This Is Not Gay Porn
July 18, 2022 4:17 PM Subscribe
Charles M. Holmes was a wealthy donor to many causes, including The Gay And Lesbian Victory Fund and Human Rights Campaign. He got his fortune by investing in the gay community by producing porn. Seed Money: The Chuck Holmes Story [1h6m] tells the full tale of Holmes and Falcon Video, and includes more (maybe) SFW gay porn scenes than you'd expect on YouTube. As ancillary material, please also have Making It Big, The History Of Gay Adult Film [1h26m], which overlaps with and is more general than the first film.
These films are about gay male porn. I haven't seen much about lesbian porn but if I do find something worthwhile I'll post it too!
These films are about gay male porn. I haven't seen much about lesbian porn but if I do find something worthwhile I'll post it too!
The documentary on Falcon says two things
a) that it is the first to use all american collegiate aesthetics as a pornogrpahic aesthetic, which is just not true (AMG since the 50s)
b) That the inclusion of the white, butch uber masculunity, read as healthy and the turn towards it in the 1980s, wasa reaction to AIDS
posted by PinkMoose at 7:01 PM on July 18, 2022
a) that it is the first to use all american collegiate aesthetics as a pornogrpahic aesthetic, which is just not true (AMG since the 50s)
b) That the inclusion of the white, butch uber masculunity, read as healthy and the turn towards it in the 1980s, wasa reaction to AIDS
posted by PinkMoose at 7:01 PM on July 18, 2022
Wow this is really great. I'm not especially interested in the psychology of Chuck Holmes - just some business dude from my point of view - but the way this documents changing aesthetics, mores, conceptions of masculinity and sexuality, political pressures, technology, etc is just fantastic. It's a great social history of the 80s and 90s in the US, everybody should watch! Thank you for posting!
posted by latkes at 8:07 PM on July 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by latkes at 8:07 PM on July 18, 2022 [1 favorite]
PinkMoose I didn't think it said thing b) - it seemed to say that aesthetic came straight from Calvin Klein just pre-awareness of AIDS, but I think thing b) is true and has been posited by others! The fetishization of white clone aesthetics and the turn toward a moralizing fitness aesthetic was surely shaped by AIDS anxieties!
posted by latkes at 8:10 PM on July 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by latkes at 8:10 PM on July 18, 2022 [2 favorites]
And which led pretty much directly to what was then referred to as the Bear Movement, which were men who didn't fit the Falcon model claiming the "right" to be gay away from this dominant and oppressive image.
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on July 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
posted by hippybear at 8:23 PM on July 18, 2022 [3 favorites]
I've been reading lately a collection of essays called Raw, which goes into some discussion about barebacking in the age of antivirals (of the gay or MSM form, mainly -- but also in the larger philosophical contexts of unprotected heterosexual and lesbian sex), and one essay goes into the historical shift from condomless to condom sex in 80s gay porn, which shifts again to barebacking in the 2000s, expanding further and more freely with PrEP and TasP.
Something the essay pointed out, which strikes me still, is that there wasn't any such thing as "bareback" or post-condom porn until HIV took hold (and was allowed by Reagan and his acolytes to kill off a bit more than 36 million people, and counting). These larger categorizations of our pornography live in and evolve out of the history of their times.
It's interesting to see the studio side of things, in that most of us may watch varieties of porn with various desires in mind, but there are people behind the curtain, so to speak, who made decisions that guide our fantasies, or images of masculinity etc., as much as cater to them. We don't think about them much, but they lived and loved and hated, and they had their own proclivities and passions, as we do.
The economic transactions we make collectively with porn companies in these times have helped, in a way, guide what others end up calling cultural mores decades down the line, based on who made a lot of money: Like the fellow who is the subject of the first link. Not sure if this is right or wrong, but it happens in other creative endeavors outside of adult film and so seems to be a pattern.
Anyhoo, there was an interesting (if angry) discussion on MeFi that might extend this past the 80s over here. I was surprised to put some of the comments in that thread into the context of therapies currently available, for a post only ten years old. Things do change, as ever.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:44 PM on July 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
Something the essay pointed out, which strikes me still, is that there wasn't any such thing as "bareback" or post-condom porn until HIV took hold (and was allowed by Reagan and his acolytes to kill off a bit more than 36 million people, and counting). These larger categorizations of our pornography live in and evolve out of the history of their times.
It's interesting to see the studio side of things, in that most of us may watch varieties of porn with various desires in mind, but there are people behind the curtain, so to speak, who made decisions that guide our fantasies, or images of masculinity etc., as much as cater to them. We don't think about them much, but they lived and loved and hated, and they had their own proclivities and passions, as we do.
The economic transactions we make collectively with porn companies in these times have helped, in a way, guide what others end up calling cultural mores decades down the line, based on who made a lot of money: Like the fellow who is the subject of the first link. Not sure if this is right or wrong, but it happens in other creative endeavors outside of adult film and so seems to be a pattern.
Anyhoo, there was an interesting (if angry) discussion on MeFi that might extend this past the 80s over here. I was surprised to put some of the comments in that thread into the context of therapies currently available, for a post only ten years old. Things do change, as ever.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 9:44 PM on July 21, 2022 [1 favorite]
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posted by Horace Rumpole at 6:03 PM on July 18, 2022 [4 favorites]