Pixelated genitals in cinema?

This is a fully “for real”, serious post. I am confused. First noticed this when I watched Everything Everywhere All at Once in a cinema, but thought it may have had something to do with the film catering to the Asian market. However, just watched a trailer for the new Thor with Natalie Portman & the hammer & all that, and the genitals are pixelated there too. We see a “naked” body standing in full view, with strategic pixels here and there. Am I losing it? Is this now normal? I genuinely don’t understand why have a full-on naked body/full frontal etc. if you’re then going to pixelate it - why not just avoid it altogether? Is this something recent?

Would appreciate anyone shedding any light. I know we’re living in a PG Marvel world, c’est la vie, but it seems surreal to have naked people in the shot and then pixelate their nakedness?

Considering Everything Everywhere All at Once is rated R, I think that blur was more for comedic effect. I mean...

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Yeah, fair enough, but I feel like there’s more to it. It’s just weird to pixelate anything, surely that impedes the suspension of disbelief? Also, to me , it’s not something in itself inherently R-rated/to be censored… to me, anyway.

What I don’t understand is more the stylistic approach, as in, if the film is an immersive experience and we’re supposedly “living in the moment/getting inside of it”/whatever term one might like to use, how do you justify putting blinds on the viewer for this one specific thing? Doesn’t it completely throw you out of the thing (sure did for me!)?

In the trailer I was thinking it might have something to do with kids potentially seeing it etc., but also I’m pretty sure it’s still pixelated in the film itself, which, yes, we know Marvel is all sexless, but to me it’s just insane?

I do not have the answer to your question, but in the case of Everything

Yeah, I agree with all of that. Still, am I the only one who finds it bizarre? What about the Thor trailer? Isn’t it all a bit odd though, in terms of suspension of disbelief etc., and kind of… I don’t know, like bleeping out swear words. It’s a TV/YouTube approach, no? Are they merging?

My favorite case of censoring out genitals and sex was in the beginning of Looney Porn (or Bad Luck Banging), which the theatrical version wasn't censored, but has a censored version (which is the version on Hulu), where the director was clearly involved and they covered up stuff with the most ridiculous shapes/colors possible with comic sans written on it, making fun of how stupid it is they have to censor this stuff.


I eventually turned it off because Hulu with commercials apparently went back to putting commercials into the movies (for a few years there it had become, multiple lengthy commercials at the very beginning, but that's another story).

I've not seen the trailer (I'm probably not interested in seeing the trailer). It's not uncommon for trailers to censor things out that are in the final movie (such as swear words, though they usually cut on them). I am suspecting there won't be full frontal genitals in an MCU movie though, but I could be wrong.


IDK. I'm kind of used to it from The Venture Brothers, but it does seem more... noticeable in non-animated characters.


I think it's sometimes used to draw attention to, "yup, this character has their dick out there," as a kind of joke. I think the actor usually doesn't actually have their dick hanging out there though. I think.

ETA: Admittedly, I haven't encountered this much, I think.

Personally,I think it is silly. Either show the nudity or don’t, but pixelating it seems weird to me.

Blurring/hiding nudity for comedic effect isn’t anything new. From Arrested Development doing exactly that to the cameraman’s hand coming into frame to hide a lady getting out of a shower in Buster Keaton’s One Week.

As funny as that scene in Everything Everywhere All At Once was, the obscuring did distract me a little. I would've fine with it if it was for a trailer, but seeing pixelated genitals on an actual movie screen just feels weird. Has it now become more taboo all of a sudden to show nudity? I know particularly graphic sex scenes earn you an NC-17 rating, but R-rated movies used to be able to show nudity, full-frontal included. Not a good harbinger for the future.

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I think in the greater context of this very specific movie, so much was twisted on itself that, at a point, anything and everything was probably on the table. The dialogue drifted, constantly, from english to mandarin (OMG I almost typed mandalorian) mid-sentence, realities were changing by beat often enough; in and of itself is ...silly.



Personally, I thought the pixelation was a stylistic choice for a more ridiculous juxtaposition of our viewing reality and expectations on what was already a very silly (in a great way) movie experience. That you're asking this very real question makes the joke (assuming it was intentional) all that more amusing, to me at least, because you're questioning the reality of a movie that in its own movie universe exists literally in every possible universe at once. So why not? I mean, pixelating out a man's genitalia is so absurd! Why else blur out such a thing in this context other than to push the silliness of it all. It made total sense to me, on a random, comedic level.

Still, the user above has a point. There are standards in play here for cinematic ratings. If the guy was actually flopping around, full frontal, while doing spinning back-hook kicks, then that could become quite overwhelming and risk the comedic value if it alienates the viewer. Plus the whole is this still R or NC-17 at that floppy point was probably a weirder line to cross, I would imagine.

I prefer to think that it was intentional for the bit, while compromising for the rating's sake.

Unfortunately, I can't speak to the Marvel part as I either don't remember the scene or haven't yet seen it.

All of this is just my take, of course. The scene IMMEDIATELY made me laugh out loud once I realized just wtf was about to happen, and was possibly once of the funniest scenes in the movie for me.

Doesn't the Japanese government monitor porn by pixelating the naughty bits?


Asking for a friend...

Whoa, for a minute I thought this was about movies with Pixie genitally.....and I was thinking that it might be really hard to see that due to the diminutive size

Exactly!

How does that one work? How do you “monitor” porn by pixelating anything? Porn is half in the mind anyway, no?

Asking for the sake of my own erudition…

Ha, rather fitting, too.

Well, it was just the trailer for the new Natalie Portman hammer/Thor movie, whatever that’s called, so I don’t know if anyone has even actually seen the thing yet.

Not knowing either language, I was surprised she's speaking in Mandarin, I would have assumed Cantonese, since I thought the character was from Hong Kong (as is Yeoh, herself, I believe. Though I recall in Crouching Tiger, I think everyone's speaking in Mandarin).


But checking this, she's speaking Cantonese to her grandfather, but switches back and forth between English and Mandarin with her husband.

https://nwlc.org/everything-everywhe...ee-in-a-movie/

Great note! I just assumed it was mandarin. Jumping through three languages per some conversation just adds layers to the movie, IMO.

Like in the background? I've watched two (I think) trailers for the film and don't remember this.

I don't feel like I've noticed a trend of pixelating nudity. I can only call to mind one example of it, from a random indie-ish film called Nine Dead Gay Guys which is from 2002.

As for the sequence in Everything Everywhere, I can think of a few reasons why they went with pixelation. Obviously the sequence in the film is very long, and having that much nudity could have presented a ratings problem (especially if you're combining nudity with an act that is evocative of something sexual). The sequence also involved a lot of stunt/wirework, and so having an actor actually be nude could have made that more complicated (I can't speak to the complication or possible lack thereof in terms of adding the nudity back in digitally). There might have also been a concern about the audience reaction, as people tend to be more squeamish about male nudity. The pixelation allows you to keep the absurdity of the situation without those concerns. I feel like the filmmakers are pretty open about their process, so you might see if you can find them on Twitter or something and ask!

"Pixelated male nudity" is an IMDb tag (of course it is!), but there are only 5 movies with that tag. "Full frontal male nudity" and "full frontal female nudity" are also both IMDb tags (of course they are!) and when you compare the ten year span of 2000-2010 to 2011-2021, the numbers for both have gone up.

I don't think that nudity is more likely to get you an NC-17 these days, so much as it is that it feels like less R-rated movies are coming out (or at least, they're not as relatively high-profile as in the days of Terminator 2), so it feels like there's less naked people onscreen these days in movies in general as a result.