Narrative Shifts in Gay Male Pornography
Dan
preceeding the events at Stonewall to the years shortly there after,
Jeremiah Smith plots the quick and radical shift in the construction of
gay bodies, gay lives as presented by the producers of gay pornography:
Gone are the days of transparent politics catering to the heterosexual
censors, lost in favor of a presentation of more truthful, more real,
homosexual lifestyles.
>From Johnson to Nixon: Narrative Shifts in Gay Male Pornography
Jeremiah Smith
<1> In Culture Clash: The Making of Gay Sensibility, Michael Bronski
argues that dramatic differences occurred in gay male pornographic
magazines around the 1969 Stonewall Riots in New York City. With a
sample of gay male print pornography my partner and I have collected,
ranging from 1966 to 1970, this article will explore the differences
proposed by Bronski and ultimately prove their truth. On the surface,
it does appear that the magazines prior to 1969 attempt to masquerade
their gay prurience while the artifacts published after 1969 had shed
the shame and secrecy of "the closet" rejoiced in the freedom of love
that had hitherto dared to speak its name. Beginning with an
exploration of the roles and brief, particularized, history of
pornography in gay male culture, I will examine the artifacts, through
the lens of Bronski's argument.
<2> Gay male pornography makes visible the sexual practices, fantasies,
concerns, and various tastes of gay men. RisquÈ artifacts of any
subculture can act as important cultural documents for that group and
the general populous as well. Not only do these documents communicate
the desires of a particular group, specialized tastes of factions, they
also encapsulate and encode politics, visibility, and the power
dynamics staged among subcultural groups and the dominant culture, e.g.
the negotiations subcultural groups had to make technological paradigms
of power were the clandestine nature in which early gay male
pornographic material was produced. Many early homoerotic underground
films and even the earliest of the homoerotic stag films enacted sodomy
and fellatio through heteronormative gestures. These preliminary
communications of modern and cryptic gay male desire were forced into
duplicity -- men "unknowingly" having sex with men in drag in order to
maintain at least the basic binary structures of heterosexual
normativity, dominance and submission as played out through
(trans)gendered performances (Burger 7).
<3> Pornography's meaning is dependent upon its social context in a
sexually repressive culture any portrayal of the erotic is a site of
contestation, especially if that particular erotic site involves a
sexualized minority or a subculture based on sexual identity.
In a world that denies the very existence of homosexuality and
homosexual desires, gay pornography performs two vital functions. It
depicts sexual desire, bringing it out of the mind and into the reality
of the material world. Porn becomes a sexual object. The sexual
identity of the viewer is consequently reinforced, bolstered by the
fact that the viewer has been engaged by, and responded to, a sexual
object (Bronski 161).
Pornography can also be a way to express, appraise, warrant, and create
a safe-place for culturally abject desires to unfold and be reflected
back into the subculture that created them. Variations of gay male
pornography represent the otherwise culturally unacknowledged desires
of a variety of tastes in gay male culture (Frederick and Nakayama 59).
<4> Desire is a difficult notion to pin down; its complexity resides in
the way it is determined. Desire is often subjectively given meaning
through a complicated process of intersubjectively determined symbolic
meanings performed through the laws of the dominant culture. "'Desire,'
properly speaking, is neither homosexual nor heterosexual... is
'emergent', and its components are only discernable a posteriori"
(Weeks 35). Desire is always representing something beyond itself
besides the mere fact of the signifier it is residing in - emblematized
in the frozen image of the sex act -- responding to the subcultural
need for reinforcement and approval. Desire's signified communication,
psychoanalytically speaking, remains hidden from consciousness. Desire
cannot be contained or controlled, not by images, texts, laws, or even
capitalism (Frederick and Nakayama 64). Roland Barthes argues that "the
pleasure of representation is not attached to its object: pornography
is not sure...the more I experience the specialty of my desire, the
less I can give it a name; to the precision of the target corresponds a
wavering of the name" (qtd. in Frederick and Nakayama 63-4). The
segmented body fetishizes parts, areas, spaces occupied by various
types of whole bodies: "Desire is multiple, plural" (Ellenzweig xviii).
