I have a question about current American TV standards & practices. An odd little itch of a question that’s been smoldering in a corner of my brain.
That is…can you show a woman completely topless, if she’s had a double mastectomy? Not just on PBS or 60 Minutes or whatever…I mean in a drama. In a “love scene,” even.
And if you couldn’t do it on a broadcast network like ABC—the FCC has been a bit of a pill, lately—what about basic cable networks?
It’d actually surprise me more if there hasn’t been some precedent set for this particular situation, one way or another. Can anyone fill me in?
I suppose it’d depend on the interpretation of the FCC’s rules. If they say that no breasts may be shown, then maybe the double-masectomy sex scene would make it to the final cut. If they say no topless women are to be shown, then I’d say probably not. I can’t see the FCC being very cooperative even if, technically, it’s OK by their rules.
Does the FCC have a clearly defined set of rules that are accessible to the teeming millions?
Now I will sit and wait for some other Doper to trounce my mere speculation with cold, hard facts or a previous instance of the exact scene you describe.
Didn’t Nip/Tuck show a double mastectomy patient in its first season? I can’t remember the woman’s name now - she was the one who played opposite Michael J Fox in Doc Hollywood. I seem to have a pretty clear memory of them having showed her with her gown open as one of the doctors examined her and a clear shot of her chest.
Yeah, you just beat me while I was typing up my response.
A woman on Nip/Tuck had a double-mastectomy (she didn’t really, it was all make-up effects) and they showed her full chest in a big close-up, scars and all. She did have love scenes in the show, but I don’t recall if or how much they showed of her chest in those scenes. Even after she got the implants.
An episode of Chicago Hope featured a teenaged girl who had a double mastectomy, then reconstructive surgery. They had a full shot of her reconstructed chest, which amounted to a topless teenaged girl in a medical context rather than a sexual one. They used to get away with a lot on that show, and I remember being surprised that there wasn’t any sort of ruckus about it. Maybe nobody was watching.
But as for the OP, I’m not sure what the networks would be willing to do at this point in time, when the FCC is handing out fines right and left. If they showed it after 10PM Eastern, they might get away with it.
Do you remember when this was? ER used to show breasts during defribillation, then they started blurring them out, now they just cut away. The FCC has gotten a lot stricter in the last few years.
It would have been sometime between 1994 and 1996 or '97. I only watched the first season or two of Chicago Hope, but it’s possible I caught a later episode at random.
I don’t remember seeing defibrillation-related nudity on ER, but I quit watching in 1999 or so. (I can’t believe it’s still on the air.) I do remember seeing topless Rebecca deMornay on the show around that time. She was playing a breast cancer patient (I think) who had a brief affair with Carter, and they had a sex scene where she was on top and you could see quite a bit. It was only slightly more than a silhouette, but I remember being surprised by the raciness at the time.
Part of it must have to do with the nipples, too. I know it’s cable, but Doctor 90210 always shows everything but the nipple (and as someone mentioned in a past thread, when it was gender reassignment surgery they showed the “before” nipple no problem, but blurred it after the implant was in!) so if the mastectomy takes the nipple it may be OK. I remember the NYTimes Magazine cover of a double mastectomy patient and they showed her whole chest, which had no nipples.
None of which adds anything to a discussion about network TV. :mad:
They had a scene shortly before the Superbowl crisis where they were treating an older woman and they cut open her shirt to shock her. It was kind of startling after you realized but so natural that you didn’t think too much about it.
I did a little research and the Chicago Hope episode aired February 6, 1995, in the middle of the show’s first season. And while the character was portrayed as being quite young (college-age at most), the actress playing her was about 29 at the time.
I seem to remember a bare breast on St. Elsewhere. If I’m not mistaken, there was a class on self breast exams, and the video being shown to the class showed a close up of a breast.
Of course, that was the “good old days”, when each network’s standards and practices department was mostly allowed to decide what was appropriate and acceptable in a given circumstance.
