 | |
 OUI magazine first cover (October 1972) featuring Nadia Cassini | |
| Categories | Pornographic magazine |
|---|---|
| Frequency | 12 / year |
| Founded | 1972 |
| Final issue | 2007 |
| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
Oui was a men's adult pornographic magazine published in the United States and featuring explicit nude photographs of models, with full page pin-ups, centerfolds, interviews and other articles, and cartoons. Oui ceased publication in 2007. ("Oui" is French for "yes".)
Oui was originally published in France under the name Lui by Daniel Filipacchi (first French issue November 1963), as a French equivalent of Playboy . [1] [2] In 1972, Playboy Enterprises purchased the rights for a U.S. edition, changing the name to Oui, and the first issue was published in October of that year. Jon Carroll, formerly assistant editor at Rolling Stone magazine and editor of Rags and later editor of The Village Voice , was selected as the first editor. [3] [4] [5] Arthur Kretchmer, the editor of Playboy, however, had a role in ensuring that editorial choices would be in line with Hugh Hefner's vision. [6] [7]
The intention was to differentiate the audience in mass-market men's magazines, in an attempt to answer the challenge brought by Penthouse and Hustler , with its more explicit photography, and therefore compete on multiple fronts. [1] At first Playboy considered a direct response by following Penthouse in a nudity escalation, but Playboy management was hesitant to alter the magazine's philosophy, based on a more 'mature' and 'sophisticated' audience (one-third of Playboy's readership at that time was estimated to be over 35). [8] Instead, a separate publication, Oui, was introduced in order to pursue a younger readership, offering a combination of a "rambunctious editorial slant with uninhibited nudes pictured in the Penthouse mood." [9]
In the late seventies, Oui published some interesting articles, including "Is this the man who ate Michael Rockefeller?" (April 1977) by Lorne Blair (lately famous for the Ring of Fire documentaries), beginning with a photograph of a grinning New Guinea native, told by the intrepid anthropologist/reporter who journeyed to New Guinea, interviewed people who had known Michael Rockefeller, then ventured into the jungle and talked to members of the tribe from whom Rockefeller had bought native art artifacts, including totem poles. In the end, he found a man who claimed he had eaten the unfortunate collector.
Oui also hosted several reportages about Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) activity, like the article "CIA vs. USA – The Agency's Plot to Take Over America" by Philip Agee, about an alleged Operation PBPrime, whose leaders were the top four men in the CIA and whose target was the control of the U.S. government.
In a more humorous vein, Oui also published the essay "The 3 Most Important Things in Life" [10] by Harlan Ellison in its November 1978 issue. The three things in question were sex, violence, and labor relations, each illustrated by anecdotes from Ellison's life. The sex anecdote involved a less-than-successful assignation with a young woman, the violence anecdote was about witnessing a murder in a movie theater during a screening of Save the Tiger , and the labor relations anecdote was Ellison's version of the story of his being fired after only one morning at The Walt Disney Company for jokingly suggesting the making of a pornographic cartoon using the primary Disney characters. The piece has since been republished in Ellison's Stalking the Nightmare and Edgeworks 1 . Oui also published short fiction.
A 1977 interview by Peter Manso of the then 29-year-old emerging actor Arnold Schwarzenegger on issues like sex, drugs, bodybuilding, and homosexuality produced some embarrassment 25 years later to candidate Schwarzenegger in the 2003 California gubernatorial campaign. [11]
During the 1970s, Oui printed a copy of Shere Hite's questionnaire about female sexuality that was used as the basis of The Hite Report. Replies were received from 253 of the magazine's women readers. [12]
Despite its popularity, Oui was unable to produce a profit. Furthermore, management realized that Oui was taking more readers from Playboy than from Penthouse. [13] [14] [15] So, in June 1981 Playboy Enterprises, based in Chicago, [16] ended its Oui experiment. [17] The magazine was sold to Laurant Publishing Ltd. in New York; its new president and chief operating officer was Irwin E. Billman, former executive vice president and chief operating officer of the Penthouse Group. [18]
During the 1980s the magazine maintained its distinction from Playboy by publishing graphic nude pictures like its rivals Penthouse and Hustler. [19] Initially, Laurant featured celebrity nudity in Oui, peaking in 1982 with pictorials of Phyllis Hyman, [20] Linda Blair, [21] Demi Moore, [22] and Pia Zadora. [23] In the same year the magazine bought the short story "Down Among the Dead Men" by science-fiction writers Gardner Dozois and Jack Dann. [24] The editorial plan was to return the magazine to the "younger Playboy image" that it previously had. [25]
The 1990s found the magazine focusing on pop culture and youth-centered topics, with rock musician interviews and an increasingly large comics section that included R-rated versions of the X-rated Carnal Comics: True Stories of Adult Film Stars line, Rip Off Press's Demi the Demoness (later the first adults-only comic character to be adapted as a live action film), and a serialized version of Jay Allen Sanford's illustrated book Triple-X Cinema: A Cartoon History.
The magazine subsequently experienced a significant decline in circulation. As had many of its competitors, Oui expanded its photo content to hardcore in the early 2000s, which included depictions of couples having sexual intercourse, including explicit penetration. Oui ceased publication in 2007.
Hugh Marston Hefner was an American magazine publisher. He was the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy magazine, a publication with revealing photographs and articles.