<5> Traditional feminist theories of pornography, like those expressed
by Robin Morgan, "pornography is the theory; rape is the practice,"
cannot necessarily be applied to gay male pornography (Bronski 164).
The relationship between gay men and their pornography is different
than the relationship between straight men and their pornography. The
performance enacted between a man and pornography reads that through
(his) the viewer's desire he is positioned as a predator in
relationship to the image. The image/object in this traditional
scenario is female, and she is seen as a victim of the predator's gaze
and ultimately his violation of her agency. In the realm of gay male
porn, performing the (gays) gaze typically does not involve the
victimization of the objectified body. The viewer's desire is scripted
through their sexual arousal or lust for the target, or he may desire
to be that object himself. Identity or identification with the object
occurs simultaneously with the performance of objectification. The gay
male gaze is more like an improvisational performance because of this
slippery condition of identification and objectification being able to
slide into and out of each other at the speed of imagination. The
sexual and sensual imagination, or imagination in general, is
boundless. "This element of identification with as well as desire for
the sexual object distinguishes gay and straight porn" (Bronski 165).
<6> As Bronski states, mass production of gay male porn began in the
late 1950s. Many early gay male porn magazines made efforts to break
away from the stereotypical images of the gay swish: from the
limp-wristed weakling to muscle bound bodybuilder, cowboy, leatherman,
soldier, construction worker, etc. In the 1940s and 1950s gay oriented
muscle magazines (e.g. Physique Pictorial) the muscle men were often
effeminate or strange compared to straight-oriented muscle magazines.
The gay pornographers' attempts at liberating the gay male symbolic
from the shackles of stereotypes resulted in queer or hypermasculine
versions of macho occupations and fetishes, or trade, e.g. bikers,
sailors, working class iconography (Ramakers 68, 79; Steel, 176). "The
cowboy, the trucker, the athlete, and the hardhat are archetypal
figures of masculine authority, rootless adventure, physical strength,
and sexual prowess...There, the pursuit of an unacknowledged but
mythical force is partly a response to being social pariahs perceived
as weak or ineffectual" (Ellenzweig 142).
<7> Early physique magazines were marketed to health cultists and "art
appreciators," "the latter often a euphemism for homosexuals looking at
well-built, nearly nude men" (Ellenzweig 123). By the 1950s these
publications began to seriously target a homosexual audience. To bypass
censors, the images on the covers and inner photo spreads were imbued
with artistic, historical, and mythic imagery -- "from the Wild West to
Roman baths"- that were validated as "contributions to the knowledge of
the history and the mythology of Western civilization (Ramakers 76). It
is important to note that amid all the gay oriented publications
available at the time, erotically charged magazines catering to Eros
were the most popular. "It seems fair to conclude, then, that magazines
such as Physique Pictorial not only reached a far larger readership,
but most likely had a far greater influence on gay men's everyday lives
than the political magazines put out by emancipatory organizations"
(Ramakers 79).
<8> By the 1970s a great deal of gay male pornography worshiped at the
altar of youth, and The Advocate finally out sold the physique genre
magazines (Ramakers 79). "[T]he central iconography of male nude
sculpture, which began in the Archaic period, reached it peak at high
classicism, and then spread throughout the Mediterranean in a tradition
revived at the Italian Renaissance and still alive today. Beautiful
boys were honored and idealized. Their transient physical gifts seemed
sacred, god-given" (Paglia 183). The erotic magazines were staged with
white, clean-cut, boyish, all-American high school or college types;
"youth is also equated with innocence and is therefore not
stereotypically gay" (Bronski 171). During this transitional period,
the 1960s, a sexual revolution began resulting in an increase in "all
manner of texts on sex" (Holmberg 140). Instead of focusing on the
narcissistic and fetishistic private pursuits of bodybuilding many of
them target an audience supposedly comprised of young, single, (white),
nudist, men or "art appreciators," all the while maintaining an
emphasis on fitness gained through the praxis suggested by the
instructional text. Nudism and modeling are public fantasies and
realities -- they are emancipatory activities and ideologies. I believe
that this transition in imagery was in part a result of the sexual
revolution's praxis of bringing the naturalness and appreciation of the
naked body and sexuality into the light of day. The nudist magazines I
am referring to also attempt a masquerade of non-homoerotic intent,
they are steadfastly about nudism and naturalism, and the philosophies
and lifestyles that are part of those subcultures.
