Cock-related comedy is alive and well: witness Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest, where Borat proudly shows photos of his son’s “chram”. “America fears the penis,” said Apatow at the time. Then there is the school of willy comedy, best practised by Judd Apatow, whose penis gag in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story had audiences either walking out or in stitches. Neither is it a million miles away from flesh-exposing but defiantly masculine stuff such as HBO’s prison series Oz or sword-and-sandal movies such as 300. In the latter sense, Patrick’s fight scene could well be filed alongside Oliver Reed and Alan Bates’s once-shocking grapple in Women in Love or, more recently, Viggo Mortensen’s bathhouse dust-up in Eastern Promises. Its female counterpart has been far more prevalent and often exploitative, but male nudity is often couched in terms of comedy or combat.
Let’s admit it: when it comes to male nudity on screen, we have still got some growing up to do.
