One Last Harpy: Interposing Decency

Before I conclude the Naked Harpies series with a grand analysis of sociopolitical forces in conflict, I want to draw attention to one more harpy, from the 2nd edition D&D Monstrous Manual:

Here we see a transitional form. After the raw naturalism of 1st edition, it's still clear that harpies shouldn't be wearing clothes. But ... but ... the moral panic! The D&D cartoon! Think of the children! So the artist makes use of a visual stratagem as old as prudery itself  - the decorous interposition. In this case, the harpy's arm.

I guess most of us learned in Sunday School how very leafy the Garden of Eden was, and how very long Eve's hair.

For those with a more secular upbringing, you may recall that it was very important for evolving primates to put their right foot forward, or at least swing their arms a little:

Pulp magazine covers sometimes didn't even bother with the interposing object, trusting in the artistic merit of the marble-like,  hairless and pigmentless female form, diaphanously clad or not. But sometimes they used it like pros:

As moral standards for newsstand entertainment tightened, the scenery became more obliging. Here is a wonderful driftwood intervention from the height of the paperback era:

You're probably more familiar with the spoof in Austin Powers, but the height of proscenic propriety was reached in the 1970 sci-fi film Colossus: The Forbin Project, where the evil computer orchestrates a naked tryst that is shown ... well, let's just say it's the only film in history where the choice to drink wine instead of martinis was the difference between an "M" and "X" rating.

Natural Nudity, Lewd Clothing

Following up the previous post, let's take history forward from the 1970's to now. In comparing the old controversy about the nudity in D&D art with more recent controversies about sexualization in D&D art, a few signal differences emerge.

The naked or topless females in OD&D and AD&D are mostly monsters, demons, or goddesses, like the harpy from last time or the memorable Loviatar. There's a certain amount of "realism" behind the nudity - how ridiculous does this foul carrion bird from 4th edition look in a smock?

Yes, she eats rotten flesh, befouls the food of others, lures men to their graves, but her only crime against decorum is daring to wear a brown breastplate with a blue skirt. (At the same time, it is notable that a lot of opportunities for male monster-nudity get passed over in those books, unlike the equal opportunity monsters of the present-day Otherworld miniatures line.)

But isn't it odd that the female adventurer pictures in old D&D are mostly reasonably clad and mostly not sexualized?

I have to grin a little because this generalization is based on a grand total of two female adventurers depicted in the 1st edition AD&D player handbook, and one more inside the DM Guide (though her and her party's adventures take up several illustrations). And feel free to point out the glaring exception: the metal-bikini Fay Wray on the DMG's cover.

Since those days, it seems that the "artistic nudity" or "realistic nudity" loopholes in mainstream gaming art have been sutured firmly shut. And yet, although more women are represented, their sexualization - particularly in player character representations - is even more evident. The difference between female and male representations, now as then, assumes that woman, not man, is the proper object of visual erotic delight.

I am reminded of Roland Barthes' essay which begins, "Striptease--at least Parisian striptease--is based on a contradiction: Woman is desexualized at the very moment when she is stripped naked." Eve, nude, has the possibility of being innocent; Eve, in pasties and G-string (or costumed with a cleavage window and thigh slits), does not. The covering of nipples and pubis satisfies the letter of the obscenity law, but sexuality is not a mere matter of obscenity. Going back to the infamous succubus from the AD&D Monster Manual, what's striking in light of adolescent memories is how covered up she actually is, by hair and pose and strategically placed limbs:

 Can you really say Pathfinder's present-day iconic character, Seoni, is much more covered up (except by tattoo ink)?

 

And those leggings and bustle/skirt/train call to mind Barthes' observation: "The end of the striptease is[...]  to signify, through the shedding of an incongruous and artificial clothing, nakedness as a natural vesture of woman, which amounts in the end to regaining a perfectly chaste state of the flesh." Except we never get to the innocent state of nudity here. Yes, we have many more female characters now than in AD&D1, but when so many of them look like this (and almost no male characters look like Riker in "Angel One"), is this really progress?

A real matriarchy would have him in short-shorts, too.

Next and last post in the series: What these issues mean to players today, and why the endless three-way flame war over sex, gender and art can be reduced to false premises.

Naked Harpies and the Fine Art Defense

Quick, name the animated Disney film that was released with female frontal topless nudity, breasts, nipples and all.

Apparently it was OK for Fantasia's harpies to swoop into your face topless, and for various she-centaurs and fairies to have exposed boobs (sans nipples and mostly covered up afterward with halter tops, but yeah), and for baby cherubs to fly around bare-assed. What was up? Wasn't this the Hays Code era of draconian film censorship?

Well, here's the list of things prohibited by the Hays Code:

1. Pointed profanity – by either title or lip – this includes the words "God," "Lord," "Jesus," "Christ" (unless they be used reverently in connection with proper religious ceremonies), "hell," "damn," "Gawd," and every other profane and vulgar expression however it may be spelled;
2. Any licentious or suggestive nudity-in fact or in silhouette; and any lecherous or licentious notice thereof by other characters in the picture;
3. The illegal traffic in drugs;
4. Any inference of sex perversion;
5. White slavery;
6. Miscegenation (sex relationships between the white and black races);
7. Sex hygiene and venereal diseases;
8. Scenes of actual childbirth – in fact or in silhouette;
9. Children's sex organs;
10. Ridicule of the clergy;
11. Willful offense to any nation, race or creed

Aren't you glad they banned both racism and miscegenation?

Absurdities aside, what's remarkable is how hedged around with qualifiers the nudity language is. It almost seems like it's making room for artistic, innocent, and high-minded nudity; making room for children's butts, as long as they don't turn around.

And indeed, censorship has for a long time tussled with the artistic exception - Christian body shame against Renaissance glorification of the nude, played out in a myriad different arenas from the Sistine Chapel's "breeches makers," to Comstock's crusade against the New York Artistic League, to the final bursting of the dam in the 1960s. As much as prudes read salacious interest into high art, high art was itself used as a stalking-horse for titillation; like the high-minded, body-stockinged "tableaux" deployed for the entertainment of gentlemen in the music-hall era.

It's against this backdrop, still within living memory in the 1970's, that we have to consider the much-commented nudity in early gaming materials. Like this harpy:

Was this kind of depiction considered as harmless to children as the Fantasia harpy? What has happened to our culture in the intervening generation? Why the Janet Jackson-level shock today? Aren't we supposed to be living in the Most Sexualized Times Evar? These questions and more must, alas, await the next blog post.