Nekkid

Mannion is soliciting examples of great nude scenes or sex scenes, gratuitous or not. My all-time favorite sex scene, which is also a nude scene, is in The Piano, when Holly Hunter and Harvey Keitel finally get down to business. It’s just a wonderful scene, in that it is both breathtaking and realistic at the same time, and aided in no small part by the fact that Holly Hunter has a spectacularly beautiful body. (Harvey’s is nothing to sneeze at, either, it has to be said.)

Another of my favorite nude scenes is in Velvet Goldmine, when Ewan McGregor as Curt Wild—half Iggy Pop, half Lou Reed—gets his dick out onstage and jumps up and down, committing to celluloid the very definition of wild abandon.

As an aside, Mannion’s been discussing the disparity between female and male onscreen nudity. My feeling is that at least part if it is attributable to the fact that most straight women don’t mind seeing women nude onscreen—largely because our entire culture normalizes the sensuality of the female form, which even women themselves can’t escape—nearly as much as most straight men mind seeing men nude onscreen. Also, I don’t know many women, or even gay men, who get especially eroticized at the sight of a flaccid cock, which is all our ratings system really allows, so male frontal seems rather altogether pointless, aside from instigating amusing “Grower v. Shower?” debates.