We've lost much of what nudism gave to us from the old country. But
perhaps, the cycle is returning. A glance at recent samplings of
photographs from nudist parks around the country show some startling
changes. Among the generation just preceding the present ones, we see
the poor physical specimens (this is not to discredit the people
themselves!) and scattered here and there some people who have good
trim builds, handsome young men and women. On the volleyball courts
there are some genuine athletes and caught in midleap [sic] their
muscles appear firm and well-developed [sic].[1]
A major component of these magazines' mission was to challenge the
prevailing cultural dictums against pleasure of and for the body,
including nudity, imagination, and sexuality. These magazines, whether
clandestinely or directly, opposed the "shame culture." "Shame culture
begins and perpetuates itself in hiding the body. Censoring nudity and
pornography perpetuates shame culture" (Holmberg 156). It must be noted
that these gay-oriented nudist or naturalist magazines were being
published prior to the Stonewall Riots of 1969 -- Bronski's theoretical
watershed for a dramatic shift in the imaginary of gay pornography
(among other immeasurably positive influences for the lives of queer
folk) -- and that post-Stonewall the very same magazines exhibit
profound changes.
<9> Before we get to the actual artifacts I want to take some space and
time to discuss the abstract, as opposed to the strictly factual,
importance of the Stonewall Riots. The Stonewall Rebellion is encrusted
with layers of influences, historical and at the time contemporary,
from the civil rights movement, Vietnam, many young Americans'
alienation from capitalist values, feminism's troubling of fixed or
accepted knowledge ("the personal is political"), and succinctly a
group of queers who were tired of being restricted, oppressed, and
arrested. At 1:45 a.m., on Friday, June 28, 1969 the New York Vice
Squad raided the Stonewall Inn, this time the freaks, queers, drag
queens, and young gay men, many Latino and effeminate, had had enough
and retaliated (Bronski 2; Ellenzweig 122). The riot lasted forty-five
minutes and an encore performance was put on the following night. The
mini-Revolution's echoes could be heard around the world. This
intrusion of reality commanded a homosexual militancy and identity --
the public could no longer ignore us (Bronski 2). It secured a space in
the cultural fabric of America for a more public gay sensibility, and
within gay culture it translated into the importance of coming out
narratives (Ellenzweig 126).
<10> John D'Emilio and Estelle B. Freedman argue that the riots
"implied a rejection of the negative social meaning attached to
homosexuality in favor of pride and self acceptance" (qtd. in
Ellenzweig 126). They also explain the significance of coming out
narratives, that they
came to represent not simply a single act, but the adoption of an
identity in which the erotic played a central role...No longer merely
something you did in bed, sex served to define a mode of living, both
private and public, that encompassed a wide range of activities and
relationships (qtd. in Ellenzweig 126).
The Stonewall Riots were a shedding of secrecy, a tear in the silence
of our long dark nights of shame, pain, and ever-hopeful struggle.
"Secrecy had spawned what Eve Sedwick calls the 'epistemology of the
closet,' the fabric of gay culture" (Herdt and Boxer 8).
