Gratuitous Nudity in Film

[Anonymous]

Do you think we’ll ever get to a place where this becomes unpopular? Are the days of Showgirl behind us (hopefully)?

I don’t think Julia Roberts or Meryl Streep have done nude scenes in their careers. Anyone else? I know that Penn Badgely has been vocal about his request to minimize nudity on his show.

I think we need more male actors to speak up. I’m not against nudity but there are too many films with unnecessary nude scenes. Seems like a lot of pressure for an actress and a clear power imbalance.

[Anonymous]

What films or tv are guilty of this currently?

It’s gotten a lot better since the 90s.

[Anonymous]

I actually don’t see a lot of nudity anymore in film. It used to be much more common…91/2 weeks etc.

[Anonymous]

I like to see hot nude chicks on film. What’s the problem?

[Anonymous]

OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

Yeah it was gratuitous in the 80s and 90s, and then there was pushback from evangelicals/parent groups, which put pressure on Hollywood. The rating system changed and now a movie would have to be NC-17 if it has certain levels of nudity, which hurts box office attendance. So needless to say, film makers avoid a lot of nudity now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

You: "Do you think we'll ever get to a point where there is less nudity in film?
Also you: "I'm watching movies from 25 years ago."

I think that film audiences used to be titillated by nudity a lot more than they are now. It's not socially taboo now to have nudity as much as it was in the 1900s (as my teenager calls them). Honestly, my issue is less about the nudity and more about the extent to which violence against women is a plot point for a lot of media. This has always been true, but there was definitely a time when it was sanitized in mainstream movies. Then you have TV like Game of Thrones and its sh*tty sequel series that the theme of which is basically "violence against women." That some of those women were also naked was a lot less upsetting than literally every other aspect of the scenes.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

Yeah that was a quarter of a century ago, OP! There's way less nudity now than there was then. That's part of why JLaw's nude scene in No Hard Feelings was so surprising and so funny - it was a real throwback moment.

I think movies overall are a lot more prudish than they were when I was growing up (I'm gen x). For good and bad! We don't really have s** comedies anymore - or erotic thrillers. Some were really good!

I think TV has taken longer to get squeamish about nudity. HBO especially. Like until recently - or maybe still! - HBO has thrown in a lot of T&A where you could see not throwing in that T&A and still essentially having the same story and character development. But even there I don't think there is as much nudity on TV as there used to be.

[Anonymous]

Can you imagine a movie like Airplane getting made today? Random, pointless nudity in a PG movie?

[Anonymous]

OP here. You raise a good point re: violence. I’m always fascinated by actors who profit from gun violence in movies, like Keanu Reeves, for example. He seems so pacifist but he’s making money from movies with gun violence.

I guess the comics/Marvel movies have a different kind of action? I wonder if that’s why they are more popular lately.

[Anonymous]

You ARE seeing less in recent movies and television shows, OP; it's not in your imagination that there's less nudity and less sex.

The younger generation (13-24 in this study) wants to see LESS sex in TV and film. Interesting study here:
https://www.npr.org/2023/10/25/1208435267/sex-teens-tv-movies
This got covered fairly broadly, not just by NPR, so if you don't like NPR, this study (done by UCLA) was covered elsewhere too. (I know, nudity is not equivalent to sex, but the study talked about sex.)

If young adults up to 24 (in the study) want to see less sex, I'd wager that the same is probably true among older 20-somethings. I agree, OP, that the 80s-90s TV shows -- network and especially cable--had lots more skin showing than we'd see now in many shows, except certain streaming shows designed to be extremely sexual. And some recent streaming series that were promoted on the fact they were sexually explicit ended up flopping big-time. For instance, "The Idol" and "Obsession" were both promoted hard as series with plently of explicit sex and both got trashed by critics, in part for what sounded like the overuse of explicit sex and what many felt to be disturbingly violent sex. Basing plots around sex and showing it explicitly doesn't seem to be sitting well with viewers or critics, I think.

It's worth noting that what teens and young adults wanted to see instead of sex and nudity is

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:OP here. I’ve been watching late 90’s movies lately and it was nearly every film. I was thinking it’s maybe shifted recently. Wanted to see if others get that sense as well. I’m sure it still happens from time to time.

You: "Do you think we'll ever get to a point where there is less nudity in film?
Also you: "I'm watching movies from 25 years ago."

I think that film audiences used to be titillated by nudity a lot more than they are now. It's not socially taboo now to have nudity as much as it was in the 1900s (as my teenager calls them). Honestly, my issue is less about the nudity and more about the extent to which violence against women is a plot point for a lot of media. This has always been true, but there was definitely a time when it was sanitized in mainstream movies. Then you have TV like Game of Thrones and its sh*tty sequel series that the theme of which is basically "violence against women." That some of those women were also naked was a lot less upsetting than literally every other aspect of the scenes.

Ha! +1

Definitely much less prevalent than in 80s and 90s
There used to just be random scenes of gratuitous nudity (mostly bare boobs) for no reason whatsoever (e.g., sixteen candles, airplane)—just to get an R rating

[Anonymous]

Yeah there needs to be more not less

[Anonymous]

For some time, it seems like there’s also a lot of gratuitous lesbian sex scenes. I have nothing against lesbians or sex scenes, but, by watching movies and tv, you’d think all women are having hot sex with one another. You never see that with gay men.

[Anonymous]

I don't know about less nudity or less sex. Recently I watched Oppenheimer with its entirely gratuitous sex scenes, Designated Survivor with its entirely gratuitous gay sex scene, and The Diplomat with its entirely gratuitous nudity.

If I wanted nudity and sex scenes, I would pick the genre dedicated to that. I'm not actually interested in seeing that stuff in more intellectual offerings. It kills the vibe, for me, and it means I can't show interesting plot lines to my kids, who have the bandwidth to appreciate such movies or shows, but aren't old enough to watch sexual content. It's annoying.