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“That’s not art. A striptease isn’t art. It’s too direct. It’s more direct than art.”

That line from Akira Kurosawa’s “Ikiru” sums up a lot of feelings people seem to have about nudity in film. The history of painting and sculpture is full of nude portraiture, which is regularly and comfortably classified as art. But the nude scene in movies is rarely discussed alongside a Canova marble statue or Manet’s “Olympia.” Movies blur the boundaries between “real life” and artistic indirection so thoroughly that people discuss nude scenes in movies as practically everything but art. It’s “content” that deserves an “advisory,” or something akin to “porn,” however the Supreme Court is classifying that these days.

As many have noted, the very nature of the actor’s job demands the audience look at them. So when nudity enters the (literal) picture, it complicates the relationship between viewer and viewed.

Neptune’s Daughter Image: MGM “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” has a well-deserved bad reputation. It’s a song about, as our Britt Hayes put it, “a woman being held hostage by some guy who may or may not have drugged her adult beverage.” But it didn’t simply spring, fully formed,...

Edward Herrmann's death was painful for the cast of Gilmore Girls, as he was a staple in the show and considered family by his co-stars. Herrmann's dedicated nature mirrored that of his character Richard, and he earned respect and love from his own family and the Gilmore Girls cast. Kelly Bishop, who played Emily, said Herrmann had an "elitist attitude" like Richard, while still being friends with anyone. His mischievous spirit even played a trick on set during the filming of the revival.

In Gilmore Girls, Edward Herrmann played Richard Gilmore, and the actor shared some similarities with the character. The series follows Lorelai (Lauren Graham) raising her teenage daughter Rory (Alexis Bledel) as a single mother with the hopes Rory will attend an Ivy League university. When Lorelai cannot pay the tuition for Rory's private high school, her estranged parents Richard and Emily (Kelly Bishop) loan her the...