How Come Penises Always Get To Mean Something On TV?

Last week’s episode of The Night Of contained one surprising and much-discussed scene. If you’re all caught up, you already know what I’m talking about — the dead penis scene. District attorney Helen Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) visits a medical examiner as he’s performing an autopsy on a middle-aged black man. At the examiner’s prompting, Helen sets down the photo she needs him to see — right below the dead man’s fully in-frame penis. It’s a brilliant scene that highlights several themes of this show in the most awkward way possible. However, The Night Of’s dick scene revealed something else to me. On TV, male nudity is given narrative weight that female nudity isn’t.

Let’s talk about that weird penis scene in The Night Of’s some more. As Esquire’s Matt Miller smartly phrases it, “we can’t help looking at the flaccid penis, which is really at the center of this conversation, just as impotency and masculinity are at the center of Episode Five of The Night Of.” Sure, by virtue of being a penis, the scene is laughably tense, but in this show about misguided accusations, Naz’s transformation from sweet lamb to cold criminal, and a potentially broken legal system, the image of a dead man of color’s flaccid penis seems simultaneously shocking and fitting. It jarringly brings the conversation away from Helen’s argument and back to Naz’s journey. This penis has real narrative and emotional weight, and it’s not the only one.

Take the full-frontal scene in Showtime’s The Affair. Maura Tierney’s character finally decides to flip the tables on her adulterous husband and sleeps with a family friend. Though this sexual encounter and the full frontal moment are played off for laughs, according to an interview co-creator Sarah Treem did with Buzzfeed, this scene had weight. “That moment of male nudity in the premiere is very much about Helen looking at a new penis and it depressing her because it’s not her husband’s,” Treem said. Focusing on female-driven sexuality is revolutionary all on its own, but that doesn’t change the fact that this peen was narratively important. Outlander’s full-frontal scene is given the same narrative significance though it’s morally murkier. Tobias Menzies’ character is supposed to be sexually assaulting another character. The entire drama on the scene rests on his penis — can he get it up?

Then there’s 50 Cent’s peen scene on Power, which either resulted in a behind-the-scenes feud or a publicity stunt depending on how jaded you are. In the episode, 50 Cent’s character, still recovering from an assortment of horrible burns, starts to pleasure himself. It’s a moment of reclaimed sexuality that may or may not have shown the rapper-turned-actor’s real penis. But more than that, it’s narratively important for this character. Likewise, Vinyl also had several instances of male nudity, which were often used to underscore these men’s power in their testosterone-dominated world. These are all super important penises, and I’m getting super tired of how this one sex organ has become a shorthand for important drama when the same is rarely true for women.

View this post on Instagram

My Auntie G money, 😆 just called me and said man what the fuck did i just watch 😳 she's traumatized. She said she had to get up twice.

A post shared by 50 Cent (@50cent) on Aug 7, 2016 at 8:11pm PDT

When men are naked on television, it means something. It’s an important moment that fans and critics alike rush to their keyboards to cover. But more likely than not, when a woman is naked on television, it’s just another Tuesday. There is a slight difference. Naked women on TV are typically only portrayed through exposed breasts, which are secondary sex organs, rather than showing both breasts and vaginas. But how many times have we seen a naked woman luxuriously laying in our protagonist’s bed for no other reason than to prove that our protagonist has sex? There is a narrative function to female nudity, but rather than driving the plot, it colors it.

There needs to be more nudity equality on television, but more than that, we need to be more conscious of how we use that nudity. Nudity, regardless of gender, is a powerful and vulnerable thing. Our female nudity deserves to have the same weight we’ve given male nudity, and likewise, seeing a penis shouldn’t be an automatic clue that this moment is important. There are exceptions to this rule. Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, which has already broken so much television ground for race, gender, and sexuality, is great about flippantly and powerfully using female nudity. Masters of Sex and GIRLS also do a fair balancing job. I’ll even throw a bone to Game of Thrones’ full-frontal cop-out scene last season. There’s far more female nudity than male in George R. R. Martin’s fantasy adaptation, and the series has a serious problem with female nudity and sexual violence, but seeing a penis on screen devoid of any narrative or sexual weight felt oddly normal. I’m all for more sexy television, but if our sexy TV could also be more fairly balanced, that would be nice.