Friday, November 13, 2009

A Bunny's Tale - Rare Behind the Scenes Video with a 60's Pop Culture Icon - CBC Archives - Circa 1966




In the turbulent, tawdry 1960's,THE ALL-AMERICAN, PLAYBOY BUNNY was positioned in the glossy pages of decadent, daring Playboy Magazine as indigenous wildlife in the smoke-filled, jazz infused, sexually charged nightclubs that Hugh M. Hefner, Playboy's founder and publisher, opened around the globe.

For repressed, working class males , the upstanding men who survived the Great Depression and who fought for victory in World War Two, the Playboy Bunny was the living logo of the 1960's sexual revolution.The Playboy Club, Hefner's high voltage chain of hipster bistros was romanticized as as the proving ground for new weapons in the war of the sexes.


Here, men fantasized about gland to gland combat.

But in principle and practice The Playboy Bunnies were, by and large, conscientious objectors, where the customers were concerned.

As the first wave of feminism emerged and gained attention , in the 1960's, many socially,culturally,and professionally empowered women decried the Playboy Bunny, and the philosophy from which it was contrived , as a key propagator of personal objectification and sexual subjugation.

The Playboy Bunny was, in the end, a casualty of the sexual revolution and the attendant, feminist awakening.

Nothing fatal.

But, like so many who survive a prolonged battle, things were never the same for Playboy , again

While, it's always hard to stop Bunnies from multiplying, The Playboy Clubs of the randy, rockin' 1960's didn't survive to the materially-focused, sexually inhibited 1990's.

But in the mid to late-2000's, with America developing a retrograde fascination for all things RATPACK, the return of 1960'S suavity that was prompted by MADMEN on AMC and Hefner's own cable series, the giddy, GIRLS NEXT DOOR on E!, at least, the image of the Playboy Bunny was back in vogue.

In Las Vegas, the opulent Palms Hotel opened the first, new Playboy Club in decades.Every night,The Playboy Bunny logo smiles down on the Vegas strip,now. A leering and lascivious landmark in a city built on sex and gambling.In the end, they are deeply similar pursuits, where people never really understand the risk, because they so crave reward. There is a new chapter written in This Bunny's Tale, every night.




From the CBC Archive, we have found a short and revealing (albeit, G-Rated:) interview with a Playboy Bunny, who takes you behind the scenes of the Toronto Playboy Club ,while sharing secrets of the Bunny Sisterhood. Enjoy!!!!!!!!!


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