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The Playboy philosophy of the Western world

Rushdie seems to be conveying the message that adult entertainment is a fundamental freedom

Terence Blacker
Wednesday 11 August 2004 00:00 BST
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A glorious coming together of hedonism and culture, of randiness and respectability, will soon be available in bookshops, airports and the occasional gallery. The superbabe Pamela Anderson, whose hardcore honeymoon video has given pleasure to millions of lonely internet bogglers, has launched herself as the author (non-writing, ghosted variety) of a novel.

A glorious coming together of hedonism and culture, of randiness and respectability, will soon be available in bookshops, airports and the occasional gallery. The superbabe Pamela Anderson, whose hardcore honeymoon video has given pleasure to millions of lonely internet bogglers, has launched herself as the author (non-writing, ghosted variety) of a novel.

Meanwhile, approaching from the opposite direction, is a real novelist, Salman Rushdie, who seems to have become an enthusiastic champion of pornography, and who has contributed an essay on the subject to a book of photographs by Timothy Greenfield-Sanders, XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits. Salman's thoughts on the sex industry will not be fully exposed before publication next month, but a promotional flash provides the gist. Porn "sometimes becomes a kind of standard-bearer for freedom, even civilisation," he says. Pictures of people having sex is particularly useful in countries like Pakistan where it is difficult for young men and women to get together.

With their new publications, the unlikely duo of Pam and Salman, Baywatch babe and Booker Prize winner, would seem to be conveying the same populist message. Sex between consenting adults is a wonderful thing; the solo version, provided by those thoughtful folk in the adult entertainment industry, is just fine, too. One of the fundamental freedoms of the age, it should finally be brought out of the shadows and celebrated as a great contribution to world culture.

Pamela Anderson's position is not difficult to understand. Those in her line of work, from the British mistress of soft porn Fiona Richmond onwards, have been surprisingly happy to burst into print, and the fact that Pam has the luxury of a literary body double in the form of a ghostwriter must have taken some of the stress out of the process. Rushdie is more of a mystery. Of the many aspects of Western society that might be promoted to the rest of the world, what was it about pornography that demanded an essay of commendation?

His position is certainly brave. There arrives a time in a man's life, usually around the half-century mark, when it becomes unwise to be too closely associated with sexual matters - at least, if that man has a public persona. With every new story - think of poor old Sven - unwelcome and frankly rather unpleasant images can flash before the eye. The fact that Salman Rushdie is married to a beautiful woman 26 years younger, and about six inches taller, than him makes the matter worse. In a context where the visual is precisely what we do not want, it seems perverse to celebrate it.

For this sudden championing of commercial sex as a force for liberation and civilised values has the unintended effect of reminding one who Salman, grinning at the camera, with his wife Padma Lakshmi draped all over him, looks like. The expression on his face - uxorious to the point of smugness - is remarkably similar to that of that great 20th-century liberator Hugh Hefner when surrounded by his mistresses at the Playboy mansion.

Hefner, of course, had an excuse for looking naff. He was peddling a fantasy which had filled his coffers. The message to the middle-aged executive hunched eagerly over the latest Playmate of the Month, was clear: if young babes with large breasts could find wizened old Hef attractive, there was hope for everyone. This dream of availability, in which paunchy, saggy, receding males can still pull women half their age, was an essential part of what was called the Playboy philosophy.

Part of the same belief system was the idea that sex was a pleasure to be taken and enjoyed like wine, cars or even reading books. Although both Hefner and his magazine may seem to belong to another age (this month: nude shots of athlete babes at the Greek Olympics), the Playboy philosophy is all around us. When a middle-class tabloid spends hundreds of thousands of pounds to buy the story of an unmarried England football manager spending a few nights with a secretary, also unmarried, and then devotes about half its pages to the subject, it is selling a fantasy of which Hefner would approve. What matters in this kind of lubricious, masturbatory journalism is not so much what happened but who did what to whom.

From TV advertisements with their knowing references to sado-masochism through the prurience of reality TV to the enactment of sexual cruelty at the Abu Ghraib prison, it is the same story. Just as Hugh Hefner once dreamed, porn has conquered the world; it is an inescapable part of daily life. Even the most breezily libertarian must surely agree that something has been lost here. Look in the eyes of the women and men who appear in XXX: 30 Porn-Star Portraits and it is difficult to discern much kindness, warmth or even happiness.

If Salman Rushdie really does feel the need to convey to his readers the marital happiness he is enjoying, he should probably do it through his fiction. Acting as cheerleader for the Playboy philosophy of the Western world does nothing for his reputation.

terblacker@aol.com

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