Flickgrrl

I'm a guy, but I chuckled when I heard an audible gasp from the audience when Will Smith was doing those shirtless pullups in 'I Am Legend.'

And I bet a few folks sitting near me during the "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" screening heard me gasp when I saw the lovely Kristen Bell come on screen in a bikini. Ain't movies grand?

Christian,

Audible gasp is the metric we're going for here. I'm a gal, and I know that some of the gasps for shirtless Will in "I am Legend" and shirtless Matthew McConaughey in everything and the shirtless -- if prosthetically muscled -- Gerard Butler in "300" are coming from guys. Re: "Sarah Marshall," the audible gasp in the screening audience I was with was in honor of Mila Kunis. Some directors know the value of attractive people looking attractive. It mystifies me that so many actresses -- Charlize Theron and Grace Kelly come to mind -- win Oscars for uglying themselves up, as if stringy hair and dowdy clothes were a measure of their acting skills.

What about Kevin Costner in "Dancing With Wolves"? I thought that was a pretty nice rear-end.

Nekkid girl comedy was more a 70s thing, like Judy Geeson in "Here We Go Round The Mulberry Bush" or Brenda Sykes in "Getting Straight." The big stars never gave it up and perhaps really didn't have to due the reliable Gratuitous Nude Scene that seems to crop up in every 70s adult comedy, with nary any famous T&A nor usually much connection to the plot. Plots didn't hang together all that well either in those days of stoner directing. I lied about the big stars - Julie Christie got bareass with Donald Sutherland in "Don't Look Now," although that movie was apparently not intended as a comedy.

"It mystifies me that so many actresses -- Charlize Theron and Grace Kelly come to mind -- win Oscars for uglying themselves up, as if stringy hair and dowdy clothes were a measure of their acting skills."

This is an absurd comment on multiple levels... I wouldn't know when to begin. To answer your supposition: No, I don't think looking at attractive people will bring us together, any more than I think a beautified Theron would have made a believable degenerate. The quote above is like something out of some 1960s anti-feminist rag.

Thus we beat on, often gratuitously nude but nonetheless fetching although sometimes artificially ugly, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Thus we beat on, boats against the current, often gratuitously nude but nonetheless fetching although sometimes artificially ugly, borne back ceaselessly into the past.

Female nudity in teen comedies is rarely done for laughs; it seems to be more of a distraction.

There was definitely an audible gasp for Joyce Hyser's reveal in "Just One of the Guys"... the most non-gratuitous nudity in a teen comedy ever?

Female nudity for comic effect is usually grotesque as far as I can tell. I'm thinking of Magda in "There's Something About Mary" or the crazy vaginal close-up in "The Heartbreak Kid (2007)" -- both of which were prosthetic (and Farrelly induced).

Oh and by extension, the assumption must be that the male member is grotesque by nature. This is hardly a new concept, going all the way back to "Porky's" (where pretty much all sexuality was something to be scared of).

Didn't Ewan Mcgregor flash his whanger in some foreign element ( mebbe Japanese?) flick? Don't know if it was a comedy, though.

Godard,

Methinks female nudity in teen comedies is in service of the obvious, but thanks for reminding me of Magda in "There's Something About Mary," which was the older woman as scary crone. Please don't remind me of the Farrellys "There's Something About Mary" remake. Yikes.
JDM,

Ewan McGregor has exposed himself in more hours of footage than Paris Hilton, most famously in "Trainspotting," among many other Scot films.

Bravo, Carrie, for taking on this subject. I find it odd, however, that Judd Apatow is the filmmaker who is trying to introduce full-frontal male nudity to movies. I mean, his core audience - of guys - is the least likely to want to see another guy's penis mangified on the big screen several times over. My husband has told me hilarious stories of locker room/ mens room etiquette - of how guys spend all their time in those places staring at the ceiling, anything except look at another guy's penis.

Also, Apatow tends to "undress" those actors in whom women have little interest. Jason Segel? Nah! George Clooney? Yes!!!

Also, why would Apatow think that anyone would be interested in anything - how shall I put this - limp?

Of all the full-frontal guys that I' ve encoutered on screen the best in Ewan McGregor - in both "The Pillow Book" and "Young Adam."

To your collection, I'd like to add Tom Berenger in "At Play in the Fields of the Lord." To paraphrase Kramer on "Seinfeld," in that film, Berenger was out there and loving it!

