Valentine's Day at the Playboy Mansion
I watched “Hearts Afire� episode 38 of “Girls Next Door� which first aired in April 2007. I viewed it at 8 on a Monday night on channel 49 (E!). This episode showed ‘the girls’ celebrating Valentine’s day and Mardi Gras with their boyfriend Hugh Hefner. The show followed Bridget, Kendra, and Holly, three beautiful skinny blonde women, around for Valentines day which included a dog date where Bridget and Holly drove their dogs around Playboy park, and creating cakes for Hugh. The women were shown preparing for the Mardi Gras party and then enjoying the party.
During the show, while the women spoke to each other, carnival music wasvplaying in the background. This was also on while the women were giving their personal interviews, and while baking the cake for Hugh. This music, as someone else has mentioned, subtracts value from what the women have to say and gives the audience permission to not take the women seriously. However, when Hugh was speaking, or the women were talking about Hugh, big band music was playing in the background, making Hugh seem very glamorous and classy (the exact opposite of how I think he should be portrayed).
The women were the objects of an assumed male gaze. During the personal interviews the women were shot from the chest up, making sure to include their barely contained busts, which would appeal to a male audience. Also, during the Valentine’s day dinner, one of the playmates shoulder straps kept falling down, revealing her breasts, and a sound effect (like a bloooop sound) was added in for extra emphasis, just in case anyone missed the naked breast at the dinner table. In addition to the table incident, women were getting their costumes ‘painted on’ before the Mardi Gras party, and Hugh was in the room watching the women get ready. Of course the women’s privates were blurred out, but little was left to the imagination. The camera showed the women being looked at by an assumed male audience, as well as by Hugh.
I also am led to believe the targeted audience is male because of the advertisements in between segments of the show. Alcohol, male enhancement drugs and Holiday DVD ads with sales pitches like “wanna bring the girls home for the holidays?� appeal to a male audience.
According to Margalit as discussed in “Humiliation, Subjectivity, and Reality TV�, humiliation is the treating of a person as an object or tool, and this is what unifies reality t.v. The women in “Girls Next Door� are definitely depicted as sub-human, they are shown as sex objects, and as sexy yet unintelligent women than don’t even deserve the audiences respect to listen to their interviews without carnival music in the background. This reality show definitely takes away the women’s dignity as human beings and questions our societies ethics and morality in the inclusion of this type of show in our entertainment.
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