Sigh. I really miss Jimmy Smits/Bobby Simone. 
You say gratuitous like it’s a bad thing!
Seriously, a lot depends on the movie. Recently saw a Kate Winslett/Harvey Keitel movie ([something or other] Smoke?) and the nudity was no more disturbing than any other number of things in the flick. Or maybe Sirens, where the whole point was to emphasize the distinction between the uptight preacher and wife, and the environment they found themselves in.
OTOH, just the other day watched Footloose with the family. There is some language in it, but overall a rather wholesome, harmless, inconsequential movie (other than the fact of, ws that really Sarah Jessica Parker?!) No nudity, nothing more than kissing shown or even really hinted, other that the one girl telling her dad (an incredibly young John Lithgow) she is not a virgin. Quite near the end, there is a shot in the guys’ showers. Has a full rear shot of this one guy, who subsequently turns around, and tho the shot is not full frontal, it definitely includes considerable pubes. And I just had to think, why the fuck was that necessary? What the hell did that add?
Hey I love gratuitous nudity. Whenever they put on those movies on Showtime or HBO that have the warning: Brief Nudity, I cheer and am much more likely to watch. 
My fiancee thinks I’m a little weird though.
PeeQueue
That’s just it, he was the last. The red bull got them all. Or at least should have. I mean, talk about gratuitous violence.
Lacking an absolute definition, I’ll define gratuitous as anything unneccessary to the plot. Basically, then, it’s an editing decision. Is all this violence so necessary? Is the foul language necessary? Are those breasts and that ass necessary? Is Keanu Reeves necessary?
In most cases, the answer is no. But where does that leave us? If you were to take a good look at your favorite movie, could you honestly say that every single scene needed to be in there? Were they all absolutely essential to the plot? Probably not. That makes them gratuitous. Does that make the decision to keep them in there bad? No.
What we’re ignoring is the basic premise that in many good movies it’s not a matter of just getting to the ending, but how you get to the ending.
People don’t read books because they want to finish the book. They read the book to travel to the world of the characters within it. Learning about how the trees looked like crimson fire on fresh autumn morning has nothing to do with whether the princess is going to get rescued. It’s gratuitous description.
But, in a way, it’s necessary as well. We become involved in their world even more because we imagine it. We see it.
Sooo…nudity a lot of the time might, in fact be gratuitous in the grand scheme of things. But if it makes the world more real to the viewer, it is, in its own small way, still necessary.
WELL???!?!?! DID SHE???
You know, now that I think of it. There WAS gratuitous nudity in The Last Unicorn! When she turned human, she was there naked…RIGHT IN FRONT OF ALAN ARKIN FOR GOD’S SAKE. Only strategically placed silver hair kept her decent.
Unicorn…for shame.
jarbaby
I think there are many movies with non-gratuitous sex scenes, although I’m not sure that there are many with nude scenes that are essential. It is possible to convey the idea that the character is nude without actually showing the audience everything. To mention Hitchcock again, Janet Leigh was not shown nude in the shower scene in “Psycho”, but it was clear that her character was nude. So clear in fact that many people later “remembered” seeing her nude! Of course, there aren’t a lot of people working in Hollywood today who are as good as Hitchcock, and for many it must be easier to simply show (rather than suggest) a nude body.
I think that there has actually be a sharp decrease in gratuitious nude seens in the last decade or so. In the eighties, it was my impression that he producers were aiming at “R’ ratings because “PG-13” had an adoloecent air to it and because their wasn’t a theatre in the contry that actually carded teenagers–the “R” didn’t even have a chance of costing you money. There are a lot of movies from the eithies (The only example I csn think of right now is Witness, but I know there are others) that have this odd quick tit shot that I think was there to ensure the “R”. These days the 'PG-13” is prefered both because it carries no stigma and because there is at trend toward giving more lip-service to family values and such; Hollywood seems a bit more shy aboutt blatantly marketing R rated movies to teens.
The “minute excercise”? :eek:
**gra·tu·i·tous: Unnecessary or unwarranted; unjustified **
So then, the nude scenes in all porn movies are not gratuitous. Hell, they’re downright essential 
Oh wait, you also asked if nude scenes were ever neccessary to advance the plot. OK. But what if a plot isn’t neccessary to advance the “action” in a movie?
