Friday, September 08, 2006
No More Tits In PG Movies
The golden age of tits in PG movies came between the late-sixties and the mid-eighties. The stifling Hay's Production Code had been relaxed, allowing all sorts of moral bankruptcy to corrupt innocent film-cameras and the MPAA's ratings board, set up to self-govern Hollywood's output was still working out where everything went. What followed was the golden era of New Hollywood film-making where young auteurs, influenced by the French New-Wave, produced challenging, ambitiously artistic movies. And tits in PG movies.
As always, the following is NSFW.
Yellowbeard: People will try and tell you that Yellowbeard is a lost classic mostly becuase it was lost. Unfortunately it has re-appeared on DVD recently so you can watch Graham Chapman of Monty Python slowly descending into terminal alcoholism and Tommy Chong of Cheech and Chong demonstrating why he ended up running a head-shop. One thing they did get right was putting some topless ladies into a scene as some all-purpose servant girls so making a lot of kids watching this undercooked pirate comedy want to watch it again. Later on they would try and convince total strangers that Yellowbeard was a lost classic. Men.
Modern Problems: Chevy Chase is granted the power of telekenisis by some friendly nuclear waste and plots revenge on people and stuff, so IMDB tells me. Patti D'Arbanville does show a nipple while in bed. She was thirty at the time, having spent the last fifteen years involved with Andy Warhol's Factory, including a lesbian sex scene at seventeen, which may explain why she looks fifty in this picture.
Force 10 from Navarone: Barbara Bach, who had to kiss Roger Moore in The Spy Who Loved Me, had to kiss a nazi in this World War 2 adventure sequel. To make things worse, they didn't have much space on Navarone so Barbara had to bathe in a little tin bath in the corner of the nazi's office. To make things even more worse, even though the film had Barbara showing her breasts, and Han Solo, Quint and Apollo Creed mounting a daring mission to kill lots of nazis, the film still wasn't that good. Some films just can't be helped. Still - tits:
Clash of the Titans: Back for a second apearance because it really is nothing but tits and because we have a couple of lady readers, here's another picture from this glorious fantasy cheese-fest. This time it's of chunky-haired man-meat Harry Hamlin standing around in his undies.
Jaws: Probably the most famous naked lady in all of PG movies is Bruce the shark's first victim, a stoned hippy girl who goes skinny dipping. The question we all had before DVDs and image manipulation software was 'does she show anything?'. The answer is 'kind of'.
Here's her stripping off on the beach, showing a great deal of healthy, fun-loving bouncing breast, and the one frame where a nipple is actually showing.
And here's the pixellated nipple of proof.
Then there is the shot of her swimming naked, filmed from below and looking straight up, which I have fond memories of being really embarrassed watching with my mum.
The girl is in almost complete silhouette here but, given today's contrast controls, is there any detail?
Yes! The nipples are definitely highlighted and there, looking at the crotch, is the unmistakable triangular shadow of 70's pubic hair. Retro!
Finally here's a picture of the beautiful young woman screaming in agony while being savagely eaten by a monster that we are only looking at to see if she's showing a nipple.
While the still-clear water is technically covering her breasts, her violent death-throes thin the water enough to show the colour and some of the detail of her left nipple. Result!
Jaws is one of those films that is constantly used as an example of the pussification of the ratings system. Following the death of the above young lady (with tits) we have two hours of close-ups of severed limbs, rotting corpses with dangling eyeballs, children getting ripped to shreds and gallons and gallons of red blood. Raiders of the Lost Ark, while tragically lacking any bare nipples, does have many shootings, including head shots, people getting splattered by propellers, face meltings and head explosions. The Outlaw Josey Wales (featured in the first column) is an orgy of rape and death that still managed to get a PG rating in America.
This is not because the ratings board was more hardcore back then, but simply because there was no PG-13 rating until the mid-80's. Before then it was either the family friendly PG or the adult friendly R and, faced with all the movies that belonged somewhere in that huge gap between what a 7 and a 17 year old can handle, some very wacky decisions were made. It was Poltergeist, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom and Gremlins - all Spielberg productions - that caused the creation of the PG-13 - a Spielberg suggestion - after they caused so many complaints. Interestingly the problem with Poltergeist was some small instances of Marijuana use and not the part where the guy rips his own face off.
After this, PGs came to mean 'for kids' and anything slightly unpleasant was put up to a PG-13. PG-13 still had the stigma of 'PG' in it's name, though, linking it to children rather than young adults, so drugs and sex got pushed further into 'R' territory, leaving PG-13's with bloodless violence and one instance of the word 'fuck' per film.
You should read Chris' review of This Film Is Not Yet Rated (and then watch the film too) for a more in depth look at the wackiness of the MPAA ratings board and it's infantilising effect on modern American film-making, but I will leave you with an example of where the American PG is at today.
The Fifth Element: In which Bruce Willis saves the world while wearing a bright orange rubber vest, and Milla Jovovich, playing and alien who babbles so incoherently you could almost believe she wasn't acting, shows her nipples twice.
First here:
And secondly here:
Both shots are non-sexualised, especially the second, where Milla plays it completely innocently and the two priests in the foreground turn away to respect her privacy. Plus the nipples are all blurry and far away. The traditionally prissy British Board of Film Censors gave this film a PG rating. America gave it a PG-13.
America you bunch of pussies.
The Wild West of the PG has been conquered and now there is only the Wild West themed PG family amusement park smelling slightly of old nappies.
Anyway, while you go and mourn the passing of an age, I'm off to trawl for porn. Bye!
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Now I'm starting to feel creepy for reading this.
It's the last one, I promise.
Promise nothing!