I'm a prude. There, I said it. Indeed, I'm probably more of a prude than I'd care to admit, and certainly more of a prude than I imagined a couple of decades ago.
And yet... I don't think it's my prudishness that has led me to this conclusion: There is way too much nudity on cable television these days, especially at HBO and Showtime. Indeed, it has essentially reached the point of self-satire.
Nudity in film and its effects on society have been debated since film began, and certainly since it prompted the Hays Code in Hollywood following the occasionally libertine silent-film era. And at this point, those who oppose nudity in film and television have lost.
These days, the question has evolved into how much of this nudity is art, and how much crosses over into something else entirely. The issue arose (again) last week when
BuzzFeed's Kate Aurthur interviewed Nic Pizzolatto, the creator of HBO's excellent
True Detective, the first season of which ended on Sunday. Aurthur mainly focused on the storylines within the series and the themes evoked — religious, ethical, and relational — but also noted the "HBO-y" nudity that appeared in several of the eight episodes in Season 1. Pizzolatto defensively noted that "there's not a great deal of nudity in the series at all," but that "a clear mandate in pay-cable for a certain level of nudity" exists.
