As far as the OP, I think it may have something to with a prohibition on displaying “frank arousal” - i.e. an erect penis. I suspect this is one criterion for distinguishing what may fall into the category of “pornography”. Women have no reliable, readily-apparent, external signal of arousal. An erect penis is a giveaway for men. If there is indeed a prohibition against erect penises, then one is faced with two options: don’t show a penis, or show a flaccid penis. In a scene of supposed passion, a flaccid penis wouldn’t do.
As has been said, the female nudity I’ve seen in mainstream movies is of the pubic hair/mons Venus variety, as opposed to the labia/vagina/open crotch variety.
Flaccid penises have made appearances in movies. Harvey Keitel’s way-too-purple member making an appearance in “The Piano” comes too readily to mind.
I agree, however, that there does seem to be a preponderance of female nudity over male nudity. Quite often, the female nudity does not seem particularly germane to the plot; in fact, it often seems a contrivance in order to instill some female nudity into the scene.
There seems to be a fairly complex set of “levels” of porn on cable. On HBO they only show movies with “brief nudity” (although the one episode of “Sex in the City” I saw had a plethora of realistic-looking dildos).
On Showtime and Cinemax they show “soft core” flicks which consist of several-minutes-long nudity/sex scenes scattered throughout the movie, but the sex is faked.
“The Spice Channel” on pay-per-view has virtually nonstop nudity and sex–and the sex is real–but they still take pains to hide the guys’ penises. You might call this “medium core”.
Finally (my girlfriend gets bootleg PPV and at 10pm they switch over to…) “The Hot Channel”, which shows everything and is thus “hard core”, but I think even they draw the line at showing ejaculations.
I’d be interested in seeing what the actual written guidelines are covering all this.
Does the Spice Channel really show non-simulated sex? I have it available on my PPV but my wife says it’s just the same old stuff you see on late night Cinemax (she’s not trying to deceive me either, we have real porn on tape).
