The church teaches quite a bit on modesty and the way we should dress. For those defending this show about why does the nudity make any difference than they should let the people have clothes on and do the show. I don’t think they will do that since it will lose the prurient factor.
It’s not about the provocative aspects, but rather the heightened risk that being naked in a survival situation. The reason in fact why they immediately work to cover themselves, as another poster described.
As to the Church teachings I could find no explicit teachings, from any clergy, about exactly what was immodest. None. The only things that I could find, doing an admittedly cursory search, were things that mostly had to do with modesty and arousal, and that’s not necessarily related to clothing.
Again, is it immodest for me to be naked in a shower with others? We have no real sexual aspect here as far as I am aware. The nudity isn’t even shown, if they were looking to titillate they would be better off using skimpy clothing that didn’t require them to censor features, which would be more immodest.
Modesty is not about a specific dress code, and something that is at one time immodest, may not be at another. Which is exactly why the Church has absolutely not published specific guidelines about it, with the exception of attire to be worn in specific historical buildings.
Do we need to go to Africa and condemn the Church there for allowing women to wander about topless, which is considered extremely immodest in the Western World, but isn’t considered even slightly sexual there. Modesty has a lot more to do with the intended effect of attire than with the specific attire worn.
That is truly one of those “
Shades of Gray” areas.
The reality is; are we all just watching? Watching a sensual love story can raise feelings of desires. Does violent films provoke acts of violence within our society? I say yes.
Therefore, can we truly claim our innocence if we are watching sin? When we purchase a ticket to watch these acts, we are a patron - which means we are funding the further propagation of such acts.
In response to the first. If something causes you personally to sin, don’t do it. There are certain things that I would refrain from watching because they would be occasions of sin for me, but not necessarily for others. There are people who could likely watch a sensual love story without it evoking any feelings of inappropriate desires. I can watch violent films without feeling any desire to act out unjust violence on others.
In fact for me, seeing things that are not necessarily moral is important in that area, we can see that the characters are flawed, and we can see how those flaws affect them. There are films that are not so good in that regard, but many are. For example I watched Breaking Bad, which is very nearly a Greek morality play, we see all of the characters behaving awfully, but it lands them in ruin. I would say that it’s better to show the ruinous results of sin, than it is to not show sin at all.
Yes, we must consider our patronage. But it is important to note that depicting a sin isn’t committing the sin, or even committing it in the mind, which would be as bad. A film that contains a murder is not an endorsement of murder. Now it is possible that there are gray areas, and Naked and Afraid may be one of them. I personally cannot find a prohibition from nudity by the Church, published by anybody but laity (who do not have the right to establish such a prohibition) and the competitors on that show are censored for public view. So I would say that there is no reason to suspect that the filming of the show is necessarily sinful. If I had reason to suspect it, I would not support the show.