<11> The samples of pre-Stonewall periodicals can be split into two
genres: "nudist" and "art appreciators." Mr. Sun (1966), M.A.N., Male
Athletic Nudist (1967), and Sun Trek (1967), all published by Wyngate &
Bevins in Hollywood, California, are representative of the "nudist"
genre. The "art appreciators" magazines are represented here by Male
Nudist Portfolio (1967), Unique (1967), and New Faces of '69 (1968).
Either through constructed textual and visual narratives of nudism or
those of an artist's portfolio of male nudes for study of anatomy or
appreciation, I argue that these magazines were smuggling queer texts
and images. These queered messages were a covert tactic to avoid
suppression and perhaps to deflect the shame of the love that dared not
speak its name.
<12> As a model of the nudist pattern, Mr. Sun incorporates, and best
represents, the genre's most intriguing and variant features. Gracing
the lower sixth of the covers of Mr. Sun (volume 1, number 2 and
volume1, number 3) are images and brief descriptions of Henry David
Thoreau and Jean-Jacques Rousseau respectively. Both issues contain
short essays on "natural" philosophers among the photographs of naked
young men outdoors - in natural and manmade spaces. Mr. Sun featured
both black and white and full color photographic spreads of naked young
men in solo and group shots. All the penises are limp, and the physical
contact is always contextualized in athleticism. The natural settings
for a majority of the shots are rustic, rugged, and/or mountainous;
there is a total dearth of images of wooded areas; any vegetation in
the images are either prairie or arid (these magazines were produced in
California). The models' ages range from approximately eighteen to
forty, and although all of them are fit there is a wide variety of
types. Hairy, boyish, playful, tough, tattooed, pure and innocent,
there is a lot of variety in one issue unlike what one finds in highly
specialized pornography today; by contemporary standards, the models
are rather unattractive.
<13> The advertisements in Mr. Sun were for mail order sales of
artworks depicting naked men in classical or semi-erotic posses, 8mm
black and white films of male nudists exercising, and color slides of
male nudists all available from Wyngate & Bevins. In addition to the
self-interest advertising, Mr. Sun featured editorials and articles,
e.g. "The Physical Side of Nudism," "Thoreau...The Thinking Man's
Nudist," "Why I Became a Nudist," "The Male Nude in Sculpture," "The
Rooftop Nudists," "Rousseau: Philosopher of Freedom," "The Quiet
Revolution in Nudism," "Nude in the Water," "High, Dry and Nude in the
Sun."
Mankind may have been land-bound for a millenium [sic] or two, but he
carries a deep love of the water with him no matter where he wanders,
from desert to mountain top. It is a primitive love that harks back to
the great amniotic sea, creator of life itself. Poets have praised the
feeling that man wants to return to the sea, and no matter how far out
into the realm of astronomical space man manages to propel himself,
there will always be that basic homage he will pay to the ocean, whre
[sic] he got his beginnings. And it is back to the sea again that he
will go to renew his spirits, refresh himself from the rigors of hectic
living and still find a mysterious challenge to anything connected with
the great bodies of water.
For the active young nudist of today, there is perhaps no greater
playground than the vast deserted stretches of beach where he can romp
and play in the surf and sunlight and know the tingling feeling of feet
polished to a fine degree by the sand.[2]
These articles along with the images, the in-itself of the artifact,
were based on the premise that the single male nude has been, or was
being, excluded from the burgeoning subculture(s) of nudism. The powers
of exclusion were allegedly wielded through a heteronormative,
family-oriented mechanism in control of much of the nudist underground
-- there was no place for the single, white, male nudist in their
fantasies of natural beauty. Often the editorials and articles
rehearsed familiar dialogues of masculinity and its merits. The roles
of (fit, single, white) men as organizers, laborers, managers, as well
as benchmarks for physical attractiveness and iconography, are espoused
throughout the magazines' discourses (textual and visual). A deep
reading of these texts unpacks another message, a folded-up message of
tolerance, hope, self-acceptance, and ultimately a closeted reflection
on the condition of many gay men in American at the time.
