'The Playboy Club' Stirs Porn Controversy Amid Premiere
NBC ‘s new show “The Playboy Club has riled some critics to labeling the network of presenting “pornographic material over the public airwaves,” during primetime hours when children are present.
The Parents Television Council fired off a letter to NBC Universal stating, “The Playboy Club is the latest and most obvious example of the way the entertainment industry is mainstreaming and even glamorizing pornography,” and adding “the NBC network – are eager to push a pornography-based show into every home in America.”
The group also urged every NBC affiliate to boycott the show, which premieres tonight. While many stations appeared to ignore the call, NBC affiliate KSL in Salt Lake City obliged. The network has decided to not air “The Playboy Club” insisting that the station’s values are “completely inconsistent with the Playboy brand.” The MyNetworkTV affiliate in Salt Lake City will instead carry the show.
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The series is a historical fiction drama about the string of nightclubs operated in the 1960’s. Hugh Hefner, the founder of the club still operates three Playboy clubs across the country today. The show features a setting similar to AMC’s success show “Mad Men” and showcases scantily clad women donning those famous bunny ears.
Women’s rights advocate Gloria Steinem, in an interview with Reuters, also went on the attack against the series in hopes for a nationwide boycott. Steinem, who went undercover as a Playboy bunny in the 1960s for an expose rails against the falsehoods that the show implicates.
She said that the show “normalizes a passive dominant idea of gender. So it normalizes prostitution and male dominance”.
Stars of the series have taken the challenge of defending the show to critics. During a Television Critics Association panel, stars of the series Leah Renee and Amber Heard, who play bunnies, argued that the show is more than “(women) prancing around in tight, cleavage-revealing outfits with bunny tails.”
"The way we look at things, if it involves sexuality, somehow a woman must be compromised. And I think it's just as chauvinistic to deny a woman her sexuality," said Heard.
She added that “the historical aspect of the show is actually one of its most enticing aspects.”
“The Playboy Club” is rated TV-14 and scheduled to air Monday nights at 10 p.m.
