(Please Note: I’m focusing on American cinema in this piece.)
Nudity in film is not a new phenomenon. The earliest known American film to contain nudity was “Inspiration” released in 1915 in which a model poses nude for an artist. But just like today, the presence of nudity in films of the silent era was controversial and subject to scrutiny by social and religious groups. In 1930, the Motion Picture Association of America enacted the Motion Picture Production Code, also know as the Hays code, which regulated the content of motion pictures. Nudity was outright banned.
When the MPAA introduced the rating system in 1968, filmmakers jumped at the chance to include the content that had been outlawed for nearly 40 years. The first known film release under the new system to contain a nude scene was “Romeo and Juliet” in 1968 in which, on the morning after their secret wedding vows, the star crossed lovers awake, Romeo goes to the window treating the audience with a glimpse of his bare buttocks and says something to effect of “oh no” and Juliet gets up quickly, allowing a flash of her bare breasts.
Even though nudity was now legally permitted in mainstream American film, filmmakers still had to be careful with the content of the scenes as to avoid an X rating (now NC-17,) because most theaters still refused to run movies carrying this rating. Nevertheless, movies began coming out more and more with nude scenes involving both sexual and non-sexual subject matter.
Now, when I first started watching movies back in the early 80's, a movie could get away with a brief, non-sexual nude scene or two and still avoid an R rating, which (among other reasons) eventually lead the MPAA creating the PG-13. But as I grew older, the MPAA grew tighter and tighter on what they would allow in a PG-13 film to the point that now even the slightest sign of a butt crack will earn the movie an R rating. Nowadays, PG-13 movies resemble the PG movies that James and I watched when we were kids. But, every year, there are a good number of movies that are released every year with varying amounts of nudity and other “controversial content.”
So what do I think of nudity in film? It’s hard to say. When reviewing a movie I don’t tend to rate it’s quality on how much or little nudity can be found, I.e. I’m not going to say a movie is good just because there is naked people in it, nor am I going to say a movie is bad just because of it’s nude content.
It boils down to the tone of the movie itself for me. Should there be nudity in this movie or not? I very rarely say, “why was there no nudity in that flick?” The one example I use as the exception is “Scream”, which could have used some gratuitous nudity to further satirize the slasher genre. Some of my favorite movies contain no nudity at all, while several of my highest picks contain lots of it.
So I guess my stance is that I’m for it, because I’ve never seen a movie that contains nude scenes and said to myself, “there should not have been nudity in that movie.” Now, I’m not saying that every movie should have some, but I do not think that the image of a nude body should incite such feeling of shock and disgust as it seems to in our “friends” in the MPAA, who would have probably rated “Porky’s” NC-17 if reviewed today.
I think the ratings board could lighten up a little bit on the subject, but there is a time and a place fore everything. I’m also a big fan of the philosophy, “if you don’t like it, turn it off.” So I guess I could say I’m all for nudity in film as long as it belongs there.
*Thank you to Wikipedia.org and IMDB.com
Some of my favorite American movies that contain nude scenes:
Conan the Barbarian - The original, not the remake.
Bram Stoker’s Dracula - The darkly erotic tone of the movie called for it.
Animal House - College antics sometimes involve the absence of clothing.
Halloween - Both versions.
Caddyshack - “Madonna with meatballs.”
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