Nude Music Videos

[Mr. TM]

Should they be allowed?

I was going through the news today and I cam across a story about Erykah Badu. She is an R&B star who was recently fined $500 for filming her music video, in the buck. The charge was not much of a deal, just a misdeemer, but it got me thinking. Should there be nude music videos?

If you ever go through the music channels, you will see almost every woman in a Hip Hop video nearly naked. Here is Drake: "The Best I Ever Had"

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Now we see that, and think it is degrading to women and all that. But they are not nude in it. Going through the short history of music videos, we will find many that contain nudity, we think of "What's My Age Again" by Blink 182, where the three lads are naked throughout the video. But that was more of a comedy video.

Recently french band Make The Girl Dance released a song "Baby Baby Baby" which showcased the lovely french singers naked as they walked down the streets of Paris.

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This is just one of the versions of the video. There are three I have seen, one with French subtitiles, one with English as shown, and one, uncensored.

It got me thinking, we are a pretty touchy society when it comes to nudity. But is it time we had music videos that could be showcased a ittle later at night that were nude. Or even better than that, videos, shot, with nudity that can be shown at any time of the day. Music videos are art, some more artful than others (compare "Baby Baby Baby" to "Superman" by Eminem which feautured a sex scene). Should the artist view, despite featuring pornography be able to be shown at any time of the day, without the censoring that is put up instead?

 

[Alex]

Well I was reading that the video to Red Hot Chili Peppers' Catholic School Girls Rule was not shown because it had nudity (there was about 10 seconds of boobs) Admittedly the entire song was about sex as well.

Well it seems people don't want nudity but they don't mind sexual innuendo songs played all the time like Disco Stick, Smack That etc.

I seem to think if the nudity doesn't imply anything e.g. Blink 182 just pissing about then it should be alright, I mean kids piss about when they're naked as well. But if it's implying some sort of sexual urge then I don't think so.

 

[Dagger Dias]

This is a very grey area. There are people who will complain about nudity no matter what the situation is, and then there are people who will argue that the human body is beautiful therefore it should not be censored, etc.... Those two sides are ALWAYS going to be arguing. I find myself, like most people probably will, to be somewhere in the middle of the spectrum when it comes to arguments like that. I don't care for nudity myself, but if the musicians feel that it's necessary for there to be a nude person in the music video, then that's their decision. Countless artists have gotten away with passing off nudity as "art", so musicians will probably use a similar point and try to argue that the nudity in the video(es) is supposed to make the video come alive and become more realistic and better, or something. I'm personally against it, although I have higher standards than the average human being but am very open to discussing others' viewpoints despite disagreeing with them.

Now then, when it comes to the issue of censoring videos that contain nudity.... I think that the videos that air on tv DO need to be censored if someone is nude because no matter what time of the day, children could be watching. How is that solved? The easy compromise would be for the version of the video that people watch at a concert or view on a DVD they purchase, those can contain the video in its unaltered form, but on tv it should be censored. Everyone wins that way because the "bad stuff" is censored on tv but those who want to see the unaltered video can just buy one of that band's/musician's DVD's to see it there. That's just my two cents.

 

[Ferbian]

Hmm it's a good question TM.

Although I do have my doubts the world wouldn't be completely frowned upon the fact that people would be completely exposed and there will eventually be one large debate on how the music world is scarring children (or so I would imagine it could end up) I do think that to some degree that the music video's is and can be too censored for their own good.

Why? because if you look at it, today's music is censored as soon as there's either a curse word or something otherwise offensive going on, I'm gonna go ahead and take a great example, Eminem - Cleaning out my closet, that one or Stan, those two songs has to be the most censored songs I have yet to run into, whole sentences being blurred out, and it's saddening having to search through Youtube for example to find a properly uncensored song.

We got a new act in Denmark, or well it's a rising act called "Electronic Lady Lab" yes I know ridiculous name, but that's not the point, the point is that the music video has a scene where the singer pours what should be understood to be gasoline onto a person in the video, and then set him on fire, now the common brain would know it's water that's poured onto him, yet the most mainstream Danish music television station choose to censor the whole scene out.

While I think nude music video's may be a step too far at certain points, I do think that this thread just shows the common amount of censoring the world has been doing throughout so many years, and quite frankly, I find it absolutely ridiculous that people are so sensitive, because while it saves the children a few "bad" moments where they either see something that will make them ask a lot of confused questions, or hear a word that they will eventually go on to use, I don't see the need to be so hypocritical to censor every little bit, for the sake of saving the children a few years of innocence as opposed to the fact that they will most definitely learn the word, see the images etc. in their teens.