Playboy’s ‘Hot Rocks’: Not-Ready-for-MTV

If you thought MTV was sexist, brace yourself.

The Playboy Channel has stepped forward with a show that makes MTV look almost prudish. It’s “Playboy’s Hot Rocks”--a new, hourlong program spotlighting uncensored, not-ready-for-MTV music videos, complete with partial or full-frontal nudity, as seen usually only over on that naughty continent of Europe.

The Bee Gees, for example, got plenty of publicity on “Entertainment Tonight” recently by feigning surprise that their steamy “Body Guard” video had been turned down for airplay on MTV, VH-1 and other Victorian outlets.

But the curious can catch that clip and others like it on “Hot Rocks,” complete with titillating comments between songs from the va-va- voom veejay, Miss March, Deborah Driggs.

The premiere, which aired several times this month, also includes uncensored Quincy Jones, Alice Cooper and 2 Live Crew; a look at musical sex-meister Barry White; and an “exclusive” interview with male-bimbo rocker Tim Karr. Scheduled guests for the second episode, airing June 2: the Red Hot Chili Peppers.

But if the Playboy Channel can clearly get more explicit in what it shows, the pervasive attitude in many of the rap and rock videos routinely shown on MTV differs little. This month’s edition of Sound & Vision--where current pop clips are rated on a 0-100 scale--takes a voyeuristic peek into the pop video bedroom, and finds only one “adult”-themed clip that also has an adult point of view.

VID PICK OF THE MONTH:

The The’s “Kingdom of Rain.” (Director: Tim Pope.) Like several other clips in this lot, “Rain” sports a bewigged blond woman in a bedroom, but there’s a universe of difference in how it moodily delineates the complexities of emotion in a long-standing, free-falling love affair. While Angst -ridden singer Matt Johnson gazes into his well-furnished fish tank, his neglected lover sits at his feet, making faces that disturbingly alternate between fake-seductiveness and all-out rage. Remarkably rich and potently cinematic, this video--which has been airing for many months--is notable now for another reason: Johnson’s unseen duet partner, representing the female point of view, is the suddenly-a-superstar Sinead O’Connor. 93

GAMMA RAY ROT:

Billy Idol’s “Cradle of Love.” (D: David Fincher.) An all-out reverse rape fantasy. Shy guy gets mauled by gorgeous woman crawling around on all fours (shades of the devil-doll in “Trilogy of Terror”!); after she’s had her way with him, her real date for the evening knocks on the door. 18

Heart’s “All I Wanna Do is Make Love to You.” (D: Andy Morahan.) Yet another insatiable woman courteously picks up a pretty-boy hitchhiker (which decade is this?) and takes him to a motel for one night of sin. Ann Wilson as the distaff Brando in a “Last Tango” reversal? Hardly. Danger disregarded, this is played up for all the phony romanticism it’s worth. (By the way, yes, they’re still electronically “squeezing” poor Wilson into a size 9.) 7

Alice Cooper’s “Poison (uncensored).” (D: Nigel Dick.) On MTV you get bondage and death by poisoning; on the Playboy Channel you get all that and breasts too. But never in the same takes as the women’s pouty faces. This suggests different models were used for the body shots, but it’s indicative of the extent to which guys like Cooper separate women’s heads from their torsos. 5

2 Live Crew’s “Me So Horny.” (D: Tass Sheik.) Him so sexist. Luke Skyywalker--er, Luther Campbell--is “a dog in heat,” and to prove it, he lifts his leg as if to urinate on the camera and, by extension, us. Self-satisfied as a recently relieved cocker spaniel, Campbell reclines in bed, reminding a young woman (who looks appropriately depressed) that he made her the sex-toy she is today. He also mocks her parents’ naivete and boasts that he’ll soon dump her. Obscenity trials aside, any man who could invest so much braggadocio in the using and discarding of women is already in a jail--of his own making. 0