“HBO, you’re busted!”
I’m a hot-blooded American male of the heterosexual persuasion, and as an adult I confess I don’t mind seeing the occasional full-frontal, unsheathed breast on pay cable TV [as opposed to ‘side boobage’ which is featured on broadcast and basic cable]. But this article by Mary McNamara, LA Times TV critic, makes a really good point:
Although it has not quite recaptured the magic of “The Sopranos,” there is no denying that HBO is once again in full stride. With Emmy-winning movies, a panoply of well-done documentaries, successful comedies and dramatic hits both popular — “True Blood” — and critical — “Boardwalk Empire,” “Treme” — the premium network bursts with so much justified confidence that it took on the perilous realm of fantasy with the well-received “Game of Thrones.”
So maybe it’s time to tone down the tits.
I write the word knowing it is going to render my editors and readers apoplectic — why not use the less crude “breasts?” Because I don’t mean breasts. Breasts are what you see on cable during a lovemaking scene or when a character is caught unawares or when, as in the season finale of “Game of Thrones,” the last of the Targaryens rises, naked and miraculous, from her husband’s funeral pyre with three baby dragons clinging to her.
Tits are what you see in a strip club or a brothel, when conversations or action between men, which usually have nothing to do with said strip club or brothel, are surrounded by nameless and silent women lounging or gyrating about in various stages of undress.
In one episode of “Game of Thrones,” the upper frontals got so gratuitous — two women teaching themselves the tricks of prostitution while a male character, fully clothed, muses about his personal history and definition of power — that fans took to Twitter to complain. Even the fine finale included a young nude woman washing her particulars while her elderly john monologued about the nature of kings.
Not that I have an internal boob-o-meter tracking all things mammarian, but it does seem like “Game of Thrones” has taken this… uh, narrative device… to particular extremes. The aforementioned scene with the “elderly john” and the “young nude woman washing her particulars” is a notable example because for the life of me, I could figure out no purpose for this scene to exist in the first place. It didn’t advance the plot. It was just a bunch of needless exposition and babbling conjecture. The only rationale I can summon up for the inclusion of the scene is because somebody on the writing staff had the bright idea, “I know. Let’s have some old fart musing about life while a naked whore washes herself in the background. It will be so… pay cable.”
McNamara continues:
Although there is male nudity — men occasionally, though not always, appear shirtless and/or bottomless when they are having sex with women — there are no male brothels, no scenes of clothed women, or men for that matter, sitting around chatting in a room filled with naked men. Well, maybe there was a scene or two like that in “Rome,” but you get my point. The brothel scenes are there, ostensibly to make a point about men and power.
That may be elevating the thought process a bit too much. I’m only guessing, but I figure HBO has some internal guidelines requiring a certain amount of nudity — mostly female — per episode of their series. I’m not kidding. Nudity is one of the ways pay cable series distinguish themselves from broadcast and basic cable. Therefore it stands to reason show runners are expected to deliver the goods on those fronts [and backs, as long as they’re naked].
If any TV writers would care to weigh in on this subject, please do. But only with your clothes on.
Bottom line (and by the way, HBO series show lots of bare bottoms, too), “Game of Thrones” has achieved something I thought impossible: Making me want to see less nudity on a TV series. And this from a guy who is a big fan of “Californication.” There’s gratuitous. And there’s gratuitous. Too often this season, “GOT” has veered toward the latter IMHO.
How about you? Too much nudity on TV? Not enough? More male nudity to balance female nudity? And should HBO change its name from Home Box Office to Hankering Bare Orbs?