Is nudity essential in film?

In the very underrated Bowfinger, a biting satire on the heartless commercialism and pretentious ways of Hollywood, the auteur of his ‘opus’ requests his conniving bimbette of a leading lady if she would be willing to shed portions of her attire during a love scene

The ladies replies with instant aplomb “Well, if I have to. If it's for the movie and you really, really want me to and if it's not just about nudity; but, if it's artistic and if it says something about reality and if it's in character and if it's for the scene and if it's not just a body that...”

The auteur nods feverishly and asserts his affirmation before any more syllables are uttered and the matter is resolved summarily.

It is a testament to the genius of Steve Martin, writer of Bowfinger, to encapsulate the entire gamut of justifications offered by every actress, writer, director, and others associated with a film that contains nudity.

When you dig deeper through all the prattle, the only reason for nudity on film is to titillate the audience and to make a film more commercially viable. This applies to every filmmaker from Ingmar Bergman to the sleaziest filmmaker of Z grade films.

For the auteur or producer, who often conflates himself as the god of his film, it is perhaps a matter of ego that he can get his attractive leading lady to go au natural. A scene is written where she is involved in a heated argument with her character’s husband, only he manages to convince her that doing it naked would add to the realism and so she complies because her director has several masterful and highly acclaimed films to his credit.

It makes her feel utterly vulnerable and embarrassed as she shoots scenes or myriad other awkward scenes. Perhaps the filmmaker secretly titillated himself by the entire experience. He can make an adult strip naked under the garb of making a film, in any other social situation can this be achieved. 

But unless you are making pornographic films, nudity is absolutely gratuitous no matter what the film. Think of any film that contained nudity and substitute it with the level of implied nudity usually shown in Bond films i.e. sex scenes under the sheets and nudity is implied by bare shoulders and legs above the knee. But everyone watching gets the point.

For a filmmaker or actor, the goal is to sustain your audience’s attention on the characters, the plot, and the dialogue. But the moment a nude body appears on screen all other thoughts cease to exist.

This applies to every man on earth, even the most evolved of men who live in Europe, from whom nudity on film and probably in real life is more frequent than inhabitants of other continents.

You abandon the thought that it is Kate Winslet’s character that is disrobing, instead, it is Kate Winslet. You soon begin to inspect the various anatomical attributes of her body. Perhaps you are passing comments to the friend sitting next to you.

I suppose it is the same for female audiences watching a man disrobe.

If it is a serious film about human suffering, the sight of a pretty body changes your mood and when it is all done, it probably takes a while for you to get back to normal by which time the film had progressed and you may have missed certain subtleties and nuances

Basic Instinct was a cracker of a suspense thriller but it was the nudity that received all the attention. Sharon Stone’s performance in the film should have earned her at least an Oscar nomination, instead the moment of uncrossing and crossing her legs is all that it is known for. Conversely, if the film didn’t contain the amount of nudity that it had, it would not have received the attention it did, I probably wouldn’t have remembered it enough to write about it.

The advent of porn sites such as Mr. Skin means that these clips are extracted and are uploaded to the sites. The ‘context’ is lost and the clip is reduced to pornography. Film actresses who agreed to disrobe for artistic reasons are now the equivalent of porn stars. Not that there is anything wrong with porn stars, but for they know that nudity is the only reason they are, extract clips, do whatever you want, nothing changes. But for the actress it is totally different it is presumed that their endeavor has much more gravitas than just flaunting skin. It has to be remembered that Hollywood film studios sell these clips to Mr. Skin.

To conclude, I am an absolutist in the matters of freedom of expression, a filmmaker has the right to depict whatever they desire on celluloid. The goal isn’t to morally judge the inclusion of nudity in a film. It is to judge the impact it has in any film and a tool to carry the story forward.

The sight of a beautiful, shapely female body shot aesthetically is the most desirous site that can be in a film. To be honest I would want films to contain copious nudity.

But if I was a filmmaker I would not want to include anything on screen that distracts my audience from the plot, the character, the dialogues, the background score, the cinematography.