Funny, I don't remember seeing a black box in Boogie Nights

Jeremy

why are there black boxes? that's bullshit. show me the peen!

I find it truly bizarre that the management of Salon feels it necessary to protect us from (gasp!) penises, particularly in conjunction with an article that explicitly points out (and implicitly derides) the double standard applied to male genitalia as compared to female genitalia. Grow up.

...that doesn't actually show any?!

What exactly is the point of a collection of clips of memorable scenes of male full-frontal nudity ("NSFW!") without any male full-frontal nudity?

After seeing "Life of Brian," my husband and I watched it on TV - the Comedy Channel, I think. We wondered exactly how they were going to handle the unforgivable (by their standards) scene - just cut it from the movie, or edit the scene differently, or what?

Well, they dealt with it by creating a moving blue dot that covered the actor's genitals at all times. To me this looked far more obscene, and drew far more attention to the forbidden zone, than simple nudity ever could. I feel the same way about pixelization.

I remeber being so impressed with "A Room With a View" and its swimming-hole scene, because an American film would have used carefully placed branches, rocks, and characters' arms to make sure we never saw their rather ordinary and human members. Aren't the British supposed to be the uptight, "Victorian" folks?

One of the "Austin Powers" movies had a very funny parady of concealment techniques, with an endless sequence of banans, balloons, and other such props covering up the characters' genitals and breasts. Then "Beowulf" came along - the scene in which Beowulf fights Grendel naked looked exactly liked that parody, but was meant to be taken seriously....

An article about our society's discomfort with male nudity, celebrating 10 films that managed to break down the taboo, links to a clip compilation... that is censored.

Or it's a meta-commentary on Salon being less culturally progressive than, say, "Forgetting Sarah Marshall".

Journalism epic fail.

I WANTED TO SELL MY EYES!!!