Nudity on Stage and Screen
I’ve never considered myself a prude, I enjoy the naked form as much as the next person. However, I cannot abide nudity on stage or screen. Particularly stage. Whenever I see it, I cringe. It is not the character naked that I see, it is the actor abused. It is rare that I have seen a moment of nudity that wasn’t solely for someone’s titillation. Of course, I know, much is done in the name of art, but mainly, it’s bullshit. Some writer/director/producer/douchebag wants to see some guy/girl/other naked or they think it will put bums on seats. Oh but what about so and so in such and such?
The word is EXPLOITATION. Exploitation in the name of art.
Sure, I would have loved to see a beautiful naked angel, a pale skinned naked angel come down from heaven in the midst of the battlefield in a production that I directed. Beautiful as the moment would have been aesthetically, who would have been looking at the angel and NOT their bits? Men look terrible naked on stage, women are just gawped at. I remember seeing Stephen Dillane in Hamlet at the Gielgud years ago and he had a naked scene. Was this some scene in Hamlet that I have previously missed? No. It was someone’s good idea. Some actor was coerced into it, or worse, they willingly agreed to it, believing it were somehow artistic, truthful, or… revealing… But like everyone else in the audience, I was doing one of two things. Looking at Stephen Dillane’s cock, or trying NOT to look at Stephen Dillane’s cock. Either way, his privates were everyone’s focus, not the speech and not the acting.
The actor is always self consciously naked. The audience is always conscious that it is the actor naked in front of them. It takes both parties out of the moment and into some self-conscious place. Either way, it spoils the intended moment. Nudity on stage and screen is frankly ugly, rarely beautiful, and when beautiful, it is often simply exploitation thinly veiled.
Lastly, the answers to yesterday’s picture quiz are: (Top Left) Jerzy Grotowski, (Top Right) Stella Adler, (Middle Left) Sanford Meisner (Middle Right) Lee Strasberg (Bottom Left) Michael Chekhov.