“…and that goes for you, too, Butler!”
I should be quick to point out that the above is merely an observation, not a complaint. While I do, of course, suffer from the affliction of the typical heterosexual male in that I would raise no objections should Katherine Heigl decide to change her position on this matter, prudence and good taste and other factors compel me to aver that I do not consider the pursuit of a gander at Ms. Heigl’s bared rack to be a force that gives me meaning. That said, I bring up the issue because I see that Ms. Heigl has another R‑rated “raunchy” comedy due in theaters, which, I see from the commercials, contains a vibrator joke that was stolen either from The Sweetest Thing or The Naked Gun 2 1/2; The Smell of Fear, I can’t quite tell which. And I see that the R rating is “for strong sexual content,” rather than nudity. And I recall that it was Heigl, in Knocked Up, who, at least to the best of my knowledge, gifted cinema with the exceptionally dubious notion that smokin’ hot chicks love nothing better than to keep their brassieres on while doin’ the monkey.
The question of who gets naked in Hollywood product—not to mention the how and the why—has as much to do with hierarchy and power as it does with personal comfort level and such. See, for instance, Sarah Jessica Parker relative to her costars in Sex and the City, both the series and the very wonderful film spun off from it. The makers of Knocked Up would, I am sure, loved to have had Heigl go topless in that film, just as the makers of Forgetting Sarah Marshall (who are not unrelated to the makers of Knocked Up) would have preferred to have Kristen Bell ride Russell Brand sans bikini top in that film. Factors in their inability to achieve such aims include the actresses’ agents and what clout they wield, the fact that both performers were “transitioning” from network (or at least non-pay-cable) television fare to cinema, and a post-Maxim lad culture that arguably values withholding—a bit of tease, you know—more than the full reveal.
Still, in Heigl’s case her coyness carries a bit of an extra frisson, as it were. For who among us can forget her thoroughly committed participation in 1994’s My Father The Hero, a picture that, its PG rating notwithstanding, makes Judd Apatow’s films look like sermonettes? The film’s constant intimations of pedophilia and incest were so unstinting, so crass, so nudge-you-in-the-ribs-slimy that they ceased to be intimations at all. And through it all there’s Heigl, insouciant in a one-piece bathing suit with a thong back.
The reaction shots of Gerard Depardieu, as Heigl’s father, are an interesting study in a particular manifestation of the Kuleshov effect.
My Father The Hero is that rare and repellent bird, a mainstream Hollywood picture that is more pornographic than an actual porno. And it certainly gave pervs of all stripe the hope that Heigl, as uninhibited as she played in it, would follow in the noble footsteps of Linda Blair and Allysa Milano and others too numerous (and in some cases sad) to name, and get out those ta-tas for the lens at the nearest legal opportunity, or post-legal-opportunity financial crisis.
But it was not to be. I imagine the fellows at Mr. Skin would call this a case of “jailbait and switch.”
“…Heigl, in Knocked Up, who, at least to the best of my knowledge, gifted cinema with the exceptionally dubious notion that smokin’ hot chicks love nothing better than to keep their brassieres on while doin’ the monkey.”
This is a pet peeve of mine. Since I look for versimilitude in most movies where flights of fancy are not called for, it always sticks in my craw when you see this kind of modesty. Why not frame the shot so the breasts are just offscreen? Or why not skip the sex scene altogether then, if you can’t find the cojones to comment on a natural human function (many would say our primary function) in a realistic manner? In a sex/romantic comedy, no less?
Forgetting Sarah Marshall struck me as particularly prudish concerning Kristen Bell (or I should say the actress did) after the male lead had a full frontal scene and the second female lead had no problem going topless.
I believe Apatow has stated that he has made it his mission to tip the scales when it comes to onscreen nudity. That’s why he makes it a point to have male nudity and little if any female nudity. I applaud the notion, but it does feel like an intellectual argument not worthy of the genius of Superbad.
Maybe all this coyness has to do with the Internet and the ability to post the images for all the world to see. I grow nostalgic for the days when even Carol Kane in The Last Detail was willing to show off her breasteses.
Glenn, am I to conclude you own a copy of My Father, The Hero? You truly are dedicated to your work.
@ Aaron: That conclusion would be an error. I stole the cap. Off the internet, as one will when necessary.
I remember Pauline Kael, in her review of Ragtime, ranting for what must have been a couple of her trademark long sentences about the lengthy scene where Elizabeth McGovern (remember her? how short a starlet’s time in the sun can be) is topless and having a discussion with someone. I wish I could find a copy of the review online. As I recall, Kael said it was an ugly thing to do to a young actress, and showed contempt for her character too. Rather than making Evelyn Nesbit a free spirit, it turned Nesbit into a dimwit without even the sense to cover herself up. The description stuck in my mind because I thought Kael was on to something. Gratuitous nudity is one thing (hey, I enjoy it too) but nudity that is being used to belittle or trivialize a woman is nasty and automatically very off-putting to me. Your description of My Father the Hero–and that shot of Heigl’s backside–reminded me of that.
Further to Heigl’s quite magnificent physique–it seems to me, purely anecdotally, that there are fewer breasts and quite a few more bare asses in cinema these days. I haven’t the energy to analyze that, though.
I feel it is shocking that our country has gone in a retrograde direction when it comes to sexuality/nudity. Back in the 70s, I’ll emphasize that we’re talking about near-forty years ago, American cinema’s depiction of sexuality seemed to be striving to reach parity with the Europeans’ presentation of same. It was frank, and as one who appreciates art, aesthetically pleasing in its presentation of nudity. Now, because of politics and the development of a center-right moral majority, we have slowly slid into exclusively juvenile expressions of sexuality.
I love Apatow’s stuff, and I even enjoy sillier fare like Casual Sex(which you recently brought up somewhere, Siren), and Private School. But how come America has never had its Walkabout, or its Last Tango in Paris (9 1/2 Weeks doesn’t count, it was pure titillation)?
