Naked Justice

From David Hare's Obedience, Struggle and Revolt:

On the subject of public nudity in performance art in the Netherlands:

  
“They felt comfortable when the artist was willing to strip him- or herself down to become the subject of their own artwork. [. . .] The conventional playmaker or novelist, by contrast, uses strategies intended not to reveal but to disguise.  When you walk naked in a public square, perhaps letting out an unedited stream of consciousness at bystanders, then you are doing something fundamentally honest.  When, on the other hand, you pretend to be someone you are not in order to re-create events which never, in truth, happened, then you are conniving at what may, from one point of view, be seen as a deliberate act of deceit” (74-75).

Though I'm not one to do so myself, I can understand the honesty and vulnerability inherent in nakedness versus the contrivance of a dramatic play.  It could explain the rise of "reality TV" in the 1990s; it could also be argued that this too is contrived and not truly representations of reality.

Hare relates another story on the perception of public nudity from a trip to Rome:

“Recently in Rome, looking at the Church of St. Peter, I found next to the altar two statues, the masterpieces of Gugliemo della Porta, representing the figures of Justice and Prudence.  In the original carving, Justice had been nude.  But her figure was so astonishingly beautiful that in the nineteenth century priests used to gather and become aroused by her.  So, predictably, the Pope had ordered her to be clothed.  And now, one hundred years later, her true figure is still hidden from view, for fear that if Justice is seen naked, she will drive the people crazy.  This perfect parable [. . .] underlies the life of all those who share a belief that things are not ordered in our country as they might be: that privilege is still unequally distributed and above all, that British institutions show no wish to be sensitive to more than one section of the population” (157).

On one level, if justice were "naked" and open to the public at large, those in positions of authority may fear a revolution.  Also, it's very funny what lengths people will go to suppress any perceived deviant behaviour because of the threat to authority it represents.  On a visceral level, we understand that nudity exposes the truth (for example, The Emperor's New Clothes).  We are vulnerable, exposed to the examiner's eye (or even to our own); all of our flaws are visible to see.  The characters of The Blue Room each have unique responses to visibility/nudity.  The Au Pair doesn't like the darkness, but the Cab Driver would rather not be seen.  The Married Woman is covered from head to toe to disguise herself from the public view, even going to lengths to wear a body stocking that she removes from underneath the sheets.  On the other hand, the Model is more at ease with her nudity, reacting only when hot wax is spilled on her bare flesh; she works in a profession where nudity is par for the course.