Playboy is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother.
The Pubic Wars, a pun on the Punic Wars, was a rivalry between the American pornographic magazines Playboy and Penthouse during the 1960s and 1970s. Each magazine strove to show just a little bit more nudity on their female models than the other, without getting too crude. The term was coined by Playboy owner Hugh Hefner. In 1950s and 1960s United States, it was generally agreed that nude photographs were not pornographic unless they showed pubic hair or genitals. Mainstream mass-market photography was careful to come close to this line without stepping over it. Consequently, the depiction of pubic hair was de facto forbidden in U.S. pornographic magazines of the era.
Penthouse is a men's magazine founded by Bob Guccione and published by Los Angeles–based Penthouse World Media, LLC. It combines urban lifestyle articles and softcore pornographic pictures of women that, in the 1990s, evolved into hardcore pornographic pictures of women.
Playgirl is an American magazine that has historically featured pictorials of nude and semi-nude men alongside general interest, lifestyle, and celebrity journalism, as well as original fiction. For most of its history, the magazine printed monthly and was marketed mainly to women, though it quickly developed a significant gay male readership.
Softcore pornography or softcore porn is commercial still photography, film, or art that has a pornographic or erotic component but is less sexually graphic and intrusive than hardcore pornography, defined by a lack of visual sexual penetration. It typically contains nude or semi-nude actors involved in love scenes and is intended to be sexually arousing and aesthetically beautiful. The distinction between softcore pornography and erotic photography or art, such as Vargas girl pin-ups, is largely a matter of debate.
Shere Hite was an American-born German sex educator and feminist. Her sexological work focused primarily on female sexuality. Hite built upon biological studies of sex by Masters and Johnson and by Alfred Kinsey and was the author of The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality. She also referenced theoretical, political and psychological works associated with the feminist movement of the 1970s, such as Anne Koedt's essay "The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm". She renounced her United States citizenship in 1995 to become German.
Pornographic magazines or erotic magazines, sometimes known as adult magazines or sex magazines, are magazines that contain content of an explicitly sexual nature. Publications of this kind may contain images of attractive naked subjects, as is the case in softcore pornography, and, in the usual case of hardcore pornography, depictions of masturbation, oral, manual, vaginal, or anal sex.
The centerfold or centrefold of a magazine is the inner pages of the middle sheet, usually containing a portrait, such as a pin-up or a nude. The term can also refer to the model featured in the portrait. In saddle-stitched magazines, the centerfold does not have any blank space cutting through the image.
Jon Carroll is a retired newspaper columnist, best known for his work for the San Francisco Chronicle from 1982, when he succeeded columnist Charles McCabe, to 2015, when he retired. His column appeared on the back page of the Chronicle's Datebook section Tuesdays through Fridays.
Leslie Marie Graves was an American actress.
Mandate was a monthly pornographic magazine for gay men. It was published in the United States and distributed internationally since April, 1975. Together with the other magazines of the Mavety Group, such as Black Inches, it folded in 2009.
Gallery is an adult sex magazine published by Magna Publishing Group. It is one of the more popular "skin" magazines that arose on the Playboy magazine pattern in the 1970s.
Philip Nobile is an American freelance writer, journalist, historian, teacher, and social critic/commentator. He has written or edited several books, published investigative journalism in leading newspapers and journals, and taught at the Cobble Hill School of American Studies, a public school in Brooklyn.
Rogue was a Chicago-based, men's magazine published by William Hamling from 1956 until 1965. Founding editor Frank M. Robinson was followed by other editors, including Harlan Ellison and Bruce Elliott. The magazine was subtitled "Designed for Men."
William Lawrence Hamling was an American writer, science fiction fan, and publisher of both science fiction digests, and adult magazines and books, active from the late 1930s until 1975. He was a lifelong member of First Fandom.
Mike Edison is a New York-based writer, editor, musician, social critic, and spoken word artist. He was one of many publishers/editors of the marijuana counterculture magazine High Times, and was later named editor-in-chief of Screw, the self-proclaimed "World's Greatest Newspaper." In his memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go, Edison recounts his adventures across twenty years of druggy adventurism and his parallel careers as a magazine editor, writer, and musician. His other books include the sprawling history of American men's magazines, Dirty! Dirty! Dirty!: Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, An American Tale of Sex and Wonder; the political satire Bye, Bye Miss American Pie; several collaborations including Restaurant Man with Joe Bastianich and The Carnivore's Manifesto with Slow Food USA founder Patrick Martins; and most recently, Sympathy for the Drummer: Why Charlie Watts Matters, a history and appreciation of the Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts, and the history of blues and rock ’n ’roll drumming. Edison speaks frequently on free speech, and the American counterculture. Between 2011 and 2018, Edison was the host and producer of the weekly Heritage Radio Network series Arts & Seizures.
There has been demand for imagery of nude celebrities for many decades. It is a lucrative business exploited by websites and magazines.
Playboy Special Editions are a spin-off series of Playboy magazine containing glamour and softcore nude photographs. The initially infrequent and later semi-regular editions ran from 1963 through 2000 then re-branded from 2000 through 2012 final issues. A one-off special edition was published in February 2015 featuring images of models in different locations within California from the controversial photographer Terry Richardson.