BTW Campaspe, regarding your Kael story, it reminds me very much of Roger Ebert’s disdain for Blue Velvet because of what he perceived as David Lynch’s nasty and too-long scene depicting Isabella Rossellini (Lynch’s partner offscreen back then) bruised, dazed, and completely nude on a suburban street. For many years after, Ebert seemed to almost hold a grudge towards Lynch – harshly criticizing much of his work until he directed the G‑rated Straight Story – for embarrassing Ingrid Bergman’s daughter (I won’t put that in quotes because I can’t be sure he said that, but I seem to recall that he did).
Personally, I think Blue Velvet is a masterpiece. And I find it far more denigrating to speak of Rossellini as if she were a child incapable of making any decisions when, as we have been able to discern over time, she is not only intelligent, but quite a formidable artist in her own right.
This is also hypocrisy, coming from a man who wrote Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (which I am a fan of, for the record) for Russ Meyer.
I’m not trying to pick on the usually rational Mr. Ebert, but what is your take on this one, Campaspe?
Tony,
I take that as a rhetorical question, since the answer is self-evident. It’s because sex is dirty in America. A straightforward, unblinking look at it in an American film would have people in the theater looking like the schoolkids in the Simpsons episode where they watch a sex film as Edna Krabapple boredly drones “she’s faking it”. There have been tries at it, but as you say they were back in the ’70s. Americans are childish when it comes to sex. I oughta know, I was brought up in this culture.
Bloody hell, this thing doesn’t take tags.
Glenn,
Brilliant post. Signs of sexual repression such as these truly make me want to leave this country, a country in which I have lived all my life and which I love in so many ways. I already gave up on making films for the American market – why attempt to bring in a potential audience at the cost of thereby making something I wouldn’t want to watch myself?
I’ll defend Kael’s rant. She was correct in the scene is awful, overdone and ends up making you feel bad for McGovern. It’s supposed to be a funny gag, but it just goes on and on…RAGTIME has some cool things, particularly James Cagney’s spectacular final role, but that moment is the worst. And of course Ebert was wrong about BLUE VELVET.
Tony, given Kael’s celebrated adoration of Last Tango and a number of other very frankly sexual movies, I don’t think we can accuse her of having retrograde sexual mores. (I realize you weren’t saying that, I’m just continuing the thoughts.) Kael saw the extended topless shot as tacky, and emblematic of what she though of as Forman’s general lack of visual elegance.
As for Blue Velvet, I think even those movie’s die-hard fans (I’m not one, I have to say–found it a slog in parts) would have to admit that the Rossellini scene was harsh, even down to the pitiless shot of her scoliosis scar. (Anyone who read Ingrid Bergman’s account of how Isabella got that scar would have cringed even harder, as I did.) I don’t recall Ebert’s whole critique of the movie, but he wasn’t the only one who thought it was too much. All that said, despite the fact that I wasn’t crazy about Blue Velvet, I didn’t think the nude scene was crude or mocking. It fit with the rest of Lynch’s vision, and I’m sure Rossellini saw it that way and played it that way.
There’s something leering about the scene in Ragtime, though, that Kael pretty much nailed. It’s interesting that Forman is a European director; Americans are not the only ones who have an adolescent approach to sexuality at times. On TV5 I have seen some pretty juvenile French farces too, and as I recall My Father the Hero is based on a French film that apparently was’t much better.
The trouble with mainstream American films is that they are so often made by and for an adolescent or barely post-adolescent mindset. It isn’t just the approach to sex that lacks depth or a broad adult perspective–it is love and romance as well. One of the many things I like about older American films is that I find more of a mature perspective about men and women and love in an old Bette Davis vehicle than I do in all of (for example) Steven Spielberg, great director though he is on occasion.
@ Campaspe: I had hoped to find Kael’s consideration of “Ragtime” in the collection “For Keeps,” but alas, it isn’t there; the considerations of McGovern therein are confined to her ornamental role in “Ordinary People” and her absolutely hapless turn in “Once Upon A Time In America.”
I’m not a big booster of “Ragtime,” but I find the cited scene more sardonic than leering. As for “Blue Velvet”…well, Christ. It is what it is, and writers much better than myself (David Foster Wallace, for one) have spent a lot of time racking their brains over Lynch’s motivations, methods and results, without ever coming up with answers that would make any of us completely comfortable in our living rooms, kitchens, and so on. It might be worth noting that Isabella R., an active and idiosyncratic artist in her own right, has never denounced, or renounced, David L. In any event, it’s a whole different ball field than the one in which Katherine H. plays, which is not to dis her. Still.
A friend who has seen the French version of “My Father The Hero” tells me that it’s actually less leeringly gross than the American remake. WHich speaks to Jeff Pickett’s plaint, I think.
Oy! I try to amuse, and open up a much more interesting can of worms. I think that’s really one of the things this blog is good for!…
Lynch has said many times that he works almost entirely by intuition (and I believe him), so on one level saying that he “intended” the scene to be intensely disturbing is not quite right, but on another it is. He just does what feels right. I’d agree that it isn’t mocking at all, but even (especially?) at its most hard-to-watch I feel it contains a great deal of compassion for all the characters involved.
Aha, I was supposed to do jokes on this one? NOW you tell me … So, two nude scene directors walk into a costume shop and …
Nope, I got nothing.
I should re-see Blue Velvet along with Repulsion, I think. I never know how to prioritize these things, though–movies I need to see, period, versus movies I suspect did not get their due from me at the time. Kael as I remember disdained the whole notion of re-watching movies in at least one interview.
I can’t imagine many image-conscious actresses, including Heigl, who’d be willing to play that Blue Velvet scene, shot and lit the way it was. It’s a tremendously nervy piece of acting and I’m sure Rossellini remains proud of it.
“the second female lead had no problem going topless”
Mila Kunis is on record as saying that the picture you refer to was photoshopped.
As for nudity in American movies, we certainly have backtracked. I was astonished that no one got naked in “Scream”. It was a slasher film, for goodness’ sake.
