Beyond the Pale: Nudism, Race, and Resistance in "The Unashamed"

Abstract

An officially despised but nonetheless profitable brand of motion picture made prior to the 1960s, the classical exploitation film was produced outside the Hollywood system. It trafficked in all forms of content forbidden by the Production Code (short of hard-core pornography) and played in the Main Street theaters off the beaten track. Because they sold themselves on the sensationalism of their subject matter, these films had little use for the gloss of their Hollywood rivals: sub-Poverty Row production values and stilted performances by the actors were the rule. Like the Hollywood feature and the documentary, the classical exploitation film is a regime that encompasses several distinct (but not necessarily exclusive) genres, such as the sexhygiene film, the drug film, the vice film, and the burlesque film. Another exploitation genre is one that has been almost completely forgotten, one that seems anathema to the popular image of pre-1960s America: the nudist film. Set mainly in nudist camps, these films, which included both dramas and documentaries, gave their audience a sight unavailable on the Hollywood screen: a full view of the naked human body-albeit with the genitals obscured. Although dozens of nudist films were made prior to 1960, only one is acknowledged as a fictional drama in which the spectacle of the nudity is cohesively integrated into a character-driven narrative: Allen Stuart's The Unashamed (1938). With so much going against them aesthetically, it's no wonder that pre-1960s exploitation films, such as The Unashamed, fell off the cinema historian's radar