Here's something most people wouldn't expect to see at the Kansas City Public Library: Playboy Playmates projected on a big screen. But that was part of last night's presentation at the downtown library by Hugh Hefner biographer Steven Watts. The author, a history professor at the University of Missouri, spent five years researching, interviewing and observing the controversial publisher for the book Mr. Playboy: Hugh Hefner and the American Dream.
Published in 2008 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., the 529-page volume provides a definitive look at Hefner's personal history and his impact on American culture. With a subject as flamboyant as Hefner, it would be easy for a writer to get lost in the scandal and glamor. But Watts achieves a thoughtful, academic yet decidedly un-stuffy analysis of Hefner's complex influence on modern American values.
As Watts explained last night, Hefner is "not just another smut
peddler," although he did make his fortune from magazines featuring nude
women. Hefner wove the company of beautiful women into a concept of
"the good life" (for men) -- self-fulfillment through sexual expression
and material pleasure. Standing at the edge of two major American social
movements -- the sexual revolution and the consumer revolution -- Watts
contends that Hefner and his empire helped to chip away at the pre-WWII
American values of self-denial, self-control and delayed gratification.
As a prominent media figure, Hefner also wielded influence -- for better
or worse -- by taking stands on the issues of civil rights, feminism,
censorship and through his embodiment of the concept of the "me
generation."
Hefner's impact has been so great, in fact, that Watts argues that "what
we think of Hugh Hefner is really what we think of us." Yeesh.
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