nudity

The Game of Thrones and Sex-Positive vs. Non-Sex-Positive Depictions of Sex and Nudity in Contemporary Culture

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2012-04-12 04:56

Image from Sodahead.com. Cached as a bandwidth-conserving courtesy
Image shared from Sodahead.com

Summary: This post uses a quote from a review of the HBO series The Game of Thrones to distinguish a major divide between sex-positive and non-sex-positive presentations of nudity and sexuality in media.

Stokes, of Overthinking It, nicely overthinks the use of gratuitous nudity in HBO's The Game of Thrones. The piece overall is about the thematically different ways sex is used in the books vs. the HBO series, but as one would expect from a blog called Overthinking It, Stokes points out the thematic similarities between the gendered manipulation of sex in the HBO series and the equally-gendered manipulation of sex by HBO itself.

But when you start thinking about what’s actually going on in that scene, it gets weirder and weirder.  The girl desperately wants to escape her current life of drudgery, and she sees performing sexual acts on Theon as the easiest way to make that happen.  She likes him, a lot, and is overawed by him, but she essentially views the sex as a contract:  she’ll do X, Y, and Z, and in return, not only will she get good treatment from him in the short term, she’ll escape to a more pleasant job in the long term. It’s made more explicit in the book that her goals are modest. She doesn’t expect him to marry her.  She’d be quite content with a job in his kitchen at Pyke. Theon, for his part, knows what she wants, and doesn’t plan to give it to her. Nevertheless, he continues to have sex with her, and to let her think that something will come of it.  It’s our first real look at the character’s dark side:  he still seems to want to do the right thing for his friends (at this point), but he’s incredibly callous towards anyone who falls outside of that circle. He takes what the girl offers, and then casts her aside.

Now put yourself in the shoes of an actress who goes in to read for a part in a high-profile HBO series. She knows that it’s a one-episode gig, but careers have begun with less. It’s a speaking part! She gets a whole scene! Clearly, this is a stepping stone to bigger and better things.  And so what if nudity is required?

Source: Overthinking It

This is probably a parallel HBO in particular but the industry of pop culture in general would probably rather not have drawn for them.

 

Let's put it this way, because I think it provides a nice distinction for folks who don't really get the sex-positive approach to porn: a sex-positive person is likely to say that gratuitous depictions of nudity and/or sexuality, i.e. nudity or sexuality intended "only" to arouse or enhance arousal is fine because to the extent it "uses" sexuality it does so to further sexuality! On the other hand non-gratuitous nudity and/or sexuality as employed by HBO in The Game of Thrones is employed not to forward viewers' sexual enjoyment but (superficially) to signal dramatic intensity and (more deeply) to distract viewers from plot and character-development corner-cutting.

The former (calculatedly enhancing sexual arousal for people who's intention is to be sexually aroused) a use of sexuality, the latter (calculatedly deploying sexual signifiers for their non-sexual utility) is an abuse of sexuality.

Or even more fundamentally, depending on other factors including consent and working conditions "gratuitous" sexuality in porn may or may not be sex-positive, but regardless of factors such as consent and working conditions the overt sexuality employed in the HBO series is inevitably sex negative.


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Why You Shouldn't Click "Continue Reading..."

Posted by figleaf on Mon, 2009-02-23 15:51

In a nice riff on my explanation for why media preferentially show only female naked PETA protestors**, frequent commenter Nightfall explained all.

First, here’s how I ended the post

Rule #2: It’s simultaneously inconceivable and intolerable for men to be sexually desired. Therefore even if there weren’t a strong bias towards the whole “male gaze” thing for women men will both be naked less and be shown naked less because it’s more of an offense to show naked men. Which is, of course, dumb, but there you go.

To which Nightfall added

Because if you are a man who sees naked men a lot, you will get turned on, and become gay. And if you are a woman who sees naked men a lot, you will get turned off, and become a lesbian. This is because modern humans have extremely fragile sexual orientations, unlike people from between 5 decades ago and the dawn of humanity. ;)

That pretty much says it all.

