Gay pornography is a form of adult entertainment that features sexual activity between males with the primary goal to sexually arouse its audience. Softcore gay pornography also exists; which at one time constituted the genre, and may be produced as beefcake pornography directed toward heterosexual female, homosexual male, and bisexual audiences of any gender. Although it has also been found that many heterosexual males consume this genre of porn as well due to its appeal in presenting a more visually stimulating or unconventional sexual dynamic, citing the focus on intimacy and male-male attraction as a source of novelty or excitement.
Homoerotic art and artifacts depicting men have a long history, reaching back to many ancient civilizations. Every medium has been used to represent sexual acts between men. In contemporary mass media, this is mostly shared through home videos (including DVDs), cable broadcast and emerging video on demand and wireless markets, as well as online picture sites and gay pulp fiction.
History
Early modern in the United States Homoeroticism has been present in photography and film since their invention. During much of that time, any sexual depiction had to remain underground because of obscenity laws. In particular, gay material might constitute evidence of an illegal act under sodomy laws in many jurisdictions. This is no longer the case in the United States, since such laws were ruled unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in 2003 in Lawrence v. Texas.
Hardcore pornographic motion pictures (stag films, as they were called prior to their legalization in 1970) were produced relatively early in the history of film. The first known pornographic film appears to have been made in Europe in 1908. The earliest known film to depict hardcore gay (and bisexual) sexual activity was the French film Le ménage moderne du Madame Butterfly, produced and released in 1920. Most historians consider the first American stag film to be A Free Ride, produced and released in 1915.Knight, Arthur, and Alpert, Hollis. "The Stag Film." Playboy. November 1967.Di Lauro, Al and Rabkin, Gerald. Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film, 1915–1970. New York: Value Proprietary, 1988. In the United States, hardcore gay sexual activity did not make it onto film until 1929's The Surprise of a Knight.Burger, John R. One-Handed Histories: The Eroto-Politics of Gay Male Video Pornography. New York: Harrington Park Press, 1995. Waugh, Thomas. Hard To Imagine. New York: Columbia University Press, 1996. Slade, Joseph. "Bernard Natan: France's Legendary Pornographer." Journal of Film and Video. 45:2–3 (Summer-Fall 1993). Other American examples include A Stiff Game from the early 1930s, which features interracial homosexual acts as part of its plot, and Three Comrades (1950s), which features exclusively homosexual activity.Di Lauro, Al and Gerald Rabin. Dirty Movies: An Illustrated History of the Stag Film 1915-1970 Chelsea House Publishers, 1976. pp. 66, 71, 101-102, 152, 154.
Legal restrictions meant that early hardcore gay pornography was underground and that commercially available gay pornography primarily consisted of pictures of individual men either fully naked or wearing a G-string. Pornography in the 1940s and 1950s focused on athletic men or bodybuilders in statuesque poses. They were generally young, muscular, and with little or no visible body hair. These pictures were sold in physique magazines, also known as beefcake magazines, allowing the reader to pass as a fitness enthusiast.
The Athletic Model Guild (AMG), founded by photographer Bob Mizer in 1945 in Los Angeles, was arguably the first studio to commercially produce material specifically for gay men and published the first magazine known as Physique Pictorial in 1951. Tom of Finland drawings are featured in many issues.Ramakers, Mischa. Dirty Pictures: Tom of Finland, Masculinity and Homosexuality. New York: Saint Martin's Press, 2001. Mizer produced about a million images, and thousands of films and videos before he died on May 12, 1992. During the late 1960s and early 1970s, the advent of 16 mm film cameras enabled these photographers to produce underground movies of gay sex, male masturbation, or both. Sales of these products were either by mail-order or through more discreet channels. Some of the early gay pornographers would travel around the country selling their photographs and films out of their hotel rooms, with advertising only through word of mouth and magazine ads.
The 1960s were also a period where many underground art-film makers integrated suggestive or overtly gay content in their work. Kenneth Anger's Scorpio Rising (1963), Andy Warhol's Blow Job (1963) and My Hustler (1965), or Paul Morrissey's Flesh (1968) are examples of experimental films that are known to have influenced further gay pornographic films with their formal qualities and narratives. Also of note is Joe Dallesandro, who acted in hardcore gay pornographic films in his early 20s, posed nude for Francesco Scavullo, Bruce of L.A. and Bob Mizer, and later acted for Warhol in films such as Flesh. Dallesandro was well known to the public. In 1969 Time called him one of the most beautiful people of the 1960s, and he appeared on the cover of Rolling Stone magazine in April 1971. Dallesandro also appeared on the cover of The Smiths' eponymous debut album, The Smiths.
