Thursday, May 14, 1998
Penthouse ad not at home in Daily Bruin
ADVERTISEMENT: Newspaper compromised, students insulted by
soft-core porn
By Kathryn Zally
I was a bit aghast to see an advertisement for Penthouse
magazine in the May 5 edition of the Daily Bruin. I was taken aback
because, although I realize that the editorial board need not agree
with the beliefs of its advertisers in the general case, the Daily
Bruin aims to be an all-inclusive student paper; I don’t know if
Penthouse should have any voice or financial interest in such a
forum.
You can cite as many Norman Mailer essays and open letters to
the Unabomber as you like, but in the end you will not convince me
that Penthouse is anything but a poorly disguised wide-open beaver
rag. I personally don’t think there’s anything wrong with that.
However, I have disdain for Penthouse’s desperate and
self-conscious efforts to be perceived as a legitimate periodical,
as witnessed in the ad in the Bruin. The ad bears a slogan
pertaining to "Truth, Justice and Protest" and shows a male hand
holding a rolled-up issue of Penthouse with the White House in the
background.
The hand holding the magazine is a fairly transparent
masturbatory gesture. What does the ad mean? Something about
Clinton sex scandals? Something about Penthouse being a forum for
radical journalism, an instantiation of protest against the status
quo? Or a suggestion that Penthouse is smart enough or highbrow
enough to earn the appreciation of the intellectual university
student population? Maybe all of the above.
If buying or reading Penthouse is some way for a person to
experience "Truth, Justice and Protest" or to "Protest" in the name
of "Truth and Justice," it’s not clear to me how. What are we
protesting anyway – political correctness, perhaps? While the
corporate world, as reflected by the media and advertising, lashes
back against the notion of political correctness, the university
population, I would hope, still appreciates that the exchange on
this topic is legitimate and complex.
It does not deserve to be subjected to the dismissive
overgeneralization ad absurdum that the quickly changing,
not-too-deeply thinking corporate world applies to it. Penthouse is
part of this world. It verges on insult that Penthouse tries to
pass as a thinking person’s magazine to us, the students of a
prestigious intellectual institution.
A lot of Bruin advertising is idiotic and insulting, you say?
Fine.
But what really gets my goat about seeing this ad in The Bruin
is the fact that Penthouse is primarily a soft-core porn magazine.
You buy Penthouse if and only if you plan to get off on it. It is
insensitive of The Bruin to run this ad because it marginalizes a
part of the student population.
To be specific, there is an ongoing debate among feminists (and
by "feminists" I mean adherents to an intellectual school of
thought, not simply mean, ugly dykes … although cute, cuddly
dykes are A-OK for Penthouse) as to whether pornography is a
detriment to society because it typically portrays women in
submissive sexual poses. If the mainstream media continually feed
our culture with images of women as sexual objects, complaisant and
containable, our culture will continue to believe in these images –
so the argument goes.
Attributing eroticism to these images can potentially lead to
mistreatment and abuse of women, some would contend. And regardless
of anyone’s personal stand on this debate, by chosing to publish an
ad for a pornographic magazine, the Daily Bruin marginalizes those
in our student population who object to pornography as a whole on
social and political grounds. Penthouse has no place in a newspaper
that aims to serve all of UCLA’s students.
Unenlightenedness aside, the ad poses a danger to the Daily
Bruin’s standards of quality. If The Bruin continues to promote
magazines such as Penthouse, it seems that ads for pornographic 900
numbers should follow directly. Penthouse is no more "legitimate"
than these, despite its vain attempts. Then our student paper will
erode into something that looks like the L.A. Weekly, riddled with
ads for all manner of trash (incidentally, the Weekly ran the same
Penthouse ad that The Bruin did, but it seemed more appropriate
when juxtaposed with an ad for laser vaginal rejuvenation).
I sincerely hope you’ll curb the degradation now before The
Bruin finds itself desperately vying for legitimacy the way
Penthouse does (on the other hand, you could print wide-open beaver
photos in the Bruin, perhaps in a feature sponsored by Penthouse,
and then you’d have the most "Truth, Justice and Protest"-loving
student paper around).
I was awestruck to see that ad in the Bruin, unabashedly glaring
at me in its full-page glory. It defied my sensibilities, not with
its fabricated ’90s macho in-your-faceness but with the underlying
truth it revealed to me: that the UCLA student newspaper would
sacrifice its integrity for a handsome check from as dubious and
duplicitous a concern as Penthouse magazine.
Kathryn Zally