The Guardian has an amusing short piece calling for more male nudity in films, following Viggo Mortensen’s super-duper nude bathhouse scene in Eastern Promises. Naturally the author sees an opportunity to make dozens of penis jokes and runs with it.
The sight of a penis on screen never fails to get people’s attention, despite the fact that said object of controversy is gazed down upon by its owners – half the planet, last time I looked – every morning at least, and is inserted into a goodly percentage of the other half of the planet last thing at night. Yet for all its mundanity, the totemic power of the phallus, rampant or dormant, to shock us has yet to subside, or, to be technical about it, detumesce. It always pokes the viewer right in the eye, so to speak, and, well, isn’t that justification enough?
Good point.
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Meanwhile, movie magazine Empire has made a list of the 10 worst nude scenes of all time and, unsurprisingly, put Borat at number one. I don’t think anyone needs to argue with that one (although, my god, I laughed).
I do have to take issue with their placement of Harvey Keitel in The Piano at number five. Sure, Harvey isn’t a heart throb but I still think that the piano polishing scene in Jane Campion’s female-focused film is extremely erotic. And Keitel should be admired for his bravery in doing the scene, which is one of the few examples of the female gaze being given priority in a film. I wrote about Campion’s sex scenes back in 2005, about how the focus is on female pleasure in The Piano and In The Cut. So I’d say that that particular nude scene is a favorite of mine.