And about clicking “Continue reading…?” You have been warned. :-)


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Naked Relatives

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2008-11-30 15:29

In a “best-of” repost Lisa of Feminist Mormon Housewives brought up a 2004 post by Not Ophelia about different standards of modesty in different countries (Europe, Utah, Saudi Arabia) and asks a great question…

Anyway, what stuck me about this whole European nudity thing was that toplessness and even complete nudity was not connected with sexuality the way it is in this country. At the pool there was [of course] much flirting going on between the gorgeous [topless] girls and the equally gorgeous [topless] boys. But I don’t think the boys were anymore ‘turned on’ by the whole thing than an American teenaged boy faced with a bikini would be. OTOH I do think the European boys were less turned on by the topless thing than say a Saudi boy would be when faced with the Modest Mormon Swimsuit. Female toplessness is no more a sexual thing in Europe than say showing your arm is in America. But in other countries a hidden arm is a sexual arm, and a sexual arm must be hidden [don’t you just hate that circular logic.]

So, a few thought questions:

It seems to me that one can be completely naked and completely modest [as in Europe.] One can also be fully clothed and quite immodest. Modesty may have less to do with a state of clothing and more to do with drawing attention to one’s self, particularly in a sexual way.

And as for burqas and the like — can/does modesty worsen lust? Or is it just prudishness that causes the burqa problem? [And its attendant female repression]

Read the original post here.

Can’t remember where I said it first, but it’s not that people look more or less sexy naked or partially undressed, it’s that generally speaking people don’t look any more sexy naked than dressed.

Case in point: almost everywhere faces are kept naked. This doesn’t mean we’re indifferent to attractive faces, in fact we’re sometimes captivated. What we don’t do, however, is sexualize naked faces. Going a step further, mouths and hands are unambiguously sexual organs, but almost everywhere naked mouths and hands are not sexualized.

This gets, I think, to Ophilia’s underlying point: the relative erotics of dress are about intention and, I think more significantly, viewers’ relative sense of privilege, not absolute state of dress.


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Do McCain Advisors Put Oatmeal In Their Bathwater So They Won't See Themselves Naked?

Posted by figleaf on Thu, 2008-11-06 10:09


Photo by Flickr user concrete cornfields. Used under a Creative Commons license.

According to Newsweek

McCain advisors showed up at Palin’s hotel room to meet with her and Todd during the RNC and she entered the room in nothing but two towels (one wrapped around her wet hair).

It’s in here somewhere.

Via DailyKos

So what’s the point supposed to be here? After just about any football game you can see whole lorckerrooms full of men in towels on TV! And in many parts of the Northwest (Alaska tends to count) with it’s long Scandinavian and Russian influences (saunas and hot tubs anybody?) answering the door in a towel isn’t that big a breach of etiquette. Compared to, say, letting a visitor wait outside while frostbite or hypothermia sets in.

Call me on this if I’m missing something but this seems like one of those “we’re pretending we’re shocked because you’ll enjoy pretending to be even more shocked” items.

There’s plenty of stuff not to like about the Palin family approach to governance that would probably be more interesting to hear about.

Update: Seriously, this is just one more reason for stuff like Half-nekkid Thursday — “naked under your clothes” knee-squeezing twittery vs substance has got to stop

Update: Digby nails it.

Ok, that’s it. I agree that Sarah Palin is a disaster. She was a terrible choice for VP and undoubtedly cost McCain votes among those who couldn’t believe he’d choose someone so unqualified. I hope we never see her again. I shed no tears for her loss.

But this obsession among the gasbags and the wingnut operatives with this story of her greeting these (apparently very, very delicate) male McCain advisors in a towel is just sexist crap.

...

Those who were in charge of McCain’s campaign, including the man himself, chose her for her looks and robotic, unresponsive stubbornness. They are in no position to complain about what they got. And they are pigs for trying to make something out of this towel thing.

Unless she flashed you her privates and gave one of her winks, it doesn’t mean she wanted to fuck you in front of her husband, fellas. She was covered. Grow up.

She said all that and more here.


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An Immodest Proposal

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2008-07-05 08:16

[Note: I’m on vacation in what may be very limited internet service so this is a pre-recorded and (I very much hope!) a self-publishing post. I may not have much opportunity to reply to comments but you’re comments are still very welcome. I’ll reply as soon as I can. You’re some of the best commenters in the blogsphere so you’re always welcome to respond spiritedly but respectfully to each other’s comments while I’m away. —fl]

Funny how often “not feeling safe” is mistaken for “modesty.” Hmm. Gee.


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Once a Naked Blogger?

Posted by figleaf on Sun, 2008-06-08 21:10

In a post titled “Once a Stripper, Always a Stripper” Lux Alptraum of BOINKOLOGY says of a promo for a new HBO series.