<14> There are distinct parallels that can be drawn between the subject
(imagery) matter, scripts about exclusion, endeavors for just
recognition, the appropriation of masculine iconography and
stereotypes, and the declaration of equal rights found in these queer
documents and the concurrent gay rights movement prior to Stonewall.
Pre-Stonewall, many gay rights organizations strategically hid behind
the scientifically determined illness model of homosexuality -
inversion and inverts, hoping for acceptance on the grounds of an
empirically based and incurable disorder that should be accepted as a
way of life for certain people afflicted with it. I specifically use
the phrase "for certain people" because many of the early queer
organizations did not accept drag queens, transsexuals, or
hyper-feminine gay men. The texts in the nudist genre magazines reflect
the larger cultural anxieties about homosexuality, esoterically and
generally.
<15> The narratives dealing with an individual nudist's experiences in
"coming out" as nudist resonate with gay men's accounts of "coming
out." Both variations on the "coming out" theme typically chronicle the
life an "idealistic boy" or "a somewhat disillusioned young man" in the
midst of confusion about his identity and place in society. When the
subjects of these discourses "come out" (as nudist or homosexual) they
are rejected until they are able to find others (solo or groups) like
them. In addition to the textual manifestations of these cultural and
subcultural anxieties and desires, the images in the magazines
construct narratives of self-acceptance and pride, freedom, and the
importance and joy of male bonding. The depictions of bonding represent
not only pleasures of attractive and nude camaraderie, but also the
(political) importance of defining oneself through a group --
solidarity, support, and identity. The textual and visual narratives as
told through the pre-Stonewall single male nudist genre were an
important and significant, albeit flimsy veil for real gay narratives
of community, acceptance, and exclusion.
<16> The nudist magazines never once mention homosexuality or display
anything beyond Platonic or brotherly love between the models -- they
merely (supposedly) target single, white, men who like to be outdoors
naked with other single, white, men. Homosexuals in the real world and
the "nudists" portrayed in these artifacts banded together for support
and identity against the ostracization from the "family" oriented
hegemony. The nuclear family paradigm is further reflected through the
nudist-narratives, contained in the fact that it is again the
heterosexual family structure that stands dominant and prejudiced over
these rejected and isolated, single, white, male nudists -- (queers).
<17> Similarly, the art appreciator genre sought to conceal its
assorted exhibitions of gay desire for fear of the mighty Censor. On
several pages within Male Nudist Portfolio, which features black and
white images of young to middle-aged men engaged in formulaic attempts
at "artistic" poses, the following phrase appears: "This photo was
declared NOT obscene in a Federal Court." In addition to the "NOT
obscene" caveats, the inside front cover declares that, "The first six
issues in this series of Male Nudist Portfolios have been declared NOT
OBSCENE in the New York City Criminal Court and in The Court of
Appeals." The overt efforts to distance this obvious pornographic
artifact from the reality of its prurient interests were carried even
further, to the point of near absurdity, in the following declaration:
"Those desiring erotic or purient [sic] material are warned that such
is not to be obtained in this publication, nor is it our intention to
provide material of such a nature." Unique also camouflages its
homosexual desires through the narrative disguise of "the male figure
in photo with pertinent commentary," but there is something more,
something similar to the nudist narratives of self-acceptance.
<18> Unique declares its cultural function as to "provide a collection
of photographs to be used by the artist and art student in his studies
of male anatomy and posing of the model. This portfolio will be of
special benefit to the person who cannot readily obtain models to pose
for his work."[3] At least Unique made an effort to artistically pose
its models [and included the only man of color in this sample], but the
photography and the models are too amateurish to actually pass as
legitimate, as non-pornographic. More importantly than its failed
efforts to conceal its true purpose (yet it seemed to have survived the
prejudices of the Censor) are the esoteric gay-coded messages expressed
through this cultural document: "The commentary accompanying the
photographs in this portfolio [Unique] is offered in hopes of helping
to bring about a world wherein man will, from the moment of birth,
accept himself - not with guilt and shame; but with esteem and serenity
-- in his totality as God made him."[4]
<19> As a final example of the art appreciators genre New Faces of '69
(1968) reflects transitional and disordered messages. The "Notes"
allege that the publishers' purpose (not an unfamiliar one by now) was
to provide models for the study of male anatomy and drawing. In a
contradictory move, the magazine included brief biographies of the
young models (dare I say underage), personalizing and further
eroticizing their pictorial narratives, while it also printed among the
images articles directed at a gay audience -- "the church and the
homosexual." Not only were the models barely legal, if at all, there
was absolutely no concern given to even a pretense of artistic posing.