Does anyone know if Ang Lee and Eve Ensler have actually started filming "The Penis Chronicles"? I couldn't find it on IMDB under that title or in Ewan McGregor's WIP.

I'm surprised that no one has mentioned Viggo Mortensen in "Eastern Promises"... and while I am not a usual fan of full frontal, the bathhouse scene was incredible!

Donna-- Viggo also went full frontal - completely full frontal - in Sean Penn's "The Indian Runner," one of Viggo's first films. He showed everything.

Looking at the box office results, Apatow films with penis are doing much worse than Apatow films without penis. Perhaps the market has spoken.

2005 40 Year Old Virgin $109 mil No penis
2007 Knocked Up $148 mil No penis
2007 Superbad $121 mil No penis
2007 Walk Hard $18 mil Penis
2008 Forgetting Sarah Marshall $55 mil (estimate) Penis

Good golly, Godard! You make a strong case for Apatow, zipped.

Graham Chapman
"The Life Of Brian"
everything

Who cares!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Is the WAR in Iraq over?

Gender bias against men is actually rampant in society, but it has been overlooked and treated with apathy for so long that it is no longer even recognized. That is dangerous.

This forum allows for a good jumping off point to examine how prevalent it is. Since this is a topic of concern, I would enjoy going into detail, but I will be brief. This discussion is about privacy issues concerning the way a female’s privacy is protected and a man’s is not. It is not limited to the locker room issue. Our scrutiny must also turn to the mainstream media. There is blatant bias in Hollywood and film. The amazing thing is most feminist will argue that women are the objectified gender when the opposite is true.

Inequality is easily seen. Although I could go into a tirade about how much full-frontal male exposure is present on virtually every HBO and discuss the way male rear exposure is acceptable on comedy central, MTV, FX channel, and many more; the point is better illustrated by a simple litmus test for comparison – replace the male lead with a female lead and logically conclude whether such a visual would then be accepted.

Examine the recent films of Hostel 2, Walk Hard, and Eastern Promises. Hostel 2 shows, in graphic detail, the male member being severed and fed to a dog. What if the gender were reversed here and it were graphic female mutilation? There would be a definite outcry. Then there is the prolonged scene of male frontal exposure in Walk Hard for “comedic” effect. What if it were graphic exposure of a female sitting down on full display? Would that be allowed? Finally, consider Eastern Promises with a graphic steam sauna fight, exposing the male lead to an extent that nothing is left to the imagination, but deemed acceptable for its “dramatic effect”. Can anyone imagine if that scene were changed with a woman spin-kicking and sprawled about? The movie would be considered exploitive trash.

Replacing the man in each of these roles with a woman allows the casual viewer to see just how blatant and gratuitous these scenes are. The contrast is laughable. These types of depictions should not be allowed at all. In fact, they are not allowed by the MPAA when the graphic depiction concerns a women.

A little art film from Britain came out awhile back about an artist that could freeze time and used this ability to disrobe the women who were shopping at his grocery store in order to draw them. It was quite popular at Cannes and Toronto Film festival and was a hit with the critics. The buzz led to its transformation into a full length feature film called Cashback. In order to be released with an R rating, the female figures were digitally altered to cover some of the more revealing areas. Having watched the original film short, the amount of female flesh on display was far less than that currently shown by men in current film and cable television. Why was the prominent display of the men in the above listed films allowed while the women’s privacy was kept sacrosanct?

This discussion is relevant because it shows, again, how women are protected and respected while men are flaunted. Keep it analogous; women enjoy a nice looking male chest as much as men enjoy a nice looking female chest. Please do not compare a female upper body to a man’s lower. Neither genders genitalia should be shown, but if it is, it should be equal.

Bare flesh always leads to vibrant discussion, but more disturbing than the disproportionate amount of male flesh displayed on cable and movies is the general depiction of men on television. On the average sitcom, take a look at the male figures and compare them to their female counterparts. How often is the man a bumbling, unintelligent buffoon who requires the saving grace of his well rounded wife in order to make it through the episode? Now imagine we had a show where the man new what was best and the woman was a moron. Imagine the feminist outcry! Yet, it is perfectly acceptable for male bashing to occur without so much as a batted eyelash - it is business as usual.

Be careful of what this may teach the future generations of men in our society.