From: foxworth@bnlux1.bnl.gov (Bob Foxworth)
Newsgroups: rec.nude
Subject: Martinez interviewed while nude on TV show
Summary: Standards used by TV broadcasters in showing nudity
Date: 6 Nov 92 05:34:10 GMT
Followup-To: rec.nude
Organization: Brookhaven National Laboratory


I happened to catch a quick tease on WNBC-TV at 0730 on Tuesday (election
day). Not sure if net or local cutaway. It said basically, "interview
with a nude man, today, Maury Povich show at 3 PM".  As it turns out,
my site excuses everyone at 1500 on Election Day to go vote. Since my
wife wouldn't be home until 5, I decided to catch the show at the
Center on site, where a TV set is available. There was even another
person watching the show. Maury Povich used to host "A Current Affair"
on Fox-TV. He now does a one hour show at 3 PM which I am near certain
is an offering of WNBC-TV New York (i.e. not a NBC net feed). The show
is a thinly disguised clone attempt of Donahue, IMHO. (times EST by the way).

I caught the show in progress at about 1510. They were interviewing
5 men in hugger briefs, or whatever they're called, contestants in
some sort of male beauty pageant. Twice during the commercial cutaway
leadins, Povich alluded to the upcoming guest. I was interested in
knowing how the TV show would handle this issue. After all, they
promised us that "a nude man" would be interviewed.
 
Interesting that the 5 contestants might as well have been nude them-
selves, for all the tightness of their briefs did for their appearance.
I suppose that just makes the contrast more apparent in what is
permissible and what is not.

Sure enough at 1530 Povich told the studio audience of several hundred
that they were about to interview a totally naked man. If anyone in the
audience wanted to leave then, they could do so. Two elderly ladies
left, then a couple of black men who appeared to be in their early
twenties. Several women came down from upper rows of seats to sit
closer to the stage, which Povich did not let go uncommented!

It's interesting to note that in what appeared to be a random selection
of people making up the audience, perhaps one percent of them objected to
the point of leaving. ['Random 'assumed none of them knew of the guest
when they came to see the show; I don't know that this is indeed true].

No one in the audience complained audibly, though the attention level
among them was obviously high.  Finally the moment of truth. From
the lead-in it had become obvious the guest was the Martinez fellow
from UC Berkeley. He bounded out of a door, ran down some steps
and took a seat between two women classmates, one of whom was a
complainant about his style of dress in class (or lack of it..) and
the other was a woman who supported his right to do as he did.

The TV audience was spared the ultimate whatever-it-is by the deft,
skillful use of the "patty bowman dot" by the video wizards at NBC.
They made it just small enough for us to see that Martinez was not
wearing any underwear, yet large enough for it to do it's intended
job. It appeared about as large, against his silhouette, as a basket-
ball would, had he held it in front of him.

He took a seat, on stage, between the two women students, facing the
audience with his legs slightly open, at that point the "dot"
followed him like a Louisiana mosquito on a August night. There
were the obligatory closeup head shots of various females in the
audience either giggling or looking embarrassed.

There were short video clips taken outdoors at UCB during the interview
showing Martinez walking around campus nude, with his midsection
covered by a black band. Watching passers-by on campus showed he did
not seem to receive a lot of attention, at least during the time
the clips were taken, and this was during daylight hours.

The questioning seemed generally to show that many men were more
critical of Martinez' actions than the women. I didn't take any
notes so won't try to paraphrase what was said. I had been more
interested, as an ex-broadcasting employee, of how the TV would
handle the issue of nudity.

What I think is interesting is the double standard of how the viewing
audience would react to nudity compared to the in-studio audience.
The broadcast media seems determined that they will not show nudity
on over-the-air TV, even though they will promote the show as being
of nude subject matter. This concerns 'network' TV as compared to
some of the specialty cable channels. 

This is the same thing as the Hemingway episode on ABC-TV "Civil
Wars" a few weeks ago. ABC press agents apparently leaked news
of a "nude episode" to the media writers in the area, and there was
at least one Radio-TV column I saw in Newsday which made noticeable
mention of "prime time nudity".  Well I saw the episode, and the
others in this group who commented on it were right, that is to
say one could see more at a "textile beach" than we saw on this
program. Oh she was nude all right, but was either shot from the side,
shot holding a robe, shot at close angles or otherwise shot while
holding her arms across her chest.

I felt that the promotional material was misleading at best as it
related to the nudity aspect. I'm not saying this was necessarly
good or bad, just that it was there. It is interesting to compare
episodes like these to one I saw several years ago, I believe also
on ABC. It was either "winds of War" or "War and Remembrance", I
really cannot recall which, but there were concentration camp scenes
involving nude people who were being placed in the rooms where they
were to be gassed, then later being taken out to be buried, and there
were scenes of both men and women shown frontally naked, although
the scenes were sometimes fleeting.  There then must be a difference
in how TV broadcasting accepts nudity although I would have thought
that a news/current affairs item would permit it, and an entertainment
show would prohibit it. Here it was the opposite. I would certainly
think this fellow walking nude on campus would be as much news as
anything else.

I would believe the concept of seeing "nudity" on TV presupposes one
would see parts of the actor's body that would not ordinarily be seen
even at a beach i.e. the genitals. The question is then, to me, if one
sees an actor in a dramatization (e.g. Hemingway) or a subject of an
interview show which borders on news/pubaffairs, or even the subject
of a news story, and the implication is made beforehand that the
subject is nude, and then during the show the subjects' genitals
and/or breasts are obliterated by a dot, or by dithering, such that
we only see what could be seen at any beach, what "nudity" was there?
At least in the viewer's eyes?

There was supposed to have been a show on PBS several years ago which
I never saw called "26 bathrooms" which was supposed to have shown
scenes in English households of people using bathrooms, bathing,
etc in which they were nude, and the world did not stop turning
because of it. What then is the criteria by which commercial
broadcasters feel they can promote nudity in upcoming programs yet
fail to offer it when the program is broadcast?  This would probably
be a good subject for some sosh major's doctoral dissertation...

Hope this has not been covered in detail by now. I try to follow this
group but am over a week behind and don't like to use the "catchup"
key, rather try to read what I can to get current. Thus I haven't
seen if anyone else discussed this already.

Does anyone have a copy of that PBS show? I think it ran in 1985 or so.