This blog isn’t just about my photography. It’s also about my thoughts on important speech issues raised daily in this country by our government and the closed-minded religious right. For example, the self-appointed moral arbiters sometimes inexplicably contend that nudity is equal to pornography.
Well, perhaps against my better judgment I’m going to wade into the whole nudity/pornography muck by challenging anyone to suggest the following is remotely obscene or pornographic:
This rather poetic underwater dance was captured in Johnny Weissmuller’s second feature film, Tarzan and His Mate, in 1934.
Here is some background information on this scene, courtesy of IMDB.com:
“The infamous nude swimming scene was originally filmed in three different versions: with Jane wearing her traditional costume, with Jane topless and with Jane fully nude. US states were empowered at that time to enact individual censorship laws, and three different versions of the scene were filmed in order to allow individual states to select the version of the scene which best conformed to its laws. All three versions were eventually removed from the film due to protests from conservative religious groups, particularly the powerful Catholic Legion of Decency.
The nude version of the scene was discovered in the vaults of Turner Entertainment during the late 1990s following its purchase of the MGM film library, and was restored to most subsequent versions of the film on the direct orders of Turner Entertainment chairman Ted Turner. In the restored version of the scene, Tarzan is depicted wearing his traditional loincloth while Jane appears fully nude, her costume having been torn off when Tarzan playfully tosses her from a tree to the water below. The scene as it exists today is approximately four minutes in duration.
Removal of this scene from the movie was utterly senseless. At least it is good to know that pig-headedness was not created by my generation (sarcasm intended), even if we sometimes subscribe to it.