The images (color and black and white) are filled with naked young men
playing or frolicking alone, as couples, or in groups, with obvious
sexual desires being portrayed. This is the first magazine, in this
review, that has featured explicit sexual desires displayed through the
models' actions/postures, intersubjective proximity, and gaze. As if a
mood of revolution and change were in the air, New Faces of '69 dared
to go further.
<20> The post- or concurrent Stonewall magazines can be generically
lumped into a category: "the cult of youth". Chicken Delight (1969),
Rugged (1969), Nude Reflections (1969), and The Boy Friends (1969-70)
highlight the larger cultural transitions and anxieties being performed
through gay rebellion. Two of these magazines express an unabashed
celebration of gay desire(s) and sexuality while the other two, to
"formally" mask their all too obvious prurient interests, appropriated
the language of the art appreciators model. Rugged and Nude Reflections
executed endeavors to mask their pornographic content, continuing to
shield themselves through the appropriated rhetoric of the art
appreciator genre. While expanding on the appreciation of nudity, i.e.
male body, Rugged sustained this false narrative throughout -- there is
no mention of homosexuality. In an explicit and contradictory gay
variation of the art appreciator paradigm, Nude Reflections' editorial
adoption of language from the art appreciator genre contrasts with the
issue's dedication to male nudity and gay eroto-political poetry.
<21> In the spirit of their time, Chicken Delight and The Boy Friends
made no attempt to cloud their intent, representing a breakthrough in
honesty and explicitness of material. While Chicken Delight featured
black and white images of (underage) boys with no duplicitous
commentary, The Boy Friends published radical new imagery, e.g.
spanking and transvestite fantasies. It also printed erotic fiction and
politically charged gay articles such as, "The Invisible Minority" by
Scott Harford detailing the Sexual Revolution and how homosexuals had
benefited from and contributed to it, and traced the history of the
homophile movement in America.
<22> There are now publications for every taste and interest.
Pornography multi-tasks, from the strictly erotic to cultural artifacts
embedded with history, politics, mythology, and multi-layered
communications. "Collectively, these publications are the image guides
to the myriad identities available to the homosexual man in late
twentieth-century America" (Browning, 192). There were dramatic
differences among gay male pornographic magazines surrounding the 1969
Stonewall Riots event. These products of identity and desire reveal
diverse narratives of self-determination. Beginning with the earnest
masquerades of the 1966-68, porn transformed from a necessary period of
contradiction and duplicity up to the moment of Stonewall, to
manifesting cultural products reflecting a strong sense of freedom,
spirit, and rebellion. "The social, cultural, and sexual impact of a
picture of two men fucking cannot be underestimated" (Bronski 167).
Notes:
[1]This paragraph is from the article "The Physical Side of Nudism" in
Mr. Sun, Vol. 1, Num. 2 (1966). This magazine contains no images of
nude women even as they are sited in the text. This issue also includes
the following essays: "Thoreau...The Thinking Man's Nudist", "Why I
Became A Nudist", and "The Male Nude In Sculpture".
[2]This sample was taken from the essay "Nude in the Water" in Mr. Sun
Vol. 1, Num. 3.
[3]Cited from editorial comments in the first edition of Unique, 1967.
[4]Cited from editorial comments in the first edition of Unique, 1967.
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