[TV orNotTV] Tits and Breasts on HBO
PGage
http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-hbo-breasts-20110703,0,6762922.story
This is an articulate expression of growing sentiment I have seen expressed in recent months, both online and in face to face conversations, mostly since Game of Thrones. I am surprised that there is a lot in it that I agree with (surprised because, like Kramer in that Seinfeld episode with the naked woman traipsing around in the apartment across the street, few heterosexual American men can really bring themselves to call for less female nudity on their television sets).
Still, there was much I did not agree with. I don't agree that upper body female frontal nudity is always, or even mostly, gratuitous and exploitative (that she calls "tits", as opposed to the artistic depiction of boobs, as in the final scene of the season-ending episode of Thrones, which McNamara, with some justification, calls the "the best use of female nudity on television ever") on HBO. I am currently re-watching the complete series of The Sopranos, and have been confirmed in my judgement that the mostly plastic "tits" at the Bing are almost always an essential marker of the underlying limited humanity of Tony and his boys, and almost never really used for erotic titillation. The nudity in the various sex scenes most of the time come closer to McNamara's breasts than tits (in a variation of what Paul Newman once famously said about the "The Player" - they are the kinds of scenes where we usually don't see the tits of the women we want to see, but mostly the tits of the women we don't want). Ditto the use of boobs in Deadwood. I thought Rome was a bit titty excessive (I only saw the first season of that), but unlike McNamara, I think their use in Boardwalk Empire was mostly justified. I have not seen the HBO vampire show, I hear there are a lot of tits in that.
But Thrones does seem to have set a new level for gratuitous tit shots. There were a couple of much discussed scenes where the boobs seemed to be thrown in merely to keep the audience from flipping during extended periods of plot exposition by one of the main characters. Again, unlike Ms. McNamara I am not automatically offended by the use of naked female breasts - I have found it possible to appreciate the beauty of the female form (okay, lust after hot babes) while also respecting women for their intelligence, humor and abilities. But a few years after my age stopped ending in the word "teen" I stopped being interested primarily in the sight of strange female breasts (though a certain interest remains), like most (well, many) grown men who have seen a few real breasts of real women. The use of tits on Thrones had the effect on me of undermining what in most other respects was a successful attempt to tell a fantasy saga that grown-ups could enjoy. But those long titty scenes threatened to reduce the show to the the its genre spawn in the sweaty daydreams of 15 year old boy virgins.
Unlike McNamara, whose article had the pungent aroma of hyper-feminist puritanism, I would like to see Thrones, and maybe HBO in general, give more thought to its use of nudity and sexuality, not to focus on de-sexualized depictions of breasts as in the dragon mother scene, but a more mature, and effective inclusion of sexuality and eroticism in its dramas.
David Lynch
totally sure that I buy the implicit part of the argument that it's
somehow worse for female characters. I'd argue that 100% of the
below-the-belt male nudity that I can recall from Game of Thrones was
extraneous to the plot in the sense that it could have been done with
some cover or by framing from the waist up without losing anything.
The same applies to the vast majority of the female nudity that I can
recall, but not necessarily all of it (e.g., Danerys' last scene and
Cat's sister breastfeeding.)
Also, if she gets to use The Sopranos as an example, I get to counter
with Oz, which had recappers tittering about "gratuitous dong shot(s)"
while the (very few) female characters pretty much kept their clothes
on.
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Jason Carpio
not watch it.
Sent from my Windows Phone From: David Lynch
Sent: Friday, July 01, 2011 9:57 PM
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Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] Tits and Breasts on HBO
PGa...@gmail.com
> If you find the content offensive or gratuitous there is the option to not watch it.
Jason Carpio
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Adam Bowie
I must admit that I mentioned i that there were perhaps one or two too many gratuitous nude scenes in the series. Now I've not read the books (although I plan to), and I certainly don't find nudity offensive per se. But like just about everything else, it needs context. I thought that the McNamara piece fairly well hit the nail on the head.
Ironically, I wonder if channels like HBO and Showtime feel they have to sprinkle lots of nudity into their shows as a reaction to the generally prudish nature of network television as a result of the FCC's rules? It's now quite noticeable that there will be nudity in the first episode of just about any series that comes from these networks, to point out to viewers the difference. Sprinkle some "ripe" language and some in your face nudity, and we know for certain that we're watching an HBO/Showtime/Starz show.
There's an interesting comparison to be made with British programming, where broadly speaking, you can show just about anything as long it's after the 9pm "watershed" and you give some advance warning. As a result there tends to be less gratuitous nudity, but nudity, violence or strong language will have much more context and relevance to the story.
Adam
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Tom Wolper
>
> Ironically, I wonder if channels like HBO and Showtime feel they have to
> sprinkle lots of nudity into their shows as a reaction to the generally
> prudish nature of network television as a result of the FCC's rules? It's
> now quite noticeable that there will be nudity in the first episode of just
> about any series that comes from these networks, to point out to viewers the
> difference. Sprinkle some "ripe" language and some in your face nudity, and
> we know for certain that we're watching an HBO/Showtime/Starz show.
