Ovid warned us about this sort of thing
“The Girls Next Door” is not my usual fare — I swear. But like train wrecks, salacious “reality” TV has an inexorable attraction for even decorous souls like mine. Besides — and I mean this — all serious artists must directly grapple with the vulgar side of contemporary mass culture, albeit in controlled doses. To ignore it entirely is to underestimate the enemy.
The show is a 30-minute program on the E! cable network that’s usually broadcast, two or three episodes in succession, during prime time. The principals are 81-year-old Playboy publisher Hugh Hefner and three platinum-haired, water-balloon-breasted young women — all in their twenties — who reside as Hef’s “girlfriends” in his Playboy mansion in Beverly Hills. It’s not clear if Hef and the “girls” — Bridget, Holly and Kendra — actually have sex, although that’s certainly the implication. As in all reality TV shows, the real and the pretend are muddled.
People who produce TV shows like this know their public and give them what they want — in this case, a slick combination of depravity and innocence. The “girls” cheerfully pose as a group, in the nude, while photographers do a shoot for Playboy. Of course, bowing to prime-time “standards,” there are no crotch shots and the girls’ collective six nipples are digitally obliterated. Most of the show’s sex consists of wink-wink dialogue while people go in and out of bedrooms.
“The Girls Next Door” is about opposites — May/December, Polygamy/Monogamy, Whores/Nice Girls, Sex/Regular-daily-living. Package these in the comfy vibe of Martha Stewart and you get Good Housekeeping meets group sex. Is the show a put-up job? On the one hand, women this astonishingly stupid — we’re talking two IQ points above plant life here — couldn’t possibly act this well. On the other hand, if they are acting as if they’re this dumb, then even Helen Mirren could learn from them.
Hef is a fairly spry guy as octogenarians go. He retains his sardonic grin and now wears his trademark smoking jacket as if it were a second skin. His hair is a tad scraggly, and his swagger has become a little wobbly, but he’s fully compos mentis.
In a recent episode of “The Girls Next Door, ” Bridget is refurbishing the Playboy mansion gym as a surprise for Hef. Meanwhile, Holly is “helping” her mom get through facelift surgery — the “most important day of her mom’s life,” as she says. Later, under her daughter’s loving watch, Mom recovers from the surgery at the mansion. She lolls about with her post-surgical black-and-blue visage in one of Hef’s many big, wide beds. Once she’s up and about, Mom gives big-hearted Hef a hug for allowing her to recover in the mansion. He in turn congratulates her for having had the plastic surgery—as if it’s the equivalent of having volunteered to give up a kidney for somebody else. Throughout the program, Holly and Bridget offer their insights into taking care of Hef’s needs (the non-sexual kind), learning to feel good about themselves, and the importance of loving one’s Mom.
“The Girls Next Door” is in its fourth season, with an audience of over 2 million regular viewers. (By comparison, “Sponge Bob,” another successful cable show, has about the same number of viewers.) As television entertainment, “The Girls” seems harmless enough. Seen in a darker light, however, it’s a nasty brew of aged Hef, stupidity, body worship, plastic surgery, mindless materialism, voyeurism, and, of course, misogyny. Only evil or desperate mothers willingly encourage their daughters to take up with very old men as orgy participants, and only depraved old men lacking any wisdom or self-control spend time with brainless girlfriends who are a quarter their age.
Ovid said that old men in love are hideous. Old men mimicking love are even more grotesque. As a fake celebration of fake eroticism, “The Girls Next Door” is a very well-crafted performance piece. But in ways its producers could never have anticipated, it’s also the perfect memento mori for our times.
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