Nudes scenes in Harry Potter?!

Updated on December 11, 2009 By Ken Begg 26 Comments

Article here.

I love the way the article makes sure to assure us that this won’t be a big deal for Danial Radcliffe, as he’s done nudity before.  Well, whatever.  Is that the issue? I’d say the bigger issue is what the hell nude scenes have to do with Harry Potter?  Even if Harry is now all grown up and having sex and stuff, do we really need nudity to sell that idea?  I don’t know, films like Casablanca have been presenting affairs for decades now, and without requiring us to look at Bogart’s naked ass.

And this:  “”There is another scene in King’s Cross station, where Harry almost dies and sees Dumbledore. In that scene, he will also be naked.”

Is this in furtherance of Rowling’s moronic retconning of the idea that Dumbledore was gay?  (An idea she was only ‘brave’ enough to put forth after she ended the series.)  And even if it isn’t, isn’t that going to come into play now?  Again, what the hell does any of this have to do with Harry Potter?

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  • I can’t wait for the nude scenes in the upcoming Alvin and the Chipmunks movie.

  • Also, I’m sure here that Ken is making oblique reference to his hopes that DUMBLEDORE will also be portrayed as nake4 in the King’s Cross scene.

  • Elizabeth

    Somehow, I don’t believe the Daily News much. Although this ought to please the lunatic fanfic writers.

    Agreed on Rowling’s “look, I have a gay character” copout. Not only did she wait until the last book was published, she picked someone whose gay love affair took place decades before Harry’s birth.

    Weren’t Gary Oldman and the werewolf gay for each other? Admitting that would’ve been much more daring.

  • fish eye no miko

    Is this in furtherance of Rowling’s moronic retconning of the idea that Dumbledore was gay?

    No. Harry awakes up in… the afterlife or whatever… naked, then puts on a robe before Dumbledore shows up. So, no, that isn’t a retcon, this is being faithful to what Rowling actually wrote.
    BTW, Harry’s been naked in the films before. In Goblet of Fire, he has a scene in the prefects’ bath. Daniel wasn’t (completely) naked, but it’s strongly implied that Harry was.

    Elizabeth: There was lot of speculation about Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, yeah. Then she gave Lupin a girlfriend Half-Blood Prince and he married her in Deathly Hallows. DH also has a scene where Harry goes into Sirius’ old room and finds pictures of girls in bikinis because, ya know, it’s important that we know that Sirius was not gay, dammit!

  • Of course not. That would be a Sirius accusation.

  • Harry naked? Blech!

    Now if Hermione was naked…

  • Ensor O’Brien

    This reminds me of something Max Allan Collins once said, in an interview I remember in Amazing Heroes#119. He said that, in reference to a Frank Miller written story which had Catwoman as former prostitute, he found that inappropriate, the equivalent of doing Peter Pan and having them face historically accurate pirates who commit rape. Collins considered Catwoman as derived from children’s entertainment, and therefore people should keep that in mind when handling her*. Collins did not say this from any prudishness (since he strongly supports the freedom of speech/1st amendment), but he felt it incongruous to have such an idea in something derived from children’s entertainment.
    (The 1988 Time magazine Superman 50th anniversary article mentioned the same general concept.)

    Similarly, many people would point out that J.K. Rowling created the Harry Potter novels for children, so having nude scenes seems incongruous. In fact, the very idea of sorcerers in the modern world strikes these people as largely a concept for children’s entertainment.

    However, if we banned film franchises for derivation from children’s entertainment, then we have some prominent franchises to ban. Unfortunately, for these people, many of the prominent media franchises of the last twenty years one can assert as deriving from children’s entertainment.
    (Star Wars: blatantly derived from the Flash Gordon serials*; Doctor Who created as an education program for children about history, the original Star Trek lost its network support when they felt it had too many children in its audience for a prime time show, etc.)

    Meanwhile, in the last then to twenty years, very few R-rated [and thus unambiguously marketed at adults-why would you market at children and have a rating that means they probably cannot see the film?] film series other than those in the horror genre have had three entries in theaters. So, since most of the prominent film franchises of the last twenty years have stuck to a PG to PG-13 rating, they have attempted to reach a multi-demographic audience including both adults and children, so these incongruities such as nude scenes in Harry Potter crop up.

    *(Collins did clarify that he considered the masked and costumed heroes/”mystery men” such as the Shadow [who did not have powers in the pulps], Zorro, the Green Hornet, etc. as an outgrowth of crime fiction, so not as children’s fiction. However, Catwoman debuted after Superman, so Collins felt she derived more from childen’s fiction.)

