Nudity in Film

The Wolf of Wall Street opened on Christmas day but it is anything but a feel-good, cheery Christmas special. It is filled will gratuitous female nudity as Leonardo DiCaprio’s character rents hookers and strippers for his office workers. There are several scenes of male characters receiving blowjobs from female characters, and a scene of one character snorting cocaine off a naked woman.

The screenplay was written by Terence Winter who is responsible for Boardwalk Empire which is also filled with nudity – mostly woman but there are also some naked men.

I should clarify that the Wolf of Wall Street doesn’t glamorize any of this behaviour but acts as a kind of Icarus-like cautionary tale, but still for much of the film, females are dehumanized through sex. When there is constant depiction of women sexually gratifying males in media it is not only sexist but harms society and the way we think about gender.

Nudity has increased to epic proportions thanks to television shows like the Sopranos, Boardwalk Empire and Game of Thrones, and it is now creeping into the big screen which usually has to deal with much stricter sensorships.

Is this a bad thing? Yes and no. For a long time now, European cinema has always dealt with nudity in a much more forward thinking way, while in North America we have long thought it’s okay to see blood and guts but a couple of breasts is out of the question. European cinema and European society are much closer to getting it right than we are. In Europe nudity isn’t such a big deal and they are much closer to equality among the sexes.

It’s not bad to show nudity in film and I am certainly not holier-than-thou when it comes to sex and nudity. Much of my novel A Thousand Bayonets takes place in seedy strip clubs and Shame the Devil starts off with a couple of women in the South of France sunbathing topless.

Is it wrong to set stories in strip clubs and on the French Rivera? No, of course not. Nor is wrong to set a story in a brothel like much of the television series Boardwalk Empire, but filmmakers and story tellers need to be aware of what they are portraying and the message they are sending.

Nudity becomes bad when it’s sexist and when it dehumanizes the characters and shows them more as sexual objects than human beings. It seems producers are using gratuitous nudity more for shock value and to sell their products more than for any actual artistic purpose.

We know when it comes to the silver screen, females disrobe much more than men and tend to be sexualized much often than men. In fact, according to Buzzfeed.com, 26.2 % of females appear nude on-screen while only 9.4% of men do. And from 2007 to 2012 female teenage nudity has risen 32.5%.

This inequality is bad for show business and it’s bad for society. Females have every right to be equal to men and to be betrayed equal in film. It is a fine balance to be sure. If a man appears topless then certainly a woman should be able to as well. But when women constantly appear naked and the men fully clothed – as happens in most films – then there is an imbalance that needs to be rectified.

I would urge you to check out the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in the Media for more information click here

Please check out my latest suspense novel Shame the devil here

#nudity