Here is what Pauline Kael wrote about the aforementioned scene of “Ragtime”:
“But the performer who is treated the worst is the lovely young Elizabeth McGovern, who plays Evelyn Nesbit. Forman appears to see Evelyn as some sort of open-mouthed retard. The actress is photographed so that her cheeks look stupidly full, and Evelyn is not merely dim-witted, self-centered, and venal – she’s also such a crude little peasant that when she’s interrupted in the middle of naked lovemaking with Younger Brother she proceeds to discuss a business deal with a couple of lawyers without having the instinct to cover herself. Younger Brother makes a move to cover her breasts, but the cloth falls and she ignores it and goes on talking. The focus of the scene is on Elizabeth McGovern’s torso. And we sit there uncomfortablyu, knowing that Forman could make his small, ponderous point just as easily by framing the image so that only her shoulders were visible – it would be perfectly clear that she was naked below the frame. When an actress is left exposed this way, it’s the director who’s crude.”
“Taking It All In” (hardcover edition), page 266. If memory serves, the shot in question is composed to make McGovern’s bare breasts appear to be resting on the bottom frameline of the image, like melons on a table.
Kael’s comment doesn’t seem like a mere rant to me, but maybe there’s an element of strangeness to it, given her collection’s double-entendre title (like the titles chosen for most of her other collections as well).
I’m gratified that you all seem to be on the same wavelength as I am.
For my part, I will move Ragtime, a film I’ve never seen but which is (no lie) sitting on top of my media stand in the living room at this very moment, up to must-watch-this-weekend status. I’ll report back on that one only if I disagree with you guys.
Of all the scenes in Blue Velvet (which I’ve seen countless times and is almost my favorite movie), the one with Dorothy on the lawn is to me one of the easier ones to read, because Lynch has been on the record about exactly where it came from and, unlike with many of his anecdotes, given us his emotional attitude towards it. He’s said that it was inspired by an incident from his childhood in which he was very disturbed by the sight of a naked woman walking down the street in his neighborhood. So we more or less know he intends us to be disturbed.
By that same token (and this is where I think it tripped up Ebert and others), there’s a layer of black humor to the scene in the way that Sandy’s ex-boyfriend and his pals react to Dorothy’s presence, and in the scene that follows where Jeffrey takes her into Sandy’s house, which definitely complicates the reaction you have to her nakedness.
“Sex and the City, both the series and the very wonderful film spun off from it…”
This sort of took me by surprise. As a 30ish hetero male who’s mostly unapologetic about seeing just about every episode of the series–and you know, liking it a lot, okay?–I thought the movie was a ridiculous mess. Deeply, passionately ridiculous. Like, to-be-puzzled-over-hundreds-of-years-from-now ridiculous.
Have you written a defense elsewhere? Point the way!
John M: Sorry, I did not splash a sufficient amount of vermouth on my sarcasm. I am not a fan of, or a defender of, any manifestation of “Sex and the City,” although I did have a very pleasant lunch with Candace Bushnell once upon a professional obligation. In referring to “SATC” as “very wonderful” I was paraphrasing Woody Tobias Jr.‘s assessment of the non-existent “Cujo II” on an old “SCTV” sketch. Sorry for the confusion. But I sincerely have nothing against sincere fans of the series—hell, it gave some lucrative employment opportunities to some valued friends and excellent directors (some of whom are the same person, i.e., Allison Anders). As for the movie—I’m with you 100 %.
This is totally off-topic from anything else here, but I saw a trailer for that Heigl/Butler film cited up top, and the premise seemed to be that Katherine Heigl’s character needed advice from Gerard Butler about how to seduce guys and get dates. Uh, yeah. The dating scene must be really rough for impossibly gorgeous statuesque blondes. Does that seem like an unbelievably stupid idea for a comedy to anyone else? Apparently, not only do smoking hot chicks keep their bras on during sex, but they require massive amounts of instruction and training to get guys to pay any attention to them.
Heigl is a beautiful young woman and a decent actress in light fluff but, as I see it, for the very reasons you cite, a comedienne without much of a sense of humor.
As for Pauline Kael, she was an impeccable stylist with an ability to recognize and describe talent, but I can’t say that she ever opened my eyes about anything. It’s okay with me if your mileage differs.
So, Glenn, can I consider this a form of entrapment?
You sure got it out of me, ya bastard.
In my defense, I watched it primarily while doing things like folding laundry, vacuuming, email.
I’m just digging the hole deeper, aren’t I?
“Ms. Heigl has another R‑rated “raunchy” comedy due in theaters, which, I see from the commercials, contains a vibrator joke that was stolen either from The Sweetest Thing or The Naked Gun 2 1/2; The Smell of Fear, I can’t quite tell which”
Or perhaps Shortbus, which had a great remote control vibrator gag.
@ Phil: YES! “Shortbus” it was! And it was pretty funny in THAT film, I admit—that character’s travails by that point had come to resemble a triple‑X rated variant of an episode of “The Lucy Show.”
@ John: Sorry! But really, some of my best friends do the same as you, honest…
I’m not really that upset by the lack of nudity in mainstream American film. Every time that I see female nudity in a Hollywood movie, I feel a bit uncomfortable, as if I’m watching the product of intense negotiations between agent, manager, producer, and actress, all of which result in the exact lighting, angle, surface area of breast revealed, and duration of shot. Perhaps this is the result of a pre-Web pubescence spent sneaking into movies such as The Doors (Meg Ryan’s nipple!) or Billy Bathgate (full-frontal Nicole Kidman!) in order to fulfill my yearning for celebrity skin. Anyway, I’m kind of happy that actresses no longer feel the pressure to get naked for a part. Still, I don’t object to those actresses who obviously have no problem, which is my way of encouraging Ludivine Sagnier to stay employed.
Or maybe it’s an homage to Shinya Tsukamoto’s A Snake of June. That’s a pretty funny movie.
@ Joel: You wrote: “Every time that I see female nudity in a Hollywood movie, I feel a bit uncomfortable, as if I’m watching the product of intense negotiations between agent, manager, producer, and actress…” Yes, that’s exactly it. And it’s all part and parcel of the puritanism bemoaned above by Jeff Pickett, I think.
