Now don’t get me wrong, I think any movie starring Nicole Kidman’s breasts is a fine film (and no, I haven’t seen “Eyes Wide Shut”).
But seriously, are nude scenes in films or television ever necessary to actually advance the plot? I thought of this while watching NYPD Blue this week. There was a quick shot of a nude Kim Delaney walking away from the camera. I consider Blue a good and serious show, and I liked looking at her butt, but the shot seemed thrown in just to have nudity.
I recognize that there are a few serious American films (and many foreign ones) about sexuality, and that nudity is probably necessary in those - “Carnal Knowledge” comes to mind. But was it necessary in “American Beauty”?
Film school graduates, make practical use of your education by discussing this ;).
S’actually something that has long bothered me too. I mean - why, people? And not just nudity - these days it seems that almost every film has a sex scene. Again - why? In the old films you’d see the couple have a bit a snog and the camera would fade out. I don’t think that the films were any the worse for this. Au contraire - the restraint did the film a world of good. Not only did it feed the imagination but more importantly the romance rather than the sex was emphasised.
Don’t get me wrong - there are plenty of films that are sexual in nature. In these cases of course the sex scenes are crucial. I can accept the necessity of a sex scene in e.g. Betty Blue or Basic Instinct. But in most films it is purely gratuitious. And it kills the romance IMHO.
I agree. Can you imagine “Gone With The Wind” done with nude scenes? There used to be lots of adult oriented films without nudity. Alfred Hitchcock did wonderful stuff, just suggesting things that weren’t shown on camera. My opinion, today’s films take the easy way out, and that’s a shame.
although, it jars me when I see a scene (which happens often) of a male in bed (often w/female love interest), phone rings, something happens he has to leap out of bed, and there he is wearing his boxers.
I mean really. Yes, some men don’t sleep in the nude, but often it’s implied they’d just had sex, so apparently, after the ‘moment’, he delicately reaches over and graps his shorts?
As opposed to the totally realistic (not to mention delightful) shot of Dennis Quaid pulling on his itty bitty bikini undies while on the phone in The Big Easy.
Excuse me, I’ve got something important to do now.
Well, I’m always one to decry nudity in most mainstream films…but I DO believe that sometimes it’s not gratuitous. Especially when they’re not sexual at all. I think sex scenes with rampant nudity are uncreative, but if you’re trying to show the vulnerability of a character, nudity is a good symbol
A fine example is all of the nudity we see in Schindler’s List, which certainly wasn’t meant to be tantalizing, it was to show the sheer humiliation that those charcaters felt.
Also, a Russian movie that I just recently rented called The Theif, featured a step-father taking his son to a Russian Bath House. All of the men were naked, and the little boy was very intimidated by it. His father leaned over and said, “Don’t worry, yours will grow.” It was touching and funny and you could see how it was a bonding moment between the two.
And most recently, Quills, has a scene where the Marquis De Sade is stripped of everything he owns, including his clothes. He tries to be a smart ass about it the whole time, but when he’s finally standing there naked, you can see that he’s been somewhat broken.
Interestingly, the examples i’ve listed are all male nudity…but I’m sure there must be similar female nudity somewhere.
And don’t get me wrong…there are PLENTY of penises out there that I’d like to see in a purely sexual form, as well. But that’s just the kind of gal I am.
Actually, I did once upon a time know a guy who would do exactly that. The minute exercise was concluded, he’d put his shorts back on. No idea why. But that was an exception, not the rule.
To address the OP, yes, I think there are circumstances in which nudity is not gratuitous. I once worked a production of the 60’s musical ‘Hair’, in which most of the cast get fully nude to make a political/social statement. Gotta tell you, that went over really well in North Carolina!
It depends on what the story is about, and whether the sex has anything to do with it. If it’s just about people taking a quick break from the story for a friendly adjustment of blood chemistry, then it’s prety obvious that the director feels it’s necessary to push my buttons for a few moments - which then leads me to think that we BOTH (the director and I) think that the story is kindof weak, thereby dragging me out of the story, which I resent.
However, sometimes things happen while naked that do change the course of people’s lives, and if such a scene is glossed over to preseve my delicate sensibilites (!) then I feel again that the film is being artistically dishonest.
On a tangent, I think that it’s just sex and we, as a society are a little too tense about it.
Is the OP talking about just nudity, or specifically “nude sex scenes”?
I was very disappointed in The Piano’s handling of this. I liked the movie, a lot. However, when it was released, Jane Campion made a Big Deal out of the fact that she’d felt it was necessary to show the culmination of the love affair by showing Harvey Keitel and Holly Hunter naked in bed together. She said something like, “By the time they get to this point, the audience will be so involved with the characters that they’ll need to see this.”
Well, by the time they got to that point I was involved with the characters, true, but I didn’t need to see Harvey Keitel stand there naked to deliver his line, in order to feel the sexual tension in the story. And I didn’t need to see the very quick (in screen time) and almost cartoon-like pantomime of the beginning of a sex act. It just didn’t do anything for me; mostly I was embarassed for the actors, that Ms. Campion had managed to talk them into this. It didn’t add anything to the movie, is what I’m saying.
But I can think of other movies where having somebody naked did add to the story. The orgy scene in Scandal, and of course there’s The Crying Game to consider. Without the nudity, there’s no punch line.