The only one of these series I watched was the first season of Rome
and 90% of the nudity and explicit violence was in the first episode.
I think part of it is to relay to the viewer "We're not in kiddie-land
any more" and part of it is to juice DVD and overseas sales.
>
> There's an interesting comparison to be made with British programming, where
> broadly speaking, you can show just about anything as long it's after the
> 9pm "watershed" and you give some advance warning. As a result there tends
> to be less gratuitous nudity, but nudity, violence or strong language will
> have much more context and relevance to the story.
I was too young to experience it, but I recollect the period in
Hollywood of the end of the Production Code and the introduction of
nudity in American movies. At first it was a thing of great
significance and a sign of a director being with the times or of an
actress being a rebel. I think it also became a word-of-mouth way to
sell a movie (Did you see Jane Fonda in Barbarella? You can see
everything!) In fact, it might also be a way to build buzz around the
HBO/Showtime series. And it became a regular part of actress
interviews to ask if she would ever do a nude scene. Over time, a
chance to see an actress naked seems to have stopped selling movies
and I'm sure HBO and Showtime will eventually follow.
Nudity is a powerful visual symbol of vulnerability or a transition to
a state of intimacy. So it has real use in movies. But McNamara has a
point that there's a difference between using nudity as a symbol for a
character's mental state and using nudity as set decoration.
PGage
On Sun, Jul 3, 2011 at 7:59 AM, Adam Bowie <adam....@gmail.com> wrote:The only one of these series I watched was the first season of Rome
>
> Ironically, I wonder if channels like HBO and Showtime feel they have to
> sprinkle lots of nudity into their shows as a reaction to the generally
> prudish nature of network television as a result of the FCC's rules? It's
> now quite noticeable that there will be nudity in the first episode of just
> about any series that comes from these networks, to point out to viewers the
> difference. Sprinkle some "ripe" language and some in your face nudity, and
> we know for certain that we're watching an HBO/Showtime/Starz show.
and 90% of the nudity and explicit violence was in the first episode.
I think part of it is to relay to the viewer "We're not in kiddie-land
any more" and part of it is to juice DVD and overseas sales.
I would not place Stargate in the upper levels of quality cable programming addressed in this thread, but on its own terms, I think it would have been a lesser show if it had given itself the full "Game of Thrones" treatment (one of the things I like about the show is the way they treat the Carter character, which I think would have been ruined if we got a load of her rack every third or fourth episode; the main alternative source of female nudity would have been to turn the show into the alien stripper/slut of the week, which would not have been good either). I have more problems with the US military propaganda aspects of this show, but that is a different thread.
Again, I am not going to endorse the general "fewer breasts please" request of McNamara, but I do think HBO should remind itself that less is more. We can always flip over a few channels to Cinemax if we just want to see naked breasts.
Kevin M.
Showtime asked for the nudity, and that they did not include any in
the rest of the episodes of the series (I believe six seasons ran on
Showtime before the switch to SciFi). Richard Dean Anderson still
contends the series was meant to be something the family could sit and
watch, though maybe not as tame as his earlier series. A few times,
either the network or the studio would ask for a hot female lead or a
recurring sexy woman, hence the Hathor episode and a few others
(Vanessa Angel was a guest star a few times wearing skin tight silver
outfit).
On Sunday, July 3, 2011, PGage <pga...@gmail.com> wrote:
After staying away from it all these years for a number of reasons, I
have been plowing through SG-1 the last month. I had seen the original
film, but really knew very little about the series. I did remember
that it was shown years ago on the local Fox affiliate, so I was
really shocked when, pretty much without warning about half way
through the pilot episode there were a few scenes of female upper body
nudity. That really was a banner announcing that somehow, I was not
watching a typical broadcast show, and sparked a little surfing on my
part (only a little, as I am trying to avoid spoilers) and found that
it was originally on Showtime (with episodes later syndicated on Fox)
before moving to SciFi. I don't know if it was because of the Fox
deal, but so far no more nudity as popped up at all (I am at the
beginning of season 5, so I guess I am going to get to the Sci Fi
switchover pretty soon, after which I suspect nudity will not be
possible). In this case, I think the restraint has helped the show (I
would be interested to see if the original producers had argued for
more nudity and were denied).
>
> I would not place Stargate in the upper levels of quality cable
programming addressed in this thread, but on its own terms, I think it
would have been a lesser show if it had given itself the full
"Game of Thrones" treatment (one of the things I like about
the show is the way they treat the Carter character, which I think
would have been ruined if we got a load of her rack every third or
fourth episode; the main alternative source of female nudity would
have been to turn the show into the alien stripper/slut of the week,
which would not have been good either). I have more problems with the
US military propaganda aspects of this show, but that is a different
thread.
>
> Again, I am not going to endorse the general "fewer breasts
please" request of McNamara, but I do think HBO should remind
itself that less is more. We can always flip over a few channels to
Cinemax if we just want to see naked breasts.
--
Kevin M. (RPCV)