Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel (5/10)

January 9th, 2012

Playing out almost exactly as you would think during its 120-minute runtime, Hugh Hefner: Playboy, Activist and Rebel tells us the tumescent rise of the man in the pyjamas together with his interests in areas you might not have associated with him. Fawning to the point of idolatry, it doesn’t quite balance the books enough to make it worthwhile.

Hefner has a rare ability to say what others daren’t. ‘I treat women like sex objects because they are sex objects’, he says. ‘They’re more than just that, but if they weren’t then our species would disappear’. I’m not sure I like the word ‘they’, there, or even the underlying objectivism behind the statement, but he says it in such a way that you almost believe his heart’s in the right place. Maybe it is, particularly if you swallow up everything fed to you here, but the fact remains that Playboy will be known for the skin revealed and not the topics covered. Besides, Hefner’s even got it covered when you comment on him. ‘I’m like a Rorschach Test. What you say about me is more of a reflection on your values, not mine.’

To be fair, feminists were interviewed for this documentary and given air time to make public their grievances. Hefner replies earnestly to camera, and we move on. It’s dismissive and not explored anywhere near fully enough for my liking. Instead, filmmaker Brigitte Berman moves on to the things Hefner can be respected for. Skin colour was never an issue to him, sexual liberation was essential in the Playboy Philosophy regardless of orientation, and unpopular beliefs such as abortion and contraception were challenged successfully.

I’ve always had a certain duality in my feelings towards Hefner. On one hand his legacy is that of a perfect shape for the ideal woman (and woe betide you if you don’t fit it) but if ever a man could be assumed to have lived his life for pure pleasure Hefner is that man. It’s something to be envied. This documentary does its very best to try to persuade us that there’s more to Hefner than pyjamas and bunnies and there clearly is. Nobody, with the possible exception of Warren Beatty, can be so tunnel-visioned as to only think about sex. Each of us does it, but it exists in a compartmentalised space in what makes us the people we are. Hefner challenged notions and essentially turned a nation’s morality. We could do with a younger version of him today, you might think. I applaud his charitable work, his campaigning work and his inability to accept the status quo. Despite this documentary’s best efforts, though, that isn’t what I’ll remember him for.