>Forgetting Sarah Marshall contains two scenes that feature full frontal male nudity, and is the only movie in my representative sample in which a penis is visible. The first instance of full frontal nudity occurs when Sarah dumps Peter: he exits the bathroom, wrapped in a towel, to find her waiting for him in the living room, and when he realises that she has come to break up with him, he drops the towel in shock. He stands naked in front of her, then turns around and squats down, trying to regain his composure, so that the audience sees him naked from behind. He spends the rest of the scene naked, having refused 143 Sarah’s entreaties to put on clothing. His penis is briefly visible at other moments throughout the scene, as when he stands up from the couch to awkwardly hug Sarah, convinced that a hug will make her change her mind. The second instance occurs at the end of the movie, in his dressing room after his performance in the puppet musical. He and Rachel have engaged in brief and awkward small-talk in the auditorium and then parted ways, but back in his dressing room, he decides to call her. At the same moment, she decides to go visit him in the dressing room, and happens upon him standing naked in the middle of the room, with the phone to his ear. In this section, I place Forgetting Sarah Marshall’s use of male nudity in the context of the larger trend in the postfeminist cycle between 2008 and 2011, when male nudity, largely absent from the genre before this period, became remarkably common.