    *Don Pendleton’s guidebook to writers for The Executioner series says, “Bolan is not Flash Gordon. He is an idealized man, yes, but such men are certainly to be found outside of the comic strips”. George Lucas cannot with a straight face make the same claim about Luke Skywalker.

  • sandra

    Retconning? That’s a word I never saw before. If they are adding nude scenes, then the script of Deathly Hallows is going to deviate drastically from the book. Here’s hoping Snape gets naked as well :-D

  • fish eye no miko

    Ensor O’Brien said: “Similarly, many people would point out that J.K. Rowling created the Harry Potter novels for children, so having nude scenes seems incongruous”

    Yes, cuz kids are totally unaware that nudity exists.
    Oh, wait…

    Look it’s not like she’s writing explicit sex scenes (I mean, this is a woman who gets embarrassed writing about characters kissing), or has characters running around naked for lolz; but, yes, the books do contain precisely two scenes in which the main/title character is naked; one implicitly (he’s in the bath) and another explicitly:

    “Harry became conscious that he was naked. Convinced as he was of his total solitude, this did not concern him”

    ZOMG! Hide the children!

    sandra said: “If they are adding nude scenes, then the script of Deathly Hallows is going to deviate drastically from the book.”

    How can that be when the nude scene at King’s Crossing is actually in the book?

    I love how everyone gets all worked up over the nudity: This is a book series in which a guy cuts off his own hand, the hero accidentally slices open a guy’s chest, and where the big news with the last three books was which beloved character was going to die THIS time. So, blood and death and (self-)mutilation = ok; nudity = BAD!

  • Ericb

    Maybe they’ll sparkle too.

  • Retconning is a comic book nerd word of some vintage, used when they retroactively alter a character’s history, or rather established continuity, in pursuit of a current storyline. For instance (a fairly benign one), I’m sure the Reed Richards and Ben Grimm are no longer WWII veterans, and I assume their origin story no longer involves them trying to beat the Russians into space.

  • It’s all presentation. The violence isn’t presented graphically. Likewise, you can imply that a character is nude without actually having the actor be nude. (For instance, show their bare shoulders and imply they are naked.) However, when they talk about the actor’s doing ‘nude scenes’, that suggests the nudity will be presented much more graphically than is necessary.

  • fish eye no miko

    Ken Begg said “However, when they talk about the actor’s doing ‘nude scenes’, that suggests the nudity will be presented much more graphically than is necessary.”

    Yes, but the people calling them “nude scenes” are the people writing the article, NOT the people actually making the film. They say they’re still thinking of how to present the scenes in question. Until I hear or see someone actually involved in making the film say there’s gonna be actual (not just implied) on-screen nudity (which I doubt) I’m going to assume the “OMG, nude Harry Potter!” stuff is just a magazine or Web Site trying to increase readership (and, hey, it worked like a, er, charm, didn’t it?).

    Besides, they’ve been more-or-less doing this with the Potter films since about the time of Prisoner of Azkaban, talking about “hormones”and “OMG, Harry has a girlfriend in this film [wink, wink]” and crap like that (though, oddly, not much was made of the bath scene in Goblet of Fire). I’m sure Dan Rad being naked on stage just fuels the fire a bit (like when PoA was directed by a director who’d done a more “mature” film, and a big damn deal was made about that, too).

  • sandra

    I’m going a bit off-topic here, but Knowledge Network, which is an local PBS-type one, is advertising its upcoming presentation of a BBC version of DAVID COPPERFIELD made about ten years ago. Young David is Daniel Radcliffe. I didn’t recognize him at first, without glasses, and with his own pale blue eyes instead of the green contacts he wears as Harry Potter. David’s Aunt Betsy is Maggie Smith, and Miss Murdstone is Zoe Wanamaker. Top level of the actors’ pool is small enough that you tend to work with the same people over and over, I guess. Oh, and they are also showing a BBC version of OLIVER TWIST with Fagin played by Wormtail – I don’t know the actor’s name.

  • fish eye’s touching faith that the filmmakers will do a tasteful job of Harry’s nudity is beyond my own dark personality.

    Also, as a huge Doctor Who buff, and student of its history, I take issue with Ensor O’Brien’s statement that Doctor Who waz originally intended as “educational”. Yes they went to historical events on occasion, but not that much really. The first thirteen episodes are not historic in the slightest (Daleks & alien planets are what we get). We do then visit Marco Polo, but then again immediately after Marco Polo it’s off to another alien planet for the Keys of Marinus.

