If you find the content offensive or gratuitous there is the option to not watch it.
Sent from my Windows Phone From: David Lynch Sent: Friday, July 01, 2011 9:57 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] Tits and Breasts on HBO I agree that the nudity seems pretty gratuitous at times, but I'm not totally sure that I buy the implicit part of the argument that it's somehow worse for female characters. I'd argue that 100% of the below-the-belt male nudity that I can recall from Game of Thrones was extraneous to the plot in the sense that it could have been done with some cover or by framing from the waist up without losing anything. The same applies to the vast majority of the female nudity that I can recall, but not necessarily all of it (e.g., Danerys' last scene and Cat's sister breastfeeding.) Also, if she gets to use The Sopranos as an example, I get to counter with Oz, which had recappers tittering about "gratuitous dong shot(s)" while the (very few) female characters pretty much kept their clothes on. On Fri, Jul 1, 2011 at 20:41, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: > LA Times TV critic Mary McNamara explains why it is time for HBO to stop > with the tits already in what I gather is a piece for this Sunday's > Calender, available online at: > > http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/news/tv/la-ca-hbo-breasts-20110703,0,6762922.story > > This is an articulate expression of growing sentiment I have seen expressed > in recent months, both online and in face to face conversations, mostly > since Game of Thrones. I am surprised that there is a lot in it that I agree > with (surprised because, like Kramer in that Seinfeld episode with the naked > woman traipsing around in the apartment across the street, few heterosexual > American men can really bring themselves to call for less female nudity on > their television sets). > > Still, there was much I did not agree with. I don't agree that upper body > female frontal nudity is always, or even mostly, gratuitous and exploitative > (that she calls "tits", as opposed to the artistic depiction of boobs, as in > the final scene of the season-ending episode of Thrones, which McNamara, > with some justification, calls the "the best use of female nudity on > television ever") on HBO. I am currently re-watching the complete series of > The Sopranos, and have been confirmed in my judgement that the mostly > plastic "tits" at the Bing are almost always an essential marker of the > underlying limited humanity of Tony and his boys, and almost never really > used for erotic titillation. The nudity in the various sex scenes most of > the time come closer to McNamara's breasts than tits (in a variation of what > Paul Newman once famously said about the "The Player" - they are the kinds > of scenes where we usually don't see the tits of the women we want to see, > but mostly the tits of the women we don't want). Ditto the use of boobs in > Deadwood. I thought Rome was a bit titty excessive (I only saw the first > season of that), but unlike McNamara, I think their use in Boardwalk Empire > was mostly justified. I have not seen the HBO vampire show, I hear there are > a lot of tits in that. > > But Thrones does seem to have set a new level for gratuitous tit shots. > There were a couple of much discussed scenes where the boobs seemed to be > thrown in merely to keep the audience from flipping during extended periods > of plot exposition by one of the main characters. Again, unlike Ms. McNamara > I am not automatically offended by the use of naked female breasts - I have > found it possible to appreciate the beauty of the female form (okay, lust > after hot babes) while also respecting women for their intelligence, humor > and abilities. But a few years after my age stopped ending in the word > "teen" I stopped being interested primarily in the sight of strange female > breasts (though a certain interest remains), like most (well, many) grown > men who have seen a few real breasts of real women. The use of tits on > Thrones had the effect on me of undermining what in most other respects was > a successful attempt to tell a fantasy saga that grown-ups could enjoy. But > those long titty scenes threatened to reduce the show to the the its genre > spawn in the sweaty daydreams of 15 year old boy virgins. > > Unlike McNamara, whose article had the pungent aroma of hyper-feminist > puritanism, I would like to see Thrones, and maybe HBO in general, give more > thought to its use of nudity and sexuality, not to focus on de-sexualized > depictions of breasts as in the dragon mother scene, but a more mature, and > effective inclusion of sexuality and eroticism in its dramas. > > > -- > TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! > You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google > Groups "TV or Not TV" group. > To post to this group, send email to [email protected] > To unsubscribe from this group, send email to > [email protected] > For more options, visit this group at > http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -- David J. Lynch [email protected] -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en