I’m not sure if this is a symptom of puritanism in the culture at large. If women start leaving their bras on during sex in real life, then maybe you’ll have a better point. As for the actresses of twenty or thirty years ago who took off their tops, I don’t think it was for the sake of verisimilitude, and I doubt that they were always thrilled to do so. I imagine that some producers were happy to finance a youth-culture curio (in their eyes) such as The Last Detail or Mean Streets, but asked the directors to throw in a bit of skin in order to guarantee at least a bit of return on their investment.
Scorsese’s gone on record as saying he doesn’t much care for nudity in pictures, saying that it “stops the film dead.” The fantasy sex scene in “Who’s That Knocking On My Door” was shot at the insistence of a distributor, and Amy Robinson’s brief nude scene in “Mean Streets” was, in fact, done at the behest of a producer. (It didn’t adversely effect Robinson and Scorsese’s relationship; she went on to co-produce “After Hours.”) He bent later on, in cases where the nudity made sense—see Barbara Hershey in “Last Temptation” and the brothel scenes in “Gangs of New York.”
The Blue Velvet scene, FWIW, is also notable in that it’s a turning point, at which Laura Dern’s character, along with some asshole jock whose exact function I forget at the moment, go from holding Dorothy in contempt to having pity and finally empathy for her, all in a matter of seconds. The extremity of this image, which may have seemed cruel given Lynch’s real-life relationship with Rossellini, did have an emotional purpose in the film itself. (Whether or not that makes Lynch’s “cruelty” worth it is, of course, an ethical question. But I agree that treating the actress as if she were powerless before the might of her director/partner is incredibly patronizing.)
“As for the actresses of twenty or thirty years ago who took off their tops, I don’t think it was for the sake of verisimilitude, and I doubt that they were always thrilled to do so.”
I think you’ve got to take this sort of thing on a case-by-case basis. There are plenty of 70’s films where the nudity is seems to be a genuine expression of the film or filmmaker’s worldview, one of the more notable examples being the nudity in Nicholas Roeg’s work.
It’s telling that I have a hard time picturing a producer of a mainstream movie today actually insisting on nudity. It might be Puritanism, but it’s a very weird, mutant strain of Puritanism. Pop culture is intensely sexualized, yet actual nudity makes people uncomfortable.
@Michael Dempsey – many thanks for that excerpt, which confirms my recollection. Whatever else you can say about Kael (plenty, oh yes, plenty) her reviews stay with you. And I don’t think she’s off with that analysis, either–it’s for sure a crude shot.
@Ed Howard–I couldn’t agree more about the intrinsic silliness of the Heigl/Butler movie’s premise.
JF: Rip Torn’s penis = box office poison. So I will agree with you on Roeg. However, I don’t think we live in too puritanical a culture, if only because the reason why nudity is scarce on the big screen has more to do with the potential size of one’s audience than prevailing cultural attitudes. Since, in theory, a scantily clad Megan Fox is available to all those over thirteen with 8–10 bucks in their wallet, why cut your profit by having her take off what’s left of her top? All of this moralism by theater-chain owners over the NC-17 is almost ludicrously transparent. The rating itself is a fine idea–remove the stigma of an X by allowing adults to see mature films in a mainstream theater. However, regardless of what it’s called, no studio or theater owner is going to want to limit their audience so severely. Of course, people insist on blaming the MPAA for this fact, when it’s the unwillingness of the studios or theater owners to distribute or show movies with realistic sex and nudity that keeps these movies from being made. America likes naked people as much as ever. What has changed is the business model of the studio, which requires as many people in as many theaters as quickly as possible. Also, since it hasn’t already been noted, American film managed to be pretty damn racy (and sexy) without nudity for several decades, so I don’t weep too much for the future.
That’s why Halle Berry’s nude scene in.. oh, what was that pile of crap… was so completely un-erotic. Everyone knew she’d been paid a ton of money to get them out for the boys so the whole scene had a great big HALLE BERRY’S VERY EXPENSIVE TITS sign over it. Things like that made me understand why Scorsese thinks it can kill a movie dead.
Speaking of SATC, I assume you’ve all seen ‘State And Main’ which gets a lot of chuckles out of Sarah Jessica Parker’s character refusing to take her top in a movie.
BTW: I have had very hot one-night stand sex with a drunk girl who kept her bra on so that scene in ‘Knocked Up’ didn’t bother me.
I do believe people have sex with garments on. Victoria’s Secret must hope so.
I’ve never understood the objection to the “Blue Velvet” scene. It’s purpose could not be more plain to me, and many other people in this thread have laid it out pretty clearly. It is meant to disturb, and it disturbs, and Rosselini has said something to the effect that she’s never felt the need to apologize for it. All this offense taken by some critics and other viewers on her behalf seems more than a bit condescending, as though she couldn’t possibly have understood what she was getting into.
Bill, you can understand a scene’s purpose and still find it distasteful. You can also believe an actress has been misused even if she herself was perfectly fine with it. That isn’t condescension, it’s disagreement. All the same, my problems with Blue Velvet didn’t revolve around that scene. Ultimately I thought the film was a great deal of snark aimed at a small target. The truth is that I would far rather re-read David Foster Wallace’s brilliant article about David Lynch than re-watch a David Lynch movie.
For me, what makes the scene so interesting and fascinating isn’t the nudity in and of itself, but the reaction to it, from the flip “Hey, is that your mom?” (paraphrasing here) remark to the seems-like-an-eternity embarassment of Dorothy Valens’ repeated “He put his disease in me,” hardly the sort of thing you want to hear about your new boyfriend from a strange woman. Of course the intensity of all this mortification would be quite a bit less without the nudity. That’s what’s so, well, Lynchian about the whole thing.
And of course this effect is ameliorated, if not entirely vitiated, if you can only look at the scene and say (and I’m not ascribing this sentiment to you, Campaspe), “Oh, poor Isabella Rossellini, look what that awful David Lynch made her do!” And this in itself is a whole sticking point in the semiotics of on-screen nudity and our reactions to it.
