The headline should read Playgirl in DTF St. Louis. Because this page isn’t a review of HBOMax’s provocative new series, nor it contains a plot spoiler. But Playgirl magazine plays a central role in the series: a fictitious cover –with the 90s font– and a fictitious centerfold spread recur in every episode and spark a meaningful conversation on porn (episode 5 begins with a 1-minute montage of the full pictorial). Here are detective Donoghue Homer and officer Jodie Plumb in episode one –the crime scene. (Note: the ‘dictate’ function in Microsoft Word would censor “porn” and “dicks” in the transcript, both rendered with four asterisks. Which, in itself, is no less meaningful)
DH: I think daddy wanted some private time with his male porno before work, so he found this little spot. Shuttered pools. Brought his Lost Ark male porno and had a hard thing with his heart. That’s that.
JP: That photograph isn’t sexual.
DH: What do you mean it isn’t sexual? I mean, it features a guy nude.
‘DTF St. Louis’ • HBOMax.
JP: It’s not sexual, it’s foolish. What, he’s discovering some kind of a lost city nude? What are you talking about? [note: silly it is, as we find out in episode 5]
DH: Looks like it. You know, some kind of Mayan something. You can see all the male stuff.
JP: I’m porn positive.
DH: I don’t know what that means.
‘DTF St. Louis’ • HBOMax.
JP: I’m porn positive. Porn is a part of my marital sex life. That’s not porn. Open your phone, put in “Indiana Jones and dicks” and you’re going to see a lot of dicks. Modern dicks. Couldn’t even get hard then. You can get hard as shit today. That’s not porn. That’s like a collectible or something, like baseball cards or something.
DH: Yeah, but people have their own shit like… this guy. He was into, like, lost cities, maybe, and treasure hunter men. So, I mean, that’s his private thing, personal to him, his thing.
JP: Why is his face scratched? In that way.
(…)
DH: Suburban dad with this secret gay pages. Should be able to be yourself in your house. shouldn’t have to get up so early just to be you. Should be an all-day kind of a thing.
‘DTF St. Louis’ • HBOMax.
Let’s take a deep dive. Detective Homer sees a magazine with a naked man and makes two assumptions: 1. the magazine is pornographic; 2. The “Suburban dad” is gay. Special crimes officer Plumb, on the other hand, refutes the first assumption and says nothing of the second.
It’s no coincidence DTF St. Louis’ creator (Steven Conrad) didn’t pick any gay porn mag of the 90s –and there were many. He picked a sex-positive magazine with some nudity, but no hard-ons and no display of sexual activity (as such, Playgirl is still allowed on eBay, for instance). And he picked a magazine with no overt gay connotations: While the print magazine had a large gay demographic, it was branded, after all, as “Entertainment for Women.”
No worries, we won’t tell you how that ambiguity plays into Homer’s investigation. We’re however interested in the different perceptions –and the very definition– of pornography DTF St. Louis offers. In Homer’s bigoted eyes, a “nude guy” is, by default, sexually explicit. And so it is for today’s social media (Meta, TikTok, YouTube), today’s prudes, censors and legislators. For “porn-positive” Plumb (who goes on to say, “No one jacks off to magazines in modern society,”) it isn’t.
DTF St. Louis is currently streaming on HBOMax
‘DTF St. Louis’ • HBOMax.
