Thick as Thieves – NBC and Playboy

By: American Decency Staff

Last evening NBC premiered the show The Playboy Club, based on Hugh Hefner’s 1960s Chicago Playboy Club.  The TV show drew much outrage months before it was broadcast both from the right and the left – pro-family groups, anti-pornography organizations, and the women’s right advocate Gloria Steinem. While NBC aired steamy promotions in the weeks before the premiere, they tried to claim with a straight face that the show The Playboy Club was not a promotion of pornography or a promotion of the actual Playboy magazine and brand. Yet not only is the Playboy name and logo peppered throughout the show, Hugh Hefner himself was used as a narrator for the initial episode.  Hefner has eaten up the free publicity NBC is offering from the show to reinvigorate his aging brand overshadowed by the proliferation of internet porn.   In return, Hefner has given NBC a quid pro quo, using one of the actresses from NBC’s The Playboy Club as the “cover girlâ€Â of the October issue of his pornographic Playboy magazine – released to coincide with the premiere episode of NBC’s raunchy new show.  NBC and Playboy are as thick as thieves in their promotion of pornography. The first episode began with this narration from Hefner: “…I built a place in the toddling town – a place where everything was perfect, where life was magic, where the rules were broken, and fantasies became realities for everyone who walked through the door….â€Â While Hefner describes The Playboy Club as a place with no rules, the show’s creator, Chad Hodge, has stated that viewers will enjoy The Playboy Club as a guilty pleasure, and claimed, "Today, people wish we were living in unhealthier times." "Watching this pilot, people are always like, 'I wish I could smoke and drink and have sex in the bathroom'.  …â€Â His description – smoking, drinking, and having sex in the bathroom – pretty much sums up the first episode.  Along with lots of flesh, eroticism, and degrading references to women.  I guess the fact that the show is set in the early 1960s, the producers must feel America will turn a blind eye in 2011 to women being overtly demeaned. The show sends the message to male viewers that women are nothing more than sex objects for their pleasure – which is how the “bunniesâ€Â are portrayed – it tells female viewers to use their bodies to gain acceptance.  In the first episode the Playboy “house motherâ€Â instructs the girls on showing more cleavage, more leg – more of everything – to appeal to men.  Teaching the ploys of seduction. The first episode ended with this narration from Hefner about the 1960s Playboy Club:  “the world was changing and we were changing it – one bunny at a time.â€Â Tragically, there is much truth in that.  The proliferation of pornography of which Hefner was a major factor has changed the world for the worse. The Playboy Club is set in the early 1960s – when pornography was still taboo and men needed a key to enter the world of Playboy.  Now 50 years later pornography is available to anyone and everyone at a click of a button and the Playboy brand is even displayed on products at local supermarkets – such as at the regional shopping giant in our area, Meijer’s, with their sale of Playboy brand men’s toiletries. And now NBC is jumping on the band wagon with a show that doesn’t just refer to pornography, it doesn’t just promote pornography – it is pornography! And the corporations advertising on The Playboy Club are complicit with their sponsorship of the show.  Companies that depend on families for support are undermining the values of those same families.  Advertisers such as Jell-O, Campbell’s Soup, Hellman’s mayonnaise, Chrysler, Sprint, Subway and others empowered The Playboy Club on NBC. Please join with us and let these advertisers know that a company that aligns with the promotion of pornography will not be a company your family will support.  Click below to contact the advertisers. Take Action! Click here:  https://americandecency.org/take_action_form.php?msg_id=116 ========================================================== Your support is important to our ability to make a difference. Donate online at: https://secure4.afo.net/ada/donate.php American Decency Association is a member of the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability. American Decency Association Bill Johnson, President P.O. Box 202 Fremont, MI 49412 ph: 231-924-4050 www.americandecency.org http://www.twitter.com/billwjohnson

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