Junk as Art

When Netflix decided last year to air an episode in its new series Sex/Life that featured full frontal male nudity it seemed like a generation-long sexual revolution in television history had been accomplished. Long in the making, this cultural insurgency started harmlessly enough with bare male chests but accelerated with shots of bare male butts. It would only be a matter of time before scenes of man-on-top imitation intercourse would show up which would lead to gratuitous glimpses of male pubic hair.

The Sex/Life episode in question was a high-water mark for television not because it included a full-on shot of a male penis, but because the penis was extraordinarily large. In fact, it was so oversized that many critics and viewers seemed to readily agree that the object was necessarily prosthetic.

News of this impressive piece of junk went viral. Much of the Internet chatter focused on the improbability of the penis’ authenticity until the actor himself advanced the solemn assurance that his junk as portrayed in the shower scene was indeed legitimate. No prosthesis was used to create the effect of artificial augmentation because the magnitude of the penis was itself a natural endowment.

Accompanying the actor’s admission of genuineness was a robust dose of pride at the fact that his junk had become a large-scale sensation. Some actors are gifted with real acting ability, others with only handsomeness, and still some with neither talent nor beauty but with a solitary piece of anatomy that becomes a work of art. Such was the case with Adam Demos.

The portrayal of junk as art has left the realm of the avant-garde and is well on its way to becoming mainstream fare. HBO’s Euphoria, arguably one of the most depressing shows on cable that depicts the never-ending misery American teens must endure as they slog through drugs, alcohol, and sex, has featured the penis when it can, but it has resorted to using prosthetic devices that up-close look so realistic even the most fervent phallus worshipper would be duped.

In another HBO series, Minx, the producers made it clear it was time for naked men to be given equal time with naked women who already seem to dominate nudity in film and television. The male penis would be front and center in a show about a feminist magazine that incorporates naked male centerfolds. Yet again in this case, the male star sported a fake, snake-like penis in a shower scene that included seven other naked men who were not modeling anything bogus.

Perhaps HBO and other production companies are making clear on television what all of us have known for some time. The continuously evolving limitations on public nakedness are giving way to an increased cultural appetite for unrestrained sexual expression. The ubiquitous, unbounded version of sex on the Internet now nearly commands that the portrayal of nudity and sex in conventional film and television more closely mirrors the images to which we’ve grown accustomed.

The question is not if this progression in graphic entertainment will end, but where. Lukas Gage, an actor in HBO’s series The White Lotus, seemed to revel in the fact that he was a part of the first-ever gay rimming scene on American television. Commenting on the series creator, the actor said, “I love that there’s a natural defiance in almost everything that he does. There’s a sense of burning down the system in his writing, and I love that, in this moment, Armond [his partner in the scene] kind of just says, ‘fuck it all!’” Gage added “I can’t wait for my ass to get retweeted all over the Internet.”

Although I’m certain we won’t see full-throttled pornography on non-PPV cable television any time soon, it is anyone’s guess what will manifest in terms of male nudity given the openings that have been made. Prosthetic penises look to be the go-to scene enhancing stratagem for the foreseeable future until we all start clamoring for the real thing. When that happens, the pressure will be intense to showcase the longest and girthiest in the business. Woe to the next generation of actors who don’t measure up.

This phallic infatuation is not a cultural phenomenon unique to America. Back in ancient Israel, God chastised His people for lusting after the Chaldeans whose genitals were like those of donkeys and whose emission was like that of horses. (Ez. 23) The commingling of worship and sex was enshrined in the pagan rituals in Canaan and perhaps at some point in Israel’s history the male member became an irresistible focal point of pleasure and aspiration.

Much needs to be said about a society ostensibly entranced by all things sexual. My supposition has always been that sexuality and religiousness are inversely proportional in a nation. When sexuality becomes an obsessive preoccupation then the notion that religion is meaningful or even warranted decreases. When sexuality becomes shunned and even denigrated then the notion that religion is all-consuming or even constrictive increases. The middle ground is the sensible balance between a vigorous but safeguarded sexuality and a rigorous but circumscribed religiousness. Unbalanced, these two elements will produce a nation either of libertines without conscience or of puritans without humaneness.

Teasing American television audiences with male genitalia, real or not, might be a tolerable amusement today, but eventually the intemperate exercise of liberty will give way to licentiousness. When cultural restraints are removed that protect a society from itself and its inclination to indulge increasingly depraved gradations of vulgarity the prelude to the tyranny either of debauchery or moralism is inevitable.