Should we be celebrating male nudity on TV? NO
As ever more actors disrobe on prime-time dramas...
Afew nights ago we watched the latest version of Jane Austen’s emma. That handsome actor Johnny flynn is (I thought) miscast as a too young and modern-looking Mr Knightley — but hey, we saw his bottom!
we were treated to a quick glimpse as he dressed and I said ‘Phwoar’ while my husband rolled his eyes. ‘Do they have to?’ he asked.
Good question. why has there been a sudden increase in male nudity on our screens?
These days it seems fashionably necessary to show male full-frontals (see this year’s hit drama Normal People, and current BBC2 shocker Industry), and maybe this trend levels the playing field.
After all, women have had to do nude scenes for ages, whether they wanted to or not.
So I suppose you could argue that it’s progress to now degrade male actors, too, with a bit of cheeky sleaze.
we live at a time when feminist activists prowl museums counting the number of female nudes and insisting there should be an equal number of males.
Bring on the Greek statues and cast aside the fig leaves! equality is apparently the name of the game — so it’s our right to turn on the TV and see the male member in (nearly) all its glory.
Oh, but do we really want to? As far back as 1985, the wonderful Merchant Ivory film A Room with A View included the famous comic scene where three chaps have a dip in a woodland pool then run around it starkers, unaware ladies are approaching down a path. Oops! fleeting shots of dangly bits just added to the hilarity.
But unless you are in a lovely, intimate relationship with those funny dangly bits, do you really want to see them?
One of my favourite scenes in literature comes in Sylvia Plath’s 1963 novel The Bell Jar. The heroine, esther, is with her high school crush Buddy willard, when he suggests they get naked. He strips off his chinos and his nylon mesh underpants, ‘Then he just stood there in front of me . . . The only thing I could think of was turkey neck and turkey gizzards and I felt very depressed.’
Oh dear, ‘turkey neck and turkey gizzards’ seems rather apt somehow. And the only time I want to contemplate them is when making the gravy on Christmas Day. Not on our increasingly filthy TV screens. Not when the rumpy-pumpy is icky and absurd and puts you right off real sex. Not when I just want a cup of tea.
I only want to see turkey gizzards at Christmas