Tim Mohr, an Associate Editor of Playboy Magazine, talks with creative.reconstruction and shares his thoughts on cultural relevance, the liberating virtues of erotica, and the numbing effects of postmodernism.
CREATIVE.RECONSTRUCTION: I envisioned you looking very different than you do. I expected to see someone that looked a bit older, and seemed a bit more “Establishment.” Is your aesthetic the general aesthetic of the Playboy offices?
TIM MOHR: [Nodding] I’d say Yeah. Our atmosphere is pretty consistent with what you’d find at a men’s magazine — and probably magazine publishing at large. Those departments that tend more towards client interaction, like ad sales, will wear shirts and ties. But the more journalistic, content-driven end of things — my thing — is a more relaxed culture.
Speaking of culture, to what extent do you think the “sexualization” of American culture — what some have termed “the end of shame” — has impacted Playboy’s relevance to the culture-at-large, and to the young male demo?
Playboy still occupies a unique and relatively unchallenged cultural space. Even with the invasion of the so-called lad magazines — Maxim, THM, etc. — our market share and our subscriber base have remained steady, even grown somewhat. That tells me that the magazine and the symbolism it bears still resonate with a fairly large and fairly loyal pocket of Americans that have grown with the publication. So I guess the answer to your question is dual-sided: We still perceive ourselves as being relevant (as do our advertisers), but it’s probably not the young-male demo that we’re relevant to.
I think you’d agree that your pornography is barely that, relatively speaking. So if not as a symbol or remnant of the counter-culture, where would you say Playboy’s relevance stems from?
Primarily from the writing, and the legacy of the writing. You have to keep in mind that our magazine ran stories by some of the most celebrated American writers of the last half-century — Vladimir Nabokov, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac, Hunter Thompson — in some instances long before more mainstream publications would. Also, Playboy essentially invented the long-form interview, which has spawned a dynamic tradition of its own. From the outset, Playboy was intended to represent a lifestyle sensibility: one that preferred sex to the violence of the 60s era, and one that appreciates that sex can be tastefully depicted and appreciated. That’s essentially Hef’s [Hugh Hefner, Playboy’s founder] vision, and that’s what attracted me to the magazine professionally.
It’s interesting that you sought to differentiate sex and violence. There are some that would correlate the two; they are typically uttered in the same breath.
Some might make that connection, but I don’t. And I don’t think the magazine does, obviously. American violence, to the extent that it’s excessive, stems from something other than sex. I spent six years as a nightclub DJ in Berlin after college, and I didn’t see a single solitary fight. Sex is no more or less prevalent in Berlin than it is in New York, but you see nightclub and bar fights here all the time.
Has working at a nude magazine adversely affected your reputation as a journalist?
I suppose it’s possible, but if so, I haven’t noticed. What some people fail to realize is that the photo spreads comprise a fraction — about 15% — of the magazine’s content; the rest is devoted to ads, of course, but also to serious journalism: cultural affairs, politics, entertainment, finance, relationships, etc. — the whole gamut of contemporary issues.
What would it take to recreate a Playboy for this post-modern era?
A cultural cause to champion! That’s what was and remains key to the magazine’s success. In Hef’s time — just after the Red Scare and McCarthyism — it was the cause of individual freedom, non-conformity and, again, the triumph of sex/love over violence, paranoia and war. There just don’t seem to be any earnest causes today. There’s too much irony, too much cynicism, and I guess, a little too much relativism.
The article originally appeared in an NYU student publication.
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