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Much Ado About Nudity |
by David Winnick
I went to go see Watchmen on March sixth. That's right; I'm one of those people. The guy who buys his ticket over a week early. The guy who shows up at the theater two hours before the movie starts just to get the perfect seat right smack in the center of the screen so the film will fill his entire field of vision.
So there I was, March sixth at six p.m. in line for my eight o'clock show and I was pumped. I read Watchmen as a junior in high school and it blew my mind. I have been collecting comics since third grade and this was the one that changed the way I viewed superheroes. So I predisposed to like the film.
I'm not here to debate the film. No matter what an individual may think about the liberties taken with the source material is not actually the point at the moment. I'm not here to talk about the Giant Squid. I am here to talk about Dr. Manhattan and his (take a deep breath everyone) blue penis.
Yes, ladies and gents, I did just write the word "penis!" I knew full well when I went to the theater that night I would see a glowing blue penis. I read the comic several times; I knew that it was coming. What I did not expect was the giggling that would ripple through the theater, the jokes, the snickers. I was, to say the least, disappointed with the audience.
Since that night I have heard the film described as "pornographic," "disgusting" and "smutty." I have seen interviews with Dr. Manhattan himself, actor Billy Crudup. Many of them focused almost entirely on his, to use a euphemism for those who have already become uncomfortable, manhood. This in a society that praises films like The 40 Year Old Virgin and American Pie both of which are much more sexually explicit than Watchmen. At no point in the film does Dr. Manhattan have sex with baked goods. Yet there I was sitting in a theater listening to people laugh every time the audience was given a full body shot. To those people, I say "grow up."
Clearly the audience did not consider why Dr. Manhattan might be naked. Could it possibly be that his lack of clothing was meant to convey his loss of humanity? Perhaps it was a metaphor for the impotency to stop the destructive forces at the end of the film? No, not in America. In our culture, female nudity is meant to be ogled and male nudity is meant to be laughed at. Not to say that I have not laughed at times too. Jason Segel's nudity was hilarious in Forgetting Sarah Marshalli>. But come on people, learn to differentiate.
I believe that this whole problem comes down to the conditioning of American society. Since I was a children I were taught to revere the feminine form. It is the female that gives life and sustains it. American society is constantly bombarded with the images of nurturing woman. The other version of woman's sexuality is the sensual woman, to be stared at and lusted over. Lust leads to sex, which leads to the propagation of the species. As for male anatomy, men are hardly ever viewed as having much to do with the propagation of life.
There is also a fear that is associated with male nudity. It seems that in America if a male views another nude male, this is an act of homosexuality. The fear that this creates assumes that there is something innately evil in homosexuality (something that I won't even tackle here because I find homophobia so ridiculous, that I am unable to express in a concise way my objection to this train of thought.) When Brokeback Mountain came out I was informed by many grown men (some married, some with long term girlfriends) that they would not see it, for fear that it would "make them gay". This concept of latent homosexuality seems to be the driving force with the discomfort over male anatomy. Every time that Manhattan's penis was on the screen, uncomfortable giggles rippled through the audience as if to see it put the viewer in danger of becoming gay.
There is a game that was played at my high school, and no doubt you remember it from your high school. It was called the Penis Game. The essence of this game was a challenge to see who could yell the word "penis" the loudest and at the most inappropriate time. Everyone of course laughed whenever the principal was talking at a pep rally and an unknown voice would echo through the gym at ten decibels: "penis!" I was sixteen years old at the time and I laughed too. I must however remind you all that this is the same sixteen year old who read Watchmen and respected it for its artistic merit and dark story. Blue penis and all. It seems to me that it is time America, not just the sixteen-year-olds, learns to deal with its giggling problem. After all, almost half of the people in the world have a penis.
By day, David Winnick is an unassuming graduate student. By night he fights crime as Ampersand, a combination of brains and brawn who terrorizes the dark seedy underworld. David has contributed to Wizard Magazine and Normality Restored.
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