    So from the very beginning the good Doctor was devoted to science fiction and entertainment, for which I applaud it.

  • Ensor O’Brien

    #
    According to the imdb:

    # The series was originally devised as an educational program for kids, with co-creator Sydney Newman having no intention of featuring “bug eyed monsters.” The first episodes featured cavemen. But when the Daleks were introduced, the attitude of the program was forever changed. Even so, the series continued to alternate between science fiction and purely historical stories for several seasons.

  • fish eye no miko

    Sandy Petersen said “Also, as a huge Doctor Who buff, and student of its history, I take issue with Ensor O’Brien’s statement that Doctor Who waz originally intended as ‘educational’. Yes they went to historical events on occasion, but not that much really. The first thirteen episodes are not historic in the slightest”

    In the first 13 episodes:
    Parts two through four of “The Unearthly Child” (set on prehistoric Earth)
    “Marco Polo”
    “The Aztecs”
    “Reign of Terror” (set during the French Revolution)
    “The Romans”
    And episode 14 is “The Crusade”

    That’s 6 (well, 5 and 3/4) of 14.

  • Heli

    I am sorely disappointed at the lack of reference to seeing Harry Potter’s wand.

  • If it makes you feel any better, I used that joke at work.

  • Me Smart

    fish eye, there have been many movies set in historical times that weren’t educational. I didn’t learn a thing from Time Bandits, for instance. Or The Patriot. Etc etc.

  • Your Doctor Who source is faulty according to the BBC.

    The first four episodes are on an primitive world which is not necessarily Earth (and in any case is totally non-educational).

    Then there are 8 episodes of the Daleks.

    Then there are two episodes aboard the Tardis.

    THEN we go to Marco Polo for 6 episodes.

    Then we go to an alien planet for 6 more episodes,

    Then the Aztecs for four episodes.

    Then anothe ralien one.

    All I can say is if Doctor Who was pitched to the studio as an educational show, it certainly did not live up to this in practice. At best they alternated space with history, and often the historical shows were shorter.

    Therefore regardless of how it was presented, the show itself was, factually, only trivially a historical educational show.

  • I have heard that exact same quote — about Dr. Who originating as an educational show — over and over and wondered where it originated, as it seems to fit so poorly with the reality of those first episodes. t seems akin to the story about Roman legions inventing hopscotch, something repeated verbatim on the internet so many times that it is accepted as fact, despite a remarkable lack of evidence.

    (Actually, the quote may have originated in the hard cover “Key to Time”, as I seem to recall almost exactly the same words presented there. Though, once again, the following section of the book describing the first episodes immediately contradicted the claim.)

  • fish eye no miko

    Sandy Petersen said: “Your Doctor Who source is faulty according to the BBC.
    The first four episodes are on an primitive world which is not necessarily Earth (and in any case is totally non-educational).
    Then there are 8 episodes of the Daleks.”

    Oooh, ok, see, I’m talking about the over-all stories, not the individual episodes.

  • Toby Clark

    Originally the non-historical stories were intended to teach science. Think of the scene in The Daleks where they come up with a way to disable a Dalek by removing it from the floor and stopping it from generating static electricity. I haven’t seen any others from that era, though.

  • D

    Harry Potter is sh*t, plain and simple, and if we could sterilize everyone who thinks it is quality in any way, the world would be a much better place.

  • professorKettlewell

    Actually, got to agree with Sandy here. Doctor Who received no input from the BBC’s Education or Schools Programming department, and didn’t employ an educational advisor.

    However…..
    If you can find a copy of “The Early Years”, you can read all about the disagreements between Sydney Newman, the series’ Creator, and Verity Lambert, the first producer. Newman had been hired specifically on the basis of his work on the ABC “Pathfinders” series, which certainly did take detours into educational pieces, and Newman was very keen for Susan to have “history lessons with Barbara” and “Science lessons with Ian” as part of the series; he was furious with Verity when she accepted the script for ‘The Daleks’, since he was mad-keen to avoid “BEM’s and cheap-jade sci-fi”. But of course, the Daleks were wildly popular, and the show’s direction was changed. But the historical stories with no Sci-Fi content at all stuck around until ‘The Highlanders’ (does ‘Black Orchid’ count?)

    And However Again….
    At this time, the BBC’s modus operandi was still the ‘Reithian Ethic’ : to educate and entertain, so arguably, it had an implied agenda to be even slightly educational.