were plenty of competition for Playboy. Some even concentrated on publishing good fiction, trying to provide decent magazine content as well as the requisite skin. Escapade, Cavalier, Stag, Nugget, Frolic. The list is endless. Only one emerged as a serious treat, Penthouse. Started by photographer Bob Guccione, it had a Continental sensibility. First published in Europe in 1965, it moved over Stateside in 1969. Still tasteful, it pushed the boundaries gently at first.
Guccione had a good eye, knew how to use diffusion filters. Everything was hazy, perhaps a little smoky. The women were perhaps a little more approachable. More importantly, they weren't airbrushed into perfection. If a little public hair showed, it was left in. The outlook was essentially the same as Playboy, a little hipper. Penthouse's idea of liberal in the 1970s included swinging with a gold coke spoon around your neck.
Guccione also became involved in the movie business, eventually stepping in as the money behind the infamous 'Caligula'. The production had already started, with a detailed script by famous author Gore Vidal,. Tinto Brass, an anarchic Italian director who had treated the Nazi realm very interestingly in 'Salon Kitty', was a logical choice. The time was right, perhaps the last moment when legitimate film and pornography might have overlapped.
In the end, money won out. Guccione wanted more stroke material; the film, both in script and in shooting, was either too serious, homo-erotic, or comical. The script was gutted even before filming began. Secret hard core scenes were shot by Guccione, using his Pets. Director Tinto Brass was removed during the editing process. Lawsuits flew back and forth, delaying the opening for three years. The end result was a mess. What most people fail to remember is how successful it was. To this day, it is Penthouse's most profitable property. Considering that they had to rent the theaters to show it, produce all videotapes and DVDs themselves, that is a remarkable feat. There is even talk of restoring a version to the vision of Tinto Brass, a development that I would love to see.
Playboy had to respond to the challenge presented by Penthouse, showing public hair, but it was the next developments in adult magazines that really resonates today. It began with a self-proclaimed obnoxious New York Jew, Al Goldstein, who started a weekly tabloid called Screw. The publication was as NYC-centric as Al was, taking elements of the Village Voice and turning the dial to eleven. Al was as subtle as a flying mallet, a life-long rage-aholic.
Goldstein and Screw were a NYC phenomenon; no matter how hard he tried to go national, it would fail. He became involved in the mobbed up NYC porn film industry, producing 'SOS' (Screw on Screen) and a personal favorite, the puppet/porn crossover 'Let My Puppets Come', a true so-bad-it's-good masterpiece. Attempts to start a national publication flunked within a year. But Al did find the perfect outlet for his unique talents; cable access.
'Midnight Blue' ran for over thirty years, a miracle considering Al's no-hold-barred style of confrontational ranting. He even had a 'Fuck You' department, where he would pick someone, usually a politician, and go off on that person for minutes on end. While, as far as I know, the program never descended to outright porn, it did attract guests from Arnold Schwarzenegger to Penn & Teller. The ads, mostly for phone sex and massage parlors, made it very profitable.
If you consider Al Goldstein hard to take, Larry Flynt took it completely over the top. A hell raiser from Ohio, Larry was in it for the girls and money from the get go. There was never any idea of art or propriety in any of Flynt's operations. He wiped all boundaries into oblivion, showing 'pink', as they say in the business. He had no taste and was proud of the fact. He also stole much of his formatting from Screw (even admitting it on 'Midnight Blue'). Unlike his friend Al, he could make a profit on it.
While there were literally hundreds of skin magazines, yet somehow Hustler zoomed to the top, with circulation that outpaced everyone, including the well-establish Playboy and Penthouse market. Part of it was the very tastelessness of the publication. Larry borrowed his humor from the National Lampoon, which had made a significant mark on the magazine market, then had all the best talent poached by Hollywood in the wake of the success of 'Animal House'. The very taboo-breaking nature of the mag, both in pictures and humor, made it a phenomenon in the 1970s. In art school, I remember the slightly younger guys laughing over each issue more than they were stroking.
Trouble found Larry when he was shot during a trial in Georgia. Larry was significantly injured, remaining in a wheelchair to this day. Strangely, he went into overdrive with confrontation, turning every trial into political theater. Even stranger, he emerged out of this fire an unlikely champion of First Amendment rights, far greater than any of his three predecessors. The guy who never finished high school became the constitutional scholar, and he was willing to put his money where his mouth was.