[hijack]
Jarbaby, please tell me Quills doesn’t totally suck. First we had the big publicity storm, with the huge newspaper ads, “Academy Award Material!”, but then the Other Side started weighing in with their opinions, “…a pretentious and overwrought waste of time…” It’s highly unlikely that it’ll ever come to my local 12-plex. So shall I count the hours until it comes out on video? Or can I probably wait till it comes to the Two-Fer Rack at Family Video? I love Geoffrey Rush–I even liked him in House on Haunted Hill. :rolleyes: Now that’s a True Fan…
Duck, let me say this. I loved Quills. I love the Marquis De Sade. I’ve read a lot of his work and I find it fascinating. If people are going to see Quills to see some wacky S/M or perverted sex talk…it’s not the movie for them. If you’re going to see a well acted, excellently written movie about censorship and the philosophy of sadism, you’ll probably be in luck.
Let me know what you think. There are some in-jokes that if you’ve read Justine or Juliette, you’ll laugh.
Well, yes, it is just sex. But sex is a highly personal and intimate thing. In most modern sex-for-the-sake-of-showing-sex scenes I feel somewhat of a gooseberry - why am I being forced to witness this intimate act?
Of course I know it’s not real (although not to the extent that my gran used to tell my mum that they constructed a little wall between the actors!) and so it’s not really uncomfortable voyeurism. But enjoying a movie involves a certain suspension of disbelief to get to know the characters and feel that they are real. Far from encouraging this, watching the sex scene reminds me (for the sake of my own comfort) that the whole thing is just make-believe.
So much for sex to encourage realism!
Ack. At the end of the day I just feel uncomfortable when characters start to get hot and heavy in a film that I am enjoying, for no reason other than the director’s whim. And double this discomfort if I’m watching it with my parents.
I have no moral objection to nude scenes, whether they involve sex or not. Indeed there has been more than one film I saw in my younger days because some particular famous hottie got nekkid in it. Finally, I think the MPAA ratings, which demonize sex but allow violence, are ludicrous.
My question really is from an artistic POV, and Screwtape hit the nail on the head. It seems to me that many nude scenes are put in just to get more people like my teenage self into the theater, or because the director doesn’t have anything to say.
Sometimes nudity does work, and sometimes its necessary. Hell, the sex scene in Terminator was vital to the plot - Linda Hamilton needed to get preggers.
And hell, it can be distracting. Back to this week’s NYPD Blue. Rick Shroeder and Kim Delaney have woken up in bed together. It’s an important bit of character development for both characters. Kim gets up and walks to the shower, and the (hand-held) camera pans down briefly to get a shot of her ass. It was so obvious it was really annoying, and it distracted from the emotional content of the scene.
Well then, I agree with Duck Duck when I say that the real question here is are any nude SEX scenes ever not gratuitous…because we’ve clearly listed many nude scenes that have nothing sexual about them.
I ALSO agree with Duck Duck (that’s two for two!) that The Piano, which I liked overall, stupidly threw in Full Frontal Harvey which had no effect on my interpretation of the movie.
The best example I can think of is the Russian Film, Burnt By the Sun*, where the protagonist makes love to his wife for the last time. He knows he’s going to be executed soon, she doesn’t - to her it’s a sweet and unexpected marital romp, for him it’s trying to be with her one last time. The sweetness and intensity of it adds to the story, and after 5-6 years I’ve never forgotten it.
Maybe nudity works better in foreign films because the principals involved are all comfortable with it - they use nudity or sex to push the story along, to surprise us, sometimes to make us want to switch places with the characters, to get fucked like that, to be looked at like that, to feel what they are feeling. They are not so self-concious about sneaking something by the MPAA.
As for American Beauty, I don’t remember shocking nude footage, I remember very real and vulnerable and vivid characters. So whatever they did worked well there.
And sure NYPD likes to see itself as pushing the envelope, but I’ve never seen anything that made me uncomfortable or shocked me. Sua, how many times have you lived that scene they showed? The morning after hooking up with someone for the first time, shy and awkward about being naked in front of each other, and curious about how things are in the light of day? It didn’t need to be there, sure, but it wasn’t a shot of Diane running along a beach in a red bikini either.
Finally, Hitchcock directed some of the sexiest work out there, without showing anyone naked. Remember Vertigo, where it is glaringly obvious that Cary Grant and Eva St. Marie have had a “strangers having passionate sex on a train” experience? I agree that restraint and suggestion can be sexier than letting it all hang out while saxaphone music blares in the background or a closeup of Dennis Franz’s ass - but it depends on the film-makers.
We’re all born naked. We all spend some portion of our lives nude. We’ve all seen other people nude. Being unclothed, especially in our climate-controlled society, shouldn’t be a big deal. I don’t see why we should deliberately avoid scenes in film and television in the bathroom or in bed simply because the character might be nude.
(I’m remembering the hangover scene from Galaxyquest. Yes, seeing Tim Allen’s ass was funny, but there was no reason he should have been fully clothed in the scene.)
Sure, it’s gratuitous when it’s specifically for titilation. But since we don’t spend 100% of our lives clothed, I don’t see why 100% of our viewing should be skin-free.
Uh, kabbes buddy, you are watching them live out their lives together all over the film. Sex is a bit more intimate to be sure, but I’ve never thought nudity was gratuitous (well, except in Airplane!) in that sense…we really were looking in on a window of these people’s lives.
People have sex. We watch, in a movie, people’s lives. It doesn’t shock me to see people in these lives having sex because that’s what people do.
However, we never really watch them go to the bathroom. That’s gonna be the next big thing, haha! “Gritty Realism! This years must see!”
Ugh. I was just about to say that I’d rather see gratuitous sex than someone’s head blown off ala Pulp Fiction, but now I’ve got to throw someone peeing or pooping into the mix. sigh