Glenn, that scene is the movie in a nutshell, its virtues as well as (what I consider) its flaws. Part of the reaction comes from Rossellini being a beautiful woman shown with her every flaw in vivid relief. David Lynch puts her stark naked on an ordinary street to recreate a nightmare probably every audience member has had. And then, he shoots her straight-on, no discreet moving away or cropping, without the slightest concession to glamor or beauty–her scar, her slight belly, the flaws on her skin, her makeup sinking into her pores. If you add the fact that she looks exactly like her mother, the dream woman of practically every critic Ebert’s age or older, you have to hand it to Lynch for his sheer ballsy daring. But I suspect that “poor Isabella!” was at least a small part of what Lynch was hoping to provoke.
And, to circle back around to what Tony was saying on page one, it’s an open question as to which filmmaker, let alone which actress, has the stomach for a similar scene these days.
One more Blue Velvet observation–I went to IMDB to check the user comments, as I often do, and was most amused to find a significant minority there complaining that the movie wasn’t shocking ENOUGH. To summarize, “I went to a David Lynch movie expecting gore, violence and nudity and all I got was this stupid ear.”
One thing that I’ve always thought was curious about “Blue Velvet” – and this is moving away from the nudity question – is the critical concensus that the film shows up the hypocricy or secret depravity of suburban life. I’ll admit that the film’s beginning does seem to point us in that direction, but the characters don’t quite live up to that theme. Almost to a person, the suburban characters are perfectly decent people. It’s those who hail from outside the suburbs who are maybe not quite so decent. I doubt we’re supposed to think that Frank Booth lives in cul de sac.
@bill: Agreed; I always thought Lynch did a much better job depicting some sort of seedy underbelly of small-town America and Americana with Twin Peaks.
Bill,
I never took it to be an indictment of suburbanites as much as it was Lynch’s acknowledgement that even the sleepiest-looking of small towns has more going on underneath than people think. Lynch used to have an affection for small towns (he is extremely taken by its denizens in STRAIGHT STORY and even TWIN PEAKS, despite all the shenanigans), and a great disdain for industrial cities (go no further than his depictions of the industrial wastelands in ERASERHEAD and DUNE). I say “used to” because of his recent preoccupation with LA (LOST HIGHWAY and MULHOLLAND DRIVE).
Campaspe,
I think one grows kinder towards Lynch on repeated viewings. BLUE VELVET was a difficult film for me to like upon its intial release, but TWIN PEAKS was a sort of gateway film for me into a greater appreciation of his work. His compassion for Laura Palmer, despite her transgressions, helped me understand his empathy for many characters throughout his films that on initial viewing seemed ugly caricatures.
To get back on track though, regarding actresses/directors that can stomach the hard sexuality in such films, it is a void that will soon be filled I imagine. The pendulum always swings back in that respect. I only hope it is by someone with loftier goals than an Eli Roth.
I will always love “Blue Velvet,” in part because of the utter exhilaration I felt when I first saw it in its initial NY theatrical run. I was feeling like everything had been done, and walked out of the theater convinced that everything had yet to be done. It was just incredibly exciting.
I also love the film because I can still always crack up My Close Personal Friend Ron Goldberg by dropping the phrase “I can hear your fucking radio you stupid shit!” randomly into any of our conversations.
Oh, I like “Blue Velvet”, too. And Tony, I’ve never been convinced that Lynch intended the film as an indictment of suburbanites either, but that’s how many people have played it up over the last 20+ years.
I first saw Blue Velvet when I was 16. It was maybe a couple weeks before Twin Peaks premiered and, having heard that this Lynch guy was a bit of a weirdo, I wanted to get an idea of what I might be in store for. So I rented the movie and, to my mother’s horror, watched it three times in one weekend. Like you, Glenn, I’d never seen anything like it and it was the first movie to really hammer home for me the idea that movies could be more than just mindless entertainment.
Plus, I will always relish the review of a high school classmate who saw it theatrically: “I thought it was supposed to be a mystery, but it was just a slutty movie where the girl was naked all the time.”
Funny, the two non-nude sex scenes you cite stuck out a great deal to me while watching those Apatow films. As you post alludes to, there is some sort of meta-comment on female screen nudity in KNOCKED UP. Is Seth Rogen’s circle’s quest to create a Mr. Skin-like site the film’s built-in excuse for why the actresses might want to keep their bras on?
I’d love to see what Paul Verhoeven would do with one of these scripts from the Apatow universe–how he would depict the women AND men.
As for Lynch and his sensitivity (or lack of) in regards to female nude scenes, I remember reading that he added a blur to obscure Laura Harring’s lower anatomy during the sex scenes for the DVD of MULHOLLAND DR. precisely because stills of those nature tend to spread on the internet. I don’t know whether this was to fulfill a contract stipulation or out of respect for his actress (or merely a comment on how the internet truly has changed the game for images’ availability, proliferation, and longevity in the time since BLUE VELVET), but I do think the anecdote adds something to the verisimilitude versus exploitation and art/business/Puritanism debates.
I’m surprised no one has brought up “Short Cuts” re Julianne Moore and Matthew Modine’s scene.
Not to get too deep with the whole Puritanism question, but I think the way in which American Puritanism is manifested is much more insidious and complex than just a lack of on-screen nudity. It’s true that sex seems to be everywhere in this culture, but it’s always a certain kind of sex, which is either frivolous or sanctioned by matrimony.
Sex in American media (and this has become much more the case in the past few decades) is rarely treated seriously, or as a subject unto itself. The kind of frankness you see in virtually any other culture is very rare here, and almost nonexistent in the mainstream. All the same, we’re obsessed with sex, and those making oodles of dough from it are very aware of the obsession. The more ashamed and conflicted we feel about our bodies and our sexuality, the better we are at being consumers of frivolous junk…which in turn makes us feel more insecure, ashamed, empty, etc. This is so basic as to practically be sub-101 level advertising. So, re. Joel’s comments, yes there are big financial stakes in how much skin is or isn’t shown, but it still plays into a basically Puritanical cultural mindset.
And I’ll add that Lynch is one of the very few exceptions that proves the rule, although he can’t really be considered mainstream (especially these days.)
@bill
“Blue Velvet” is one of those movies where the criticism tells you more about who’s saying it than the movie, I’ve found.
What Zach said.