The first three characters are dead, Larry is a 78 year old cripple. The first three empires faded or disappeared completely. Hustler went into hard core video and made a fortune. The legacy of all four remains to this day. The male gaze in America was a perfect storm of marketing and sex, turning desire and wealth into the ability to do anything and get away with it, as long as you had money. Our current playboy president, with his trophy wife and lame' tower, complete with solid gold toilet, is JFK morphed into a monster.
What really sells Donald is his absolute disregard for propriety, a willingness to say anything at any time. It drives his haters crazy while it drives his fans crazy in a different way. Trump is a revolt against a politically correct world, and the PC police, expecting polite behavior, have no idea how easy a target they are, no matter how much they may have the moral high ground. In the 2016 election, the unwashed masses wanted a loud mouthed sexual predator jerk, and they got him. Without Trump, there never would have been enough female rage to start the MeToo# movement.
Take the lifestyle and money of Hefner, the shallowness of Guccione, the abrasive New York attitude of Goldstein, the bottomless pit of bad taste of Flynt, and that Frankenstein monster is Trump. In the same way that the right has taken rock music, another liberal but male-centric cultural artifact, and taken it over, the right has taken over the male gaze. Does anyone actually listen to Ted Nugent's music? Do you think Trump supporters, even the so-called Christians, are disappointed that Donny nailed a porn star? They secretly wished that they could, living vicariously through him.
Yet outrage is a two edged sword. The nightly barraged of comedians taking another swing at Trump comes more from Al Goldstein than Dick Gregory; Bill Maher, Seth Meyers, even Stephen Colbert. The left uses political theater straight out of Larry Flynt; shutting courtrooms down, confronting Senators in elevators with sexual abuse victims, all beyond decorum or good taste. If we complain about the lack of civility in the current political climate, it comes from our past, from selling sex in a blunter and cruder fashion. Right and wrong do not matter any more; it comes down to who is the loudest, most outrageous, and last to speak.
There is a great deal of irony in this situation. The four magazine men would consider themselves liberal, if nothing else because they had to defend their sources of income from conservative initiatives like the Meese Commission. The left keeps thinking they will win simply by having truth and morals on their side. The Jews in Germany thought the same thing, even walking into the ovens. Stupid has a snowball effect that smart never does; time to get on the gravy train before the whole shithouse goes up in flames.
The greatest irony is that the best possible savior for the left may come from the most unlikeliest of places; porn. Stormy Daniels managed a miracle, turning two wrongs (screwing Donny then taking money to keep quiet) into the opposition that has crippled a president who would like nothing more than to be a tyrant. In the same way that the Christian right has been forced to embrace a serial sinner like Donald Trump, the left, especially the feminist, had better start using Stormy for the leverage that she affords. The Equal Rights Amendment, no matter how justified, failed because it wasn't sexy. It would be too easy to make that mistake again.
Naturally, people want their message to be valued at face value, for what it is worth. That's simply not how things are done here in modern America. Take Hillary Clinton; the far right's hatred of her is pure castration fear. She is every lesbian who found you, being male, unattractive, every feminist who thought you dumb or a redneck, every mother who ever told you to take out the garbage or clean your room. The fantasies thrown upon her are not helped by having a husband who cheated with a so-so looking intern when he was in power. She is an object of hatred completely divorced from her actual persona.
Hopefully, this is the last gasp of the powerful older white male elite. I'm saying that as someone who fits at least a couple of those categories. Time to move over, let the next generation take over, find news ways to screw it up. Can't we have a presidential candidate under the age of 70? In the state of North Carolina, that is mandatory retirement age for a judge.
With Hillary as president, no MeToo# movement, no forward momentum without a strange headwind. Just another paradox in this situation, where the left's bottom feeders, the porn industry, create methods of public outrage co-opted by the right. Listen to Alex Jones, then go back and listen to Al Goldstein. Watch the Supreme Court hearings, then look at images of Larry Flynt's trials. There is nothing new under the sun, only new ways to apply those methods.
I agree with Jon Stewart; you can burn out from outrage and indignation, yet no one is entertained by a call to reason. A battle is being fought for the future of this country, yet the left is always caught flat footed, not willing to get it's hands dirty. Time to look at what is working; a porn star causes lawyers to flip. As Clint Eastward once said, 'Deserves got nothing to do with it."
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