NatGeo & so called "Fetishisation of the other"

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Ive noticed that in National Geographic we are often treated to Amazonians in the nude. There are no age limitations or gender restrictions and full frontal nudity is acceptable. A Nat Geo portrayal of Western Nudism however censored out genitalia completely opting to show only the occasional breast and buttock.

http://abagond.wordpress.com/2013/05/23 ... ic-nudity/
http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/arc ... 40828.html
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/M ... phicNudity
http://www.networkedheritage.org/wp-con ... cation.pdf

The point is that there is a time honoured tradition of portraying tribespeople in the nude without any form of censorship. For some reason the same liberties arent taken when naturists are portrayed in the west.

I hasten to add that this isnt really a racial issue so much as a cultural one. White/Asian/Black naturists in the west are all censored out but in an indigenous setting there is no censorship. Interestingly a BBC documentary showed a tv presenter living al fresco with the natives. His genitalia were censored where the tribesmen werent. This may have been a request on his part but seen contextually it may be down to something else entirely.

The SG1 example I edited out was meant to accompany this point. At the time of viewing it reminded me of this particular debate. When viewed in the context of cultural elitism it really does leave one with a bitter aftertaste

The issue of context seems to be an ever present spectre in the thread. The problem with this argument is that a nudist camp would seem to be an appropriate context for full frontal nudity and indeed that's precisely what goes on there. If people are suggesting that there is a difference between a village in Africa where the women are bare breasted and a village in Texas where the women are bare breasted I would love to hear a justification for that

Last edited by binaryodes on 06 Feb 2014, 6:35 pm, edited 12 times in total.

Yeah, it's been an elephant in the room for a long time that only black women with light skin are ever featured in TV productions. And Asian actors? Forget about it. There's that guy on the Walking Dead, George Takai occasionally, and in both iterations of Hawaii 5-0. Oh, and The Green Hornet and Bonanza....but those probably aren't shining examples of racial sensitivity, even if Bonanza went out of its way to write stories critical of white supremacists.

Uh,B.D.Wong in Law and Order.Forrest Whitaker in Ghost Dog The Way of the Samurai,he is one of my favorite actors.Michael Beach from Third Watch.Gaborey Sidibe is in a few shows.We do need more variety but to say there is none is not really correct.

Well I don't know the show or the actresses involved but I wouldn't make that assumption. The blonde actress might not agreed to it or it wasn't in her contract or something like that. I don't think they'd be any more apprehensive about a white woman being nude in a film than they would one of color. As far as nudity in film, I imagine it is probably mostly white women.

Maybe the white woman wasn't comfortable with having nudity broadcast. Maybe the other woman was only prepared to do it because she needed the work. It's all fruitless speculation.

Casual nudity is shown in National Geographic because that's just how it is in some African cultures.

Im not so sure about that. If the models were white I cant imagine that that would be acceptable really. Can you imagine a full page spread of 13 yr old girls running about starkers in the local woodland... no? (Apologies for the mental images). This is precisely what we get in the National Geographic however. It seems a little more than kitchen sink photography.

Do you want National Geographic photographers to hand out t-shirts or something when they're photographing cultures that don't wear full-coverage clothing? A lot of cultures in warmer parts of the world go naked or what a lot of people would consider half clothed because that's what's comfortable in that environment. You don't see it very often with with white people because there simply aren't very many white cultures that go around naked or half naked, both because they tend to live in colder climates and they tend to have a more conservative culture.

I have no problem with nudity of any kind... I also have no problem with the photos themselves. Its the disconnect between the fact that its acceptable for an ethnic underage girl to be nude but not a white underage girl. I mean surely we can agree that that's odd. You missed the point a little.

Youll never see a picture of a white teenager in the nude. It would be decried as child pornography. Thats the point im making and you're focusing in on a rather irrelevant point

As others have said, there could be many reasons why the white woman was not portrayed more graphically, but here's another angle...artistic expression.

The white woman was kidnapped and basically being forced to submit to this bonding (IIRC, the parasite rejected her and she was killed). Hence, the concealment of her nudity might have been artistic reflection of her being an unwilling participant in the ritual while the other woman (who needed a new host body) was a willing participant.

Both women were unwilling....

I think the important distinction isn't race, but the context of the photograph.

Photographing people who are publically "naked" would be very different to photographing people naked in private, or consciously making a child strip to be photographed naked.

Ah thats not what I meant. There are white naturists for instance. There are entire clothes free communities. That was what I was referring to. It would be unacceptable to feature 12 year old naturists in the nude. I do concede however that it would be equally unacceptable to feature nude 12 year old african american naturists

Would it be taboo to feature a tribe of blonde haired blue eyed nords who eschew clothing however? I think that such a tribe would never be featured in National Geographic. The idea of a 12 year old blonde haired blue eyed nord in the nude is unmentionable

In terms of story cannon, no. The woman with the parasite had no will of her own anymore. So, in that sense, she was "willing."

Once possessed by a parasite, the host becomes the "body" of the parasite. Someone would have to be exceptionally strong-willed to influence the parasite's direction over their body.

The nudity occurred before the implantation so she was unwilling at the time of the disrobing.

To go back to the proposed scenario a quick google search turned up a national geographic video featuring white nudists in suburban america. There were brief flashes of nudity but genitalia were censored. Now im genuinely puzzled as to why this is the case. It would seem to discount the idea that its "cinema verité" to show nude Africans

I'll reiterate my theory: African tribespeople are essentially another exotic curiosity for western viewers. Shot of flamingoes pan to hippos transition with a herd of stampeding wildebeast and now an image of a buxom african woman washing her clothes. Its not dehumanising because I imagine that the premise is that the lack of "civilisation" excludes them from the wider sphere of humanity.

Suburban Americans on the other hand are afforded the dignity of censorship of their genitalia because the trappings of civilisation somehow make exhibitionism taboo

Last edited by binaryodes on 06 Feb 2014, 5:46 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Youever read an article on nudism/naturalism? They are out there, in the same educational context.

All of this over 20 seconds of nudity in a 20-year old movie?

One had dark skin and the other had light skin, and the dark-skinned one was shown nude while the light-skinned one wasn't ... neither woman was exploited - they were both of legal age and they both got paid, so what's the big deal?