BLUE VELVET has been so wildly mis-read over the years. BV was the apropos American film for the Reagan years – bugs seething under the flag. But the film does have a happy ending, and is not an attack nor treatsie on suburbia. TWIN PEAKS showed how much Lynch actually loves his quirky, small-town folk. He just sees the dark and light in all.
There was nothing like that film out in 1986 and watching Dean Stockwell sing is the most surreal moment in my film-going history. For the first time, a filmmaker made me question whether I was in his dream or the theater.
“This is a pet peeve of mine. Since I look for versimilitude in most movies where flights of fancy are not called for, it always sticks in my craw when you see this kind of modesty. Why not frame the shot so the breasts are just offscreen? Or why not skip the sex scene altogether then, if you can’t find the cojones to comment on a natural human function (many would say our primary function) in a realistic manner? In a sex/romantic comedy, no less?”
You saw the same king of “modesty” in Sex and the City on TV. None of the women on the show showed their breasts much, although the supporting actresses had to do more graphic sex scenes than Parker did. It made for some odd effects, with the ladies straddling some actor or other simulating humping and pumping for all they were worth – but with those trusty brassieres in place.
@ Christian: Your overall point is pretty dead on in my book, but I’m not sure if Blue Velvet has an entirely happy ending. The trauma of everything that precedes the last two scenes still lingers. One of the main things I tend to think about when I see that final shot of Dorothy and her kid is the kid’s father sitting in Dorothy’s apartment with his hands bound and his ear missing and his brains spattered all over the kitchen.
Well, it’s as happy an ending as BLUE VELVET could have;]
One way to tell the difference between critics of the film is to note how they interpret Laura Dern’s great “mysteries of love” speech as either ironic or sincere. It’s the most sincere moment in the film.
Heigl’s prickliness–her most distinctive and, because it appears so genuine, compelling aspect–has been ill-served by movies seeking to blunt and tame it rather than let it roar. She keeps getting cast as Kate, but I’m convinced she’s got a magnificent Cleopatra in her.
To the larger point, I don’t know, every time I hear absolutes about America’s sexual hang-ups they only remind me of how large and expansive my culture is. There’s plenty of leering but ultimately sexless adolescence on display, sure. And I can’t deny that’s the majority.
But there’s also room for Burn After Reading’s balancing a brutal takedown of its Lothario with almost tender portraits of sexual longing from his lover and her would-be suitor. Or the Farrelly’s lewd but humane farces, which never resort to such special pleading as The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s revulsion to porn. Room enough that such seemingly disparate movies as A History of Violence and (pace Campaspe) Munich can latch onto the same device for portraying a marriage besieged–contrasting an early, tender and playful bout of lovemaking with a later, brutally selfish one.
All of these, even the Cronenberg, strike me as American as apple pie. (Which reminds me that American Pie itself took a charmingly pedagogic slant to the dilemma of losing your virginity, complete with helpful tips on sustaining the experience.) To jump media, America can be summed up by Sex and the City’s repressed, tasteful bouncing of bedsprings the same way it can by Tony Soprano’s rutting around or Al Swearengen’s blowjob-monologues. Not inaccurately, but by no means definitively.
And for the film that the conversation has mostly drifted to, and Lynch’s attitudes about suburbs as revealed therein, I think Hoberman’s review of Blue Velvet contains the best summation of the director I’ve ever encountered: “…Lynch has affinities to classic surrealism. But Lynch’s surrealism seems more intuitive than programmatic. For him, the normal is a defense against the irrational rather than vice versa.” So put me in Bill’s camp as well.
Bruce – That Hoberman quote is really interesting. I don’t know that I would have been prepared to take my reading of “Blue Velvet” quite that far, but now I wonder…
Bruce, Bill, and JF,
The Hoberman quote makes even more sense if you read the body of the movie to be a literal dream rather than just a series of surreal events. The dream can be taken to start with Lynch’s first dolly into the severed ear, and end with his zoom out of Jeffrey’s ear at the conclusion of the film.
I’ve always believed this was an intuitive allusion that the story is a dream rather than a deliberate choice Lynch made in presenting it as such.
“Or the Farrelly’s lewd but humane farces, which never resort to such special pleading as The 40-Year-Old Virgin’s revulsion to porn.”
You know, one of these days, we’ll be able to have a conversation about sex comedies without somebody showing up to shit on this movie.
Seriously, what revulsion? The main character has a problem with jerking off to porn that’s actually not uncommon, but it’s not like the other characters are like “Porn, oh, we’d never do that. That’s nasty.” Even the guy who drops off the big box of porn, his taste in porn is a coping strategy. Fairly common stuff, really.
40YOV has a pretty difficult problem, which is explaining how a man in America gets to forty, remain a virgin, and have any sort of woman want to touch him without being paid up front. And they actually handle it pretty well. What they’ve gotten in return is an unjustified backlash. I’m still kind of astounded that anybody thinks Apatow’s a conservative. I’m still scratching my head at that one, if I’m being honest.
Dan, regarding The 40-Year-Old Virgin, I collapsed title and titular character, but should have been clearer that the attitude towards porn was only a tic of the latter. What I meant by “special pleading” was that the character’s distaste for pornography (and even given comedy leeway I’d say Carell’s gagging, horrified reaction is “uncommon”) is calculated to endear him to the audience, making him more of an innocent, rather than grow naturally from what we’ve seen of a character who after all managed to hear out Rogen’s donkey-show story without screwing his eyes shut and begging him to stop. Apatow makes his character so childishly sexless (remember also his confusion at the anatomical model, or the incomprehensible comparison of breasts with bags of sand that outs him in the first place) I think he was afraid the audience wouldn’t root for him otherwise.
So (in my head, and apologies for collapsing this as well instead of writing it out) Apatow struck me as a contrast to the Farrellys, who load their characters with all manner of sexual quirks and behaviors–think Carrey in Me, Myself, & Irene learning his alter ego enjoys a dildo up the ass, or Matt Damon in Stuck on You incessantly masturbating after his break-up–without diminishing their sweetness or even hinting that this compromises their deserving of true love. So yes, I find the creators of There’s Something about Mary’s hair gel gag more mature and observant commentators on sexuality than Apatow. Whom I do enjoy but consider overrated and too often taking the easy way out.
