1 SONIDO, Louise Jashil R. Media 230: Media Ethics April 1, 2014 SHOOTING THE BODY: The Ethics of Shooting Nudity in Media I. POINTS OF DEPARTURE Sexually explicit images in media have always been subjected to the regulation of censorship laws and moral restrictions enforced through more conservative sectors of society. However, the advent of the digital age of production has ushered in a resurgence of alternative modes of image-making independent of or less controlled by regulatory laws. Because of the increasing accessibility of various recording equipment, the institutionalization of the independent film festival, the growing recognition of photographers or filmmakers as artists rather than as strict media practitioners, and the rise of alternative venues of publication and distribution outside of traditional media, images of nude or semi-nude bodies have begun to proliferate in venues beyond the boundaries of codes or laws. In an era of increasing sexual liberation, cultural, socio-political, and academic interest in media portrayals of the sexualized body have also become more pronounced. There is now wider use of nonprofessional actors, models, and subjects in media productions, especially in light of “independent cinema’s association with traditions of hardscrabble realism and the seepage of an actual situation.” 1 In accordance with prominent women’s movements, feminine spaces previously hidden or taboo have become iconographic projections of the female experience in boudoir photography (i.e. the photographing of women in their most intimate spaces). Film and media scholarship has also seen the emergence of “pornographic studies” in analyses of sexploitation cinema and pornography-in-film, consequently lending these representations a certain degree of legitimacy. In light of these developments, this paper is less interested in building a case for or against nudity in films, but rather focuses on contending with the relatively unregulated flux of nude/semi-nude bodies in media by exploring, in particular, the ethical concerns involved in the photographing or filming of nudity in the Philippine media industry. The objectives of the paper are (1) to understand the various ethical considerations of or for photographers/filmmakers and subjects/actors when shooting nude bodies for photos or for film; (2) to glean a picture of the problems or difficulties that photographers/filmmakers encounter when shooting nude bodies for photos or for film; and (3) to examine existing laws, codes, or protocols on nude filming/photography in the Philippines — if there is any, if there is enough, or if there is too much. 1 Gorfinkel, Elena. “The Body’s Failed Labor: Performance Work in Sexploitation Cinema.” Framework (Spring 2012): Vol. 53, No. 1. 79-98. ProjectMuse Database. Web. 19 March 2014