The Merits of a Blue Wang
Ξ March 24th, 2009 | → Comments Off | ∇ Interesting |
I’d had a very interesting (almost wrote stimulating, but I deftly avoided the Freudian pun) conversation about Watchmen a couple weeks ago and meant to write about it, but got caught up with other things and forgot about it until now.
I’d never read the comic, so I didn’t have any knowledge of what to expect, nor had any discussions about it. I was a blank slate. So I don’t find it particularly surprising that I found the full-frontal male nudity a bit unexpected. When talking about the movie with friends afterwords, I semi-jokingly asked if it was adolescent to think there was a bit much blue penis in the movie, to which I got a surprisingly sharp rebuke that it indeed was. We proceeded to have a short (but very thought-provoking) discussion on the matter. It was pointed out that the movie only replicated the scenes in the comic, which I suppose is true but I think a fifteen second scene has a slightly different visual impact than a single comic cell – but that’s trivial. Also, I agree there was just as much female anatomy being shown, but I’ve never particularly cared for pointless nudity in movies. One of my favorite movies is Ghost in the Shell, in which the main character is nude in the opening scene. I thought the nudity to be so base and pointless (and in fact, I still do) that it led me to basically disregard the rest of the merits of the movie until I watched the TV series a year later.
The main reason I focused on the male nudity is that while I don’t particularly care for flagrant fan-service in movies, I’ve come to accept that is simply how Hollywood makes movies. Without passing any judgment on it, male nudity is just rarer in movies than female nudity, so when it does occur it is unusual and as such has a greater impact. I think that would be the reaction of anyone who is new to the story. I have a friend who is very familiar with the story and said he didn’t even notice the nudity in the movie until it was brought to his attention by a friend. I can buy that – going back to Ghost in the Shell, I don’t even notice how the Major dresses anymore. I accept that she’s a hyper-sexualized character, but I’m so familiar with the series now I forget how she must look to people who are new to the universe (as I was reminded when I showed the first episode of the TV series to a female friend of mine).
That being said, however, I think the reactions of the audience members made uncomfortable by the nudity of Dr. Manhattan actually makes the experience of the movie all the richer for their discomfort. It’s jarring to them – they understand at a more visceral level just how detached Dr. Manhattan is. That sort of emotional reaction just isn’t possible if our traditional cultural mores had been desensitized – I don’t think it’s meant as a challenge, not bringing our cultural conventions to the forefront in an attempt to get us to examine and get past them like so many other movies, but rather to rub a raw nerve precisely because of the reaction it’s suppose to provoke. And it’s a raw nerve that hasn’t been poked into numbness by Hollywood, so it’s particularly effective.
So I say, be uncomfortable with that giant blue penis – it’s perfectly natural.
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