“It’s being written by smart stripper Diablo Cody, and produced by a man named Steven Spielberg. Great, just what we needed—another reason to watch TV.”

Get it? Diablo Cody took her clothes off! That’s all you need to know about her. Isn’t it funny? She was a sex worker, and now she’s a screenwriter! That’s so cute!

It’s a laugh a minute, all right.

Read the quote in context here.

Yeah, I always wonder if my more political posts would get linked back to more often if a) I was ever right or b) if I’d never posted photos of my booty or c) both.

Shoulda thought of that years ago though.

Oh well, since I did and since Lynn Gazis-Sax and Sungold are still celebrating female desire week I’ve included three of the photos most often marked “favorite” from my Flickr photo stream after the “continue reading” jump.

(Oh yeah, and while the first image isn’t as not-work-safe as it appears, you probably still wouldn’t want to try explaining it to someone else from work.)


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The Perfect Body

Posted by figleaf on Sat, 2007-12-22 18:50


Photo from Silent-Porn-Star’s blog.

According to the very interesting Silent Porn Star’s blog, one hundred years ago this year, Australian silent-film star Annette Kellerman was arrested for indecent exposure for wearing the swimsuit in the picture. Until she came along women’s suits were actual dresses (usually wool knit!) with ankle-length pants!

It’s worth noting that in the early 1900s Kellerman was deemed the world’s most perfectly-formed woman. (No doubt sociobiologists have dozens of competing theories all of which explain how gene-based human standards of beauty could have evolved in just three or four generations.)

SPS, who puts a lot of work into humanizing early, early dancers and actresses, has quite a lot else to say about Kellerman in the original post. In addition to ending Victorian bathing-dress decency standards (which, she correctly argued, resulted in the drowning deaths of countless women) and appearing nude in pre-MMPA mainstream silent films she was a screenwriter, a swimming-education activist, a role model for Esther Williams, a physical-fitness instruction-manual author, and founder of a fitness club. Who knew?


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Standard double standards

Posted by figleaf on Wed, 2007-11-07 15:14


Photo by Flickr user E-Dubya. Used under a Creative Commons license.

So via Jessica at Jezebel we learn that the The London Daily Mail was all in a snit about women who not only get drunk, and not only brag about it, but actually post photos on Facebook. And, presumably, other social network sites.

Imagine! Women! Drinking too much demon rum! And thinking it’s funny! Which, I’m sure it does at the time but even so.

Ok, ok, so that’s a predictable reaction. Turns out Jessica is soliciting links to Facebook photos of similarly shift-aced men which, somehow, the Daily Mail managed to overlook.

Funny how we do stuff like that — like “expecting better” of women than men, or perhaps expecting nothing at all of men. (Because, otherwise, what would moralists have to tut-tut and otherwise blame women for?)

Along the same lines, well, in sort of a backwards way, Juliet Lapidos of Slate.com’s Explainer column mentions that the Motion Picture Association of America rates not only movies but movie posters. Now as you might imagine of the same twerps who clog the first 20 minutes of every DVD with messages saying watching with a friend is piracy, it turns out they permit ads with violence against men but not against women.

Before the good people of the advertising administration approve a poster, they make sure it’s suitable for all viewers. Ads can’t depict nudity or sexual activity, violence toward women, cruelty to animals, or rape.

...

In May 2006, the advertising administration rejected a poster for the documentary film The Road to Guantanamo, which featured a man hanging by his handcuffed wrists with a burlap sack over his head. Apparently, the MPAA objected specifically to the burlap “hooding,” presumably because it was too frightening for young viewers. So the film’s distributors created a new poster, which showed only a pair of shackled hands and arms.

The whole lame story, that’s actually mostly about misconceptions about human anatomy, here.

I’m… not exactly sure why depictions of drunkenness or violence against one gender are to decried but not the other. If I were a knee-jerk MRA I’d make the very correct point that men are considered expendable in patriarchy. And if I were a considerably more clever feminist I might point out that pretending to protect women on paper (literally on paper in this case as the MPAA was originally most concerned about movie posters) grossly overlooks the reality that most female victims of violence are victims of domestic violence.

Instead I’m a prudish libertine and so in addition to scowling at those who, regardess of gender, brag about drinking themselves unconscious I’m also trying to get over why any kind of violence gets a nod. While nudity and sexual activity doesn’t.


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