Of course, you could also make the argument that porn movies are gratuitous in and of themselves.
I’ll say that according to some statistics I recently made up, over 95% of all nudity in movies and on tv is unnecessary, does not advance the plot, is present only to titilate, and is, by that definition, gratuitous. It is infantile, often, and appeals to the adolescent in us, which I resent. Often, it is an easy way to give “interest” to a piece or segment which is inherently weak. I really love porn, by the way, but that’s more honest. It’s a movie, made for people who want to see sex and that’s pretty much what it is. On the other hand, I HATE seeing nudity and sex in a movie in which it’s really not necessary. It’s manipulative (although I refuse to be manipulated by it) and dishonest. Anyone who says other is itching for a fight.
Actually, Magdalene, I think the movie you’re referring to is North by Northwest. Jimmy Stewart and Kim Novak starred in Vertigo, still the most powerful movie about sexual obsession I know of and doesn’t contain a hint of nudity.
Cheers,
Hodge
Damn. Left my sig off that last post. And it fits so nicely with the topic too.
AAAAAARRRGGGGHH!
Ok. I think I have it now. When I preview, it unchecks the show signature box.
You are so right, Hodge! :o Thanks for clearing it up.
Sex between characters in non-porno films is symbolic of the relationship between the two people, its not shown just for a thrill of showing people having sex or being naked.
Some acting coash in Hollywood once explained this to me in a better way, though.
As many women have told me, its the cuddling afterwards that’s symbolic of the relationship.
Sua
Sometimes nudity will not serve the purpose, especially when the desired effect is comedic interest. For example, I recall an Inspector Cleuseau flick (I think it was “A Shot in the Dark”) where the inspector “infiltrated” a nudist colony. The resulting scene(s) were hilarious, as the director (Blake Edwards) used “coincidental” prop placement and clever camera angles to ensure the audience understood everyone was nude, yet frustrated every attempt to get a glimpse of forbidden regions. Of course, you could do such a scene nowadays, but most people would just wonder why they were going to such pains to spare the audience the sight of naked people (and a tip o’ the hat to the Ausin Powers films – they did exhibit creative near-nudity at its comic best).
~~Baloo
If you watch Casablanca, a couple walks over the top of a mountain & comes back & smoke cigarettes. This is how they had sex in earlier films. I don’t know if they cuddled when they smoked though.
To quote Andros, “They did–and no one cared.”
A brief history. http://www.mbcnet.org/ETV/N/htmlN/nypdblue/nypdblue.htm
But hey, that doesn’t stop Rev. Wildmon and the American Family Association from trying.
http://simr02.si.ehu.es/FileRoom/documents/Cases/396nypd.html
I was there, back in '93. People in my church organized to boycott this show. No, I did not participate. My response was to deliberately sit down and watch the thing (I even taped it, just in case somebody came to church on Sunday morning and tried to claim they’d showed something they hadn’t, or in case anybody wanted to see what they’d missed), and you know what? The sky did not fall. No demons burst out of the tee-vee and dragged me down to Hell. I saw a cop show with some bad language and a tiny bit of nudity, that’s all.
More importantly, and more relevant to the OP, I saw a TV producer pushing the edge of the broadcast standards envelope, not because he had an artistic statement to make, but because he saw it as a good, easy, cheap, fast way to get some publicity and pump up his career. The English language has a name for what’s cheap, easy, and fast–we call it a “whore”. I saw Steven Bochco whoring on network TV. To me, that was worth boycotting, not the occasional nudity.
[p.s. to Jarbaby: thanks for the review. I haven’t read any of the books–how could I, down here in the Rust Belt? My public library doesn’t even have a copy of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. And I can’t figure out how to order them from amazon.com and explain the VISA charge to the Better Half. “You ordered what?” I’ll wait till it comes out on video, I guess. It might attract too much attention, if I drove all the way to Chicago to see it. “Mommy won’t be home after school today, she has to drive to Chi-town to see a movie about a naked sodomizer…”]
Handy: They were having sex? :eek:
Nude scene–not gratuitous. It was there to explain the sketch at the beginning of the movie, and no sex occurred at the time. The actual sex scene between Jack & Rose had no nudity. I appreciated that (as much as I could appreciate the love story that took up half that film).
Nudity of network TV, though, is unnecessary. Save it for cable!