Sexual revolution During the 1960s, a series of United States Supreme Court rulings created a more liberalized legal environment that allowed the commercialization of pornography. MANual Enterprises, Inc. v. Day. was the first decision by the United States Supreme Court which held that magazines consisting largely of photographs of nude or near-nude male models are not obscene within the meaning of § 1461. It was the first case in which the Court engaged in plenary review of a Post Office Department order holding obscene matter "nonmailable."370 U.S. at 495–496. The case is notable for its ruling that photographs of nude men are not obscene, an implication which opened up the U.S. Postal Service to nude male pornographic magazines, especially those catering to gay men.
Wakefield Poole's Boys in the Sand, starring Casey Donovan, was the first gay pornographic feature film, along with the works of filmmakers such as Pat Rocco and the Park Theatre, Los Angeles, California, . In fact, it was the first pornographic feature film of any sort. Boys in the Sand opened in a theater in New York City in December 1971 and played to a packed house with record-breaking box office receipts, preceding Deep Throat, the first commercial straight pornography film in America, which opened in June 1972. This success launched gay pornographic film as a popular phenomenon. Early adult gay films also included underground works by Andy Warhol, Kenneth Anger, and Jack Smith.
The production of gay pornography films expanded during the 1970s. A few studios released films for the growing number of gay adult movie theaters, where men could also have sexual encounters. Often, the films reflected the sexual liberation that gay men were experiencing at the time, depicting the numerous public spaces where men engaged in sex: bathhouses, sex clubs, beaches, etc.
Peter Berlin's 1973 film Nights in Black Leather was the first major pornographic film designed to appeal to the gay leather subculture and drew some mainstream gays into this culture.
The 1960s and 1970s also saw the rise of gay publishing with After Dark and Michael's Thing. During this time many more magazines were founded, including In Touch and Blueboy. Playgirl, ostensibly produced for women, was purchased and enjoyed by gay men and feature full frontal nudity (the posing straps and fig leaves were removed).
Gay pornography of the 1950s through the production date of the movie is reviewed, with many excerpts, in Fred Halsted's documentary Erotikus: A History of the Gay Movie (1974).
1970s From 1970 to 1985, commercial gay pornography was just getting set up to become the large industry that it was to become. Because it was in the fledgling stage, it recruited actors from the only network it had access to: the gay community. Even among members of the gay community, people willing to act in gay porn were hard to come by due to the social stigma and implicated social risk of being publicly out.
France In the mid-1970s, French hardcore pornography achieved commercial success, including a significant portion of gay films. Pornography was seen as a part of the French gay liberation movement, because it ensured popular representations of gay sex. Members of the socialist revolutionary Homosexual Front for Revolutionary Action (FHAR) and its descendant organization, the sometimes derided gay pornography as overly "bourgeois" and "fascist". Valéry Giscard d’Estaing's government introduced social reforms in 1974, including lowering the age of consent from 21 to 18, for heterosexual and homosexual men. D'Estaing was also publicly opposed to the censorship of cinema, allowing the erotic cinema industry to grow under his administration; in 1975, pornography amounted to 25% of film industry revenue. Early gay pornographers like and Jacques Scandelari achieved commercial success through their producers, Troika Films and Greenwood Films, and adult theaters like La Marotte and Le Dragon. In 1979, Terry founded the Club Vidéo Gay, a private association which circumvented French obscenity laws. Many films produced during this time were set and filmed in New York City, reflected New York's gay subculture, and depicted sexual practices like fisting and S&M.
Auteur Jean-Daniel Cadinot arose as a gay pornographer in the late 1970s, capitalizing on new VHS technology and depicting fantastical narratives from French history in his work. In some of his films, actors played underage boys, leading to criticism, especially after the in which multiple writers and academics were accused of child sex abuse.
United States During the 1970s, gay pornography constituted the bulk of American gay visual culture; discourses about sexual practices were "inseparable" from discussions of gay politics and lifestyles. Early gay pornographers marketed films first as "gay", rather than primarily pornographic works. The most popular figures of the early 1970s industry included Wakefield Poole, Fred Halsted, Jerry Douglas, Joe Gage, and Peter Berlin. Nights in Black Leather (1973) was promoted in The Advocate for seven months before its release, demonstrating the popularity of gay pornographic films during this time. Many 1970s gay films had long sequences depicting cruising, often with experimental, nonlinear narratives that reflected 1960s avant-garde filmmaking.
Los Angeles In Los Angeles, gay pornography producers like Jaguar Productions were targeted by the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) for their distribution of gay films. In the late 1960s after the Stonewall Riots, Los Angeles gay liberationists and filmmakers monetized gay culture, promoting adult theaters with words like "male" and “homosexual." Theaters like the Park showed work from mail-order filmmakers like Bob Mizer and Dick Fontaine as well as underground gay films by Kenneth Anger and Jack Smith. The Jaguar was founded in 1971, and promoted gay films in newspaper advertisements and theater marquees. The LAPD started seizing adult material in 1972; theaters like Las Palmas were surveilled, and gay citizens and institutions were registered and tracked. The police