The Playboy, a comic book by Chester Brown, has really got to be one of the most personal stories told in any medium, almost embarrassingly so. It is an autobiographical account of Brown’s own teenage addiction to pornography, and how this affliction shaped his adult relationships with women, and his personal conceptions about love and race. The narrative follows Brown from the early 1970’s up through the early 1990’s, when the book was published, and is told from mixed perspectives. And although humility and embarrassment are the vanguard of the narrative, it never comes across as crass or cynical, and does not cheapen itself with trashy humor.
Part one of the story is told in the 2nd person from the point of view of Brown’s subconscious, a little shoulder-sitting devil. The little devil represents temptation and talks to Chester Brown tempting him and drawing him along. Brown started buying issues of Playboy when he was fifteen years old, and thus began his strange and guilt-ridden journey. He would buy new issues as they hit the newsstands but be overcome with feelings of guilt and remorse and would often times wind up either throwing the magazines away, burning them, hiding them in a forest and ripping out the pages he liked and getting rid of the rest. From this perspective, Brown is able to put the blame on temptation and write himself as a victim of pornography. It is also possible from this perspective for Brown to more carefully evaluate himself as a character in a story by removing himself, the artist, from the actual actions of himself the character.
As the story progresses, Brown’s actions become more calculated and his habits become more instinctive. He starts to actually collect the magazine and seeks out back issues he once had at thrift stores and used bookstores. During this, the second part of the story, the narrative shifts perspective. Brown’s little devil on the shoulder starts to tell the story from the first person point of view. This shift in perspective symbolizes Browns owning up to his feelings about porn and accepting his addiction as part of his life. From this perspective Brown is no longer the victim of his temptation, nor is he the victim of pornography; he is now an enabler of his emotions, his addictions and his actions. However, even when Brown fully accepts his habit, he is still not comfortable with who he is. Brown still struggles with guilt, remorse and still constantly struggles each and every time a new magazine is purchased.
Not only does Chester Brown acknowledge and own his addiction during the narrative, he also realizes his own deep-rooted racist tendencies. At one point Brown buys an issue of Playboy, gets home and opens it up the centerfold. He is unable to get aroused because the Playmate is black, which would have been a pretty big deal during the early 1970’s. At this, his little devil screams, “My God! The Playmate’s Black!” Stunned, Brown quickly changes pages to find a girl that suits him. This was the point in Brown’s life when he realized that unbeknownst to his conscious person, subconsciously he was innately a racist. This realization startled Brown and shed light on yet another aspect of his life that needed addressing.
These deep seeded dark habits, or addictions are things we all have and have to work with during our lives. It’s hard enough to deal with them in the privacy of our own conscious beings, let alone to write a story about them. Chester Brown takes the humiliation one step further than a mere story: he draws himself masturbating and puts his guilt on the page in both words and drawings. The art is absolutely wonderful and Brown is able to convey more emotions in his simple drawings than many other comic book artists. And while the art style may not be realistic or accurate in its depiction of the human figure, it is bold and does wonders to emote the feelings of the artist.
Every time I reread The Playboy, the impact and the emotion is still intact. The personal humiliation and embarrassment on display is nothing short of astonishing, and the tone is serious and never feels condescending towards the author, or towards other people who may have experienced the same addiction. The Playboy is truly a work of art. Comicdom is always searching for its literary champion, and often erroneously thrusts this title upon creative types such as Gaiman, Ellis, and Moore. If comic books as a medium are ever going to be pulled out of the ghetto of pulp-entertainment, and shed their superhero shackles, then it will be up to artists and writers like Chester Brown. This kind of comic book narrative can stand up to real criticism, spark real debate, and shed light on society while examining through both words and sequential pictures the emotions that make us all human.
