Posted on 09/29/2017 5:17:28 AM PDT by Nextrush
"THERE IS NO PORNOGRAPHY IN GERMANY....THERE IS ART....EVERY LAST HAIR, EVERY LAST DETAIL...."
Journalist Howard K. Smith-"Last Train From Berlin"
Hugh Hefner started "Playboy" at a time when there were strict "obscenity laws" in the United States.
Total nudity was banned in movies, magazines and other media of the time etc. etc. Violations of the law could lead to fines and or jail time.
His nude photos of Marilyn Monroe in the first issue were rather tame shots that focused on the side of her body.
It would take more than a decade for laws to change with Hefner himself in court once and the jury unable to reach a verdict.
But eventually legal arguments that included the notion that total nudity was "art" and not something "dirty" would prevail........
(Excerpt) Read more at nextrushfree.blogspot.com ...
Not surprised.
Here in the States, it’s all about investment. Cheers to the guy that has the original copy with Monroe in it.
bkmk
Yes, Hugh brought high-minded news to the local 7-11 magazine rack.
Ahem.
Don’t you just love beautiful women though.
Back in the ‘60s I ran across my buddy’s Playboy mag for the first time and got an education - for different reasons.
Yeah, the chicks were eye-openers (in those days), but what got my attention was an anti-gun article that had all the usual arguments. I shook my head and moved on. A few pages later there was an article lauding some Playboy vacation spot that featured skeet shooting by club members. Typical “For me, not thee” mentality.
Thumbing through the rest of the pages, I found lots of ads for Playboy cufflinks, Playboy tie tacks, Playboy playing cards, Playboy this and Playboy that.
I came away with the feeling it was just another left-wing approach hiding under the guise of Free Speech, yet using the “You can fantasize being like us by buying . . .” Capitalist approach to make a buck at the same time.
Never bothered to look again, despite all the hype.
Bettie Page was posing nude before Playboy was published. PB was not the first skin magazine. He just made it look high class, like the difference between a skidrow whorehouse and a high class brothel. Both selling the same thing.
The “sexual revolution”, the civil rights movement, and the social revolutions of the time all have two proximate causes: the utter decay of the existing structures, and the returning WWII veterans.
If you would visit one of the thousands of small towns in the US of the time, you would note several different things.
The entire town was segregated, with a white side and a black side. While the white government officially ruled over all, the black side had its own black “shadow government” to attend to the affairs of the black side, while keeping the white government informed. The head of this shadow government was often the black undertaker, as he was often the wealthiest man on that side.
On the white side, the *predominate* Christian sect would have a clique that forced moral compliance of all to their standards. Those who belong to other denominations tended to chafe at this. This was most often seen in the Bible Belt region.
Secular universities often required religious participation, were adamantly gender segregated, even forbidding marriage of students or the ownership of cars. All student events were chaperoned.
Enter the veterans. Having been “out of the game” for four years, they and their female peers were very focused on a few things: to get a college education paid for by the government, to get good jobs, to get married, have children, and buy a house.
Anything that got in the way of those goals got trampled.
Veterans are strongly opposed to segregation, and rapidly forced desegregation in most of the North.
The epicenter of the Bible Belt (and the anti-Catholic KKK in the 1930s) was Indiana, specifically the Indiana University campus at Bloomington. Its president, Herman B Wells, turned it from a corrupt parochial school into a modern university.
To fight against the religious parochialism, he invited in the Kinsey Institute, who began the sexual revolution in earnest.
Most of what had been forbidden before was ended, allowing the veterans and their soon to be wives to get the most out of college, get at least the husband a good job and get well on the way to the American dream.
Certainly a lot of bad stuff came with it, but the good stuff and the bad stuff was what the great majority wanted.
Hugh Hefner will be buried next to Marilyn Monroe
They’d have to move someone.
Thanks for taking the time for a thoughtful, intelligent post.
Hugh Hefner's corpse was still warm and people couldn't wait to jump on Free Republic firing off, "Moral degenerate! Reprobate! Burn in hell!" as if Hefner single-handedly infected against their will a once chaste and virtuous America with his pornographic filth.
As you said, and I've argued elsewhere, things in 1953 America were a lot more complicated than that. Playboy did not occur in a vacuum. Hefner's death and his impact on American society is deserving of introspection. He was both a product of the massive social upheavals of post-war America as he was an influence on them.
I’d like to note that of all things, the 1969 Don Knotts movie The Love God?, is good for showing the cultural and media frenzy of the time.
There’s a lot in what you write about regarding WW II vets who went through the hell of war obviously wanting something “better” after that awful experience that is quite true.
The race issue was easy for people to deal with when it finally came to a head in 1963, but the other stuff like long hair, drugs, rock n roll, anti-war protests and even some sexual things caused some anger and blowback in my recollection.
Peter Hitchens writes that moral decay in the UK came out of World War I with so many dead, so many maimed and religious leaders having told everyone it was their “Christian duty” to participate in the carnage.
In a general sense the two world wars probably were a beginning of the end in the Western nations in financial terms as well.
The UK spent itself into debt needing loans from the USA in the first one, went further into the hole after the second.
The USA’s turn to spend too much money would come as the Great Society geared up in the 1960’s alongside Vietnam.
We are a drugged up nation IMHO today with drugs, alcohol, porn, credit cards, video games, social media etc. etc. carrying us into oblivion.
The debt load gets larger and larger by the minute.
IIRC, he paid $75,000 decades ago for the spot next to hers.
When so many vets attended college after the war, it had a huge stabilizing effect on the schools, as they would not stand for nonsense. However, after they graduated, this influence disappeared. And because the vets had torn down most of the social controls of the schools, it left a power vacuum seized on by the political left.
Much of the failure of the Republicans to moderate radicalism in society was lost because of the ravages of the FDR years, which split the conservative and liberal wings of the party. The liberals (aka “Country Club Republicans”) actually preferred being in the minority, and easily crossed the aisle to work with Democrats against the conservatives (aka “Goldwater Republicans”).
I’ve seen her columbarium grave in a small obscure cemetery behind a Westwood CA office building, and IIRC, she was surrounded on all sides.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.