What this has to do with being “conservative” I’ve no idea; I didn’t raise the Apatow’s political (or did you mean cultural?) leanings, and don’t think for a second he is. Nor would it bother me if he were.
Speaking of conservative filmmakers I adore, I like Tony’s suggestion that Blue Velvet is so successful at casting its dreamlike spell in part because Lynch may not have consciously crafted it as such. For all the dream sequences in the history of film that capture their dislocation and derangement, very few convey how dreams strangely pull towards verisimilitude, the way locations and events and fellow-travelers constantly shift and melt together while all along their moment-to-moment reality is never held in doubt by the dreamer. If Lynch’s dreamscape was crafted intuitively, that could explain how he pulled off such a feat.
The funny thing about Blue Velvet is that while I agree it’s a fine film, I’d seen so many ripoffs and takeoffs and swipes of it at that point, the impact of it was blunted severely. It doesn’t quite cast the spell on me that the best Twin Peaks episodes or Wild at Heart (turning 20 next year!) does.
My chief issue with the 40 Year Old Virgin, adding to what Bruce said about the title character, is that he wanted to get laid so those three guys would like him, not because he was lonely or wanted to try new things.
But those three guys are unhappy, unlikable assholes- Rudd’s character is genuinely psychotic, Rogen is Stock Rogen Douchebag, and Malco is- well, he straightens up by the end a bit.
I’ve always felt Apatow, while undeniably talented, is mean spirited and quite hacky at his core.
http://brandonsoderberg.blogspot.com/2008/05/judd-apatow-thinks-rap-music-is-really.html
This post from Brandon Soderberg, which starts with Walk Hard and goes off on other things, is an interesting little bit about how Apatow views the world.
I’m sorry but to say the Farrely go-to of over the top sexual display is somehow more realistic, or valid, than they depiction of simultaneous fascination, longing and confusion that Apatow shows seems wildly offbase. Perhaps things come down to personal preference as I have a hard time finding most Farrely characters likeable or charming, mostly they add up to cliché’s of what is supposed to be cute or likeable beneath the surface level “gross out humour”, and do find Apatow’s films to be filled with characters that have depth, that are flawed and likeable, that seem much more real, so there you go.
It seems what you have labeled “childly sexless” is actually a mix of longing, fear and struggling to find a place. One’s lack of interest in porn in that situation isn’t so simple as a moral high ground. More so it is being deeply uncomfortable with oneself and their relationship to themself, and finding it easier to switch it off than to confront why they may have gone through life a virgin so far. That seems much more interesting than covering up a reductive view of human thought with dick jokes as the Farrely’s tend to do.
Also, that article on Apatow and rap music is absurd. It uses Armond White as an pillar upon which it bases its reasoning. end of story.
I lost all faith in the Farrellys after Stuck on You and that UNBEARABLE remake of The Heartbreak Kid. Seriously that movie should be tried in the Hague. It’s just as mean spirited as Apatow at his worst. The only positive thing about it was, well, guess.
Another thing that occurred to me about Bruce’s discussion- title character of 40YOV, as I said, seems to want to get laid because those guys will like him better. But he also puts up with their horseshit to an annoying degree. Which I suspect was a way of making the audience like him more, since he’s amazingly tolerant of these three dickheads.
Also amusing- the girl trying to sell all his geeky shit at the end, because, well, uh- he can’t have it because then he, uh… that would be bad?
From the article linked above:
‘They are characters wonderfully out-of-step with the rest of their peers because of their interest in 70s funk and soul. I won’t even begin to understand that one…”
I understand it completely, it shows they’re smarter and more savvy to what’s cool than the other kids who probably all listen to Blink 182 or whoever.
J. Temperance, that’s a fair interpretation of what Apatow might be going for, but regardless it plays out for me as representative of the puritanical streak some commentators were complaining is the sole mode of contemporary mainstream American film. I think that’s too broad a brushstroke, and picked the Farrellys as counterexample for their chipper certainty that the nicest guy you meet has his kinks and fetishes, and that’s ok. Personal preference, as you say.
Dan Coyle, The Heartbreak Kid is such an appalling mess I actually can’t guess what its positive thing was. The fact that it was so awful May’s original got a push?
Well, since the thread was talking about nudity, I was referring to Ms. Malin Akerman’s topless scene. It was quite a balm in a horrifying vortex of awful. You know what I mean, when you feel like you’re drowning in a terrible movie and you latch onto something, anything, to keep from performing seppuku to escape it? Maybe that caused me to be more charitable towards her performance as Laurie than, oh, everyone else who saw Watchmen.
(but hey, she’s very good when she finds out the Comedian is her father, played that reaction well)
Back to Apatow, he recently answered the “are you conservative” question in Playboy:
http://www.playboy.com/articles/judd-apatow-20q-interview/index.html?page=2
Care to post his comment, Dan Coyle? Some of us would prefer not to click on a link to Playboy while at work.
Dan, I don’t even see an “are you conservative” question in that interview, and I checked both pages.
Are you talking about the abortion question? Which he answers, quite rightly, by saying that if Heigl’s character had an abortion, the film would have been eleven minutes long. And that the film had nothing to do with pro-abortion or anti-abortion– it’s just about two people who don’t know each other well but give it a try.
Here’s the thing: Andy’s revulsion isn’t with porn. It’s with his own body/sexual feelings. That’s the entire point of the scene (remember, the porn star takes on his voice and the punchline of the scene is “I AM YOU!”). Of course the guy has trouble masturbating; he associates sex with humiliation and pain, as that rather hilarious montage earlier in the film shows us.
I do agree Apatow sanded off the edges of man-children like this, but, frankly, he did it to a far less offensive degree than the godawful “Napoleon Dynamite” and, yeah, I can’t blame him for leaving out the misogyny.
As far as his co-workers, I don’t think Apatow denies they’re kind of obnoxious. But A) all of these guys exist. Odds are pretty good if you’re a man in America you’re friends with at least one of them, probably all three, whether you know it/are willing to admit it or not. B) the movie points out they’re no more functional or healthy than Andy; in fact that’s kind of the central theme. About the only one that’s a reasonably sane human being, emotionally speaking, is the stoner. In a way it’s about all four of these guys growing up, Andy forcing them to reflect on how they act.
