Color Blind To Nudity

Recently, PZ Meyers did what I recently did regarding the movie, Avatar, and posted a movie review on his blog, Pharyngula, about it. I guess great minds think alike -- except I did it first. (Nyah-nyah!)

But he mentioned something interesting about the main characters being big, blue, and naked. Somehow, seems like we, as a society, don't seem to mind nudity all that much, provided that it's placed in some other hue besides fleshtone. Whether it's the big blue and virtually topless Na'vi aliens of Pandora, or the big blue and strangely half-circumcised penis of Dr. Manhattan, we seem to regard colorized nudity to be something which doesn't count -- almost as if paint acts as a kind of clothing.

This is nothing new. Back in the 1960's the Star Trek pilot episode, "The Cage" featured the green-skinned Orion women, who were said to be sexually irresistable. Susan oliver danced about in her barely clad costume and shook her generous hips (Oh, how I wish Hollywood would bring back real women who are shaped like that!) and made for a watershed event in terms of how much sexuality sci-fi could get away with on television and the silver screen. All hail the Starfleet Uniform miniskirt!

But there's more to it than that. We seem to regard CGI nudity in that same category. It's as if the fact that the nudity is generated by a computer somehow masks actual nudity even more effectively than paint. We again can point to Dr. Manhattan, or the deliberate nudity of the CGI film, Beowulf, which had plenty of computer-nudity and even dared to show Sir Anthony Hopkins nearly naked. But this really is a phenomenon that goes all the way back to the film Boogie Nights, which culminated with an obvious piece of special effects which added at least five inches to Marky-Mark Walhlberg's dick. No, you're not a star.

But if they can do that with computers, what's not possible? Hmmm, maybe they should re-do the Laura Croft Tomb Raider movies! Or maybe, by contrast, Playboy magazine should finally stop air-brushing? With such realism made possible with such technology, it's really only a matter of time before the best X-rated movies won't even need victimized women on cocaine doing it with old male thugs on Viagra anymore. (Good riddance!) Supersized boobs will merely be a mouse-click away. And we really won't be able to tell the difference between real boobs on a fat woman and fake boobs on a skinny one, because a computer can simply take one and superimpose it on the other. There may even be computer programmable porno movies where you can type in your preferences to make hours and hours of fun-filled screwing scenes with women who have exactly the proportions you prefer.

Oh, it's a great time to be male!

My point in talking about all that is simply this: How is it that in the midst of all this, we somehow developed enough anal-retentiveness as a society to go all ape-shit when Janet Jackson showed her non-painted, non-CGI generated, and merely B-cup sized boob for half a damned second on the halftime show of the 2004 Superbowl? And why, in the midst of all the scantily-clad female back-up dancers and shirtless male dancers in spandex, did this at all matter?

It's the 21st century going on one decade as of midnight tonight, and we'll have to all recognize that if we can't come to grips with our own skin, we'll never get by. This matters, not because we're a society of prudes who need to get over it -- although that's a compelling enough reason by itself. No, it matters because the advertizers who want to take advantage of us do so by titilating us sexually, and the prudes who fight agaisnt open sexuality unwittingly give them cover -- allowing them to snipe at us with sneak peeks at the forbidden. To free ourselves from this situation, we need to open our minds, and sometimes our buttons, to the reality that nudity isn't such a big deal. With that mindset, society forces advertizers to sell their products based on their merit - and that scares them!

But it matters also to achieving a more peaceful world. There are two simple ways entertainment can be spiced up: One is with more sex. The other is with more violence. And with one avenue closed, the other avenue becomes more attractive to producers. We've seen this with soap operas -- where the endless audience of As the World Turns has gotten bored with all the sex, and so episodes now frequently feature murder. But outside the world of soaps, the avenue of sex has only barely been used, and so we find that our children frequently see people being killed with guns, and seldom seeing the tenderness of human love and affection.

Pardon the double entendre, but fuck that!

Well, I say, more sex, less violence! 'Make love not war' is a mantra that is equally suitable for the silver screen as it once was for the war in Vietnam. And women can easily use their sexuality to persuade more men to be non-violent. O, Woman, thou has more power than thou knowest! Fucking USE it! You'll find that witholding sex from the violent shitheads of this world quickly eliminates their presence. And we NEED that!

And the first step towards that situation, is getting over the nudity. We shouldn't have to resort to CGI or pretty blue or green colors in order to allow us to see skin. Let's be adults about our bodies, for once!

Eric