As far as Apatow being conservative, I think it’s worth asking if he’s conservative because of genuine belief or conservative because he has to get his movies made. Apatow makes crowd-pleasers, and Hollywood tends to get more and more conservative the broader the audience. The guy works within a system, and there’s only so much power you’ve got within that system.
For example, I sincerely doubt that getting naked was ever even ASKED of Heigl or Bell, because Hollywood thinks naked breasts turn off female audience members. It’s kind of interesting: with male-targeted films, you can layer it on, but with “women’s pictures”, Hollywood gets conservative extremely quickly, both in what it’ll show and on deeper levels.
Normally I don’t speak for other commenters, but I think Campaspe would slap you upside the head for implying KNOCKED UP or FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL are “women’s pictures.”
Tom: it was the question previous to that, wasn’t it?
Dan: I agree Andy forced them to reflect on their behavior, and yeah, I know guys like that, but I still didn’t like them. I wanted Andy to realize he didn’t need their approval or friendship- after the “outing”, hell, he’s almost willing to quit his job than face their disapproval. It was just one of those… things that bug me.
Part of this I blame Apatow, partially I blame the actors- Rudd as David shifts abruptly from sympathetic to near-psychotic one too many times, given how little time he actually spent with Amy. He’s kind of pathetic, and Rudd, usually a reliable actor, is a bit lost. Cal is… I dunno. Not one of Rogen’s best performances, he feels like he wandered in as the stock Kevin Smith Closeted Gay Character that says Faggot a Lot, so Kevin can get away with his homophobic slurs, because ha ha ha, the guy sayin’ em likes boys! I really thought they were going for a Cal “I’m Gay!” moment, but they didn’t. Jay is.. well, I half-agree with Soderberg’s “corruptor of things” statement, but the story asks us to feel pity for him when he destroyed his relationship through his own willful disregard for fidelity. Then boom, his girl is preggers and he goes from ladies man to grownup overnight. Which I liked, but… I just thought that Andy needed more than just these three fuckheads if he was ever going to grow up.
The irony is, I kinda do like the film, but only because Carrell carries it.
When I watched KNOCKED UP, I was under the impression that Heigl’s character didn’t remove her bra, because she, even though extremely drunk, still had enough sense to know she didn’t really want to remove all her clothing in front of the slob of a man she was having sex with.
And that it was a comedy.
Showing actual sex nudity tends to overshadow the funny (unless it’s meant to be laughed at), just as much as it could take one out of drama, as it was mentioned Scorsese has said.
@Dan Coyle: Jesus, how did I miss that? Mea culpa.
Oh, and here’s what Big Hollywood’s John Nolte has to say about Apatow:
“Raunchy comedies aren’t anything new; it’s just that Apatow (and his too-many imitators) are all about the raunch. You can feel the story gears turn to get to the raunch – to get to the “big” set-piece — you can feel the strain to fashion an iconic moment. Content has little to do with whether or not something’s funny. It’s all in the set up, and with the Apatow crowd you can see the wizard pull the strings. There’s practically a sign that reads, “Cool People Laugh Here.””
Christ, what a goddamn baby he is.
@Tony – Slap, no. Set my teacup down with a clatter and fix Dan with a basilisk glare, absolutely.
@Campaspe
Actually, it was an unclear logical jump. Let me make the progression clearer.
I don’t think either of those movies are “women’s pictures”, of course. I do think, however, that they were designed to be movies that had some appeal to female moviegoers: they were gunning for the date crowd, and that meant, as far as Hollywood was concerned, no nudity. I think if it had been exclusively male-targeted, Kristen Bell would either have gotten her top off, or been replaced with an actress who would.
From there, I actually thought about movies aimed exclusively at women and it strikes me that as a rule, the more a movie wants a female audience, the more conservative it will get in certain topics, even by Hollywood standards. Somehow I doubt this is some sort of original insight, but I think it’s interesting.
But Dan, how is either of those movies conservative? Dialogue and situations are extremely raunchy in both cases, and in the case of FSM there is full-frontal male nudity, which, onscreen at least, women often find more crass than a breast here or there.
My favourite recent display of cinematic female nudity was that shaky-cam thriller OPEN WATER. There’s a scene where the couple is in bed, the man makes an overture to his naked wife, she says she’s not in the mood, he tries to get her in the mood, she’s still not in the mood, and he lets it go.
The scene got a fair number of chuckles in the theater, and a lot of complaints about how unnecessary the nudity was. But it just felt right: it was just something natural– after all, some people do sleep without clothing– and a little sexy without there being any actual sex. I didn’t think about “how did they convince the actress to do this”– I just thought about these two characters, these two lives on the screen. It was, to my mind, the very opposite of exploitative.
@ Tom – Perhaps true, but then throwing those selfsame actors in the water with REAL FREAKIN’ SHARKS strikes me as more than a little exploitative. And I liked the movie. But maybe that’s my irrational fear of sharks talking.
@Dan – In fact, I did understand what you were saying and I agree. I have zero solid research but my impression is that women of all political persuasions are rather alienated by a large portion of female nudity in films–they judge, quite correctly, that it’s there to titillate men, not illuminate a woman’s life or sexuality in any way.
I just couldn’t resist the joke. Forgive me, I knew you weren’t comparing Knocked Up to Now, Voyager. 🙂
Poor Blanchard Ryan- she’s eaten by Sharks in Open Water and then disappears, only to resurface in Beerfest, where her most notable scene is Kevin Hefferman doing her doggystyle.
“Forgive me, I knew you weren’t comparing Knocked Up to Now, Voyager. :)”
Do NOT tempt me. I’ve been researching popular culture studies for one of my comedy writing gigs and have seen so much ridiculous shit that I really, really want to prank the lot of them.
“But Dan, how is either of those movies conservative?”
Conservative in certain topics, like nudity and relationships, not all. 🙂 Actually, when I saw the movie at a test screening, the women were laughing a LOT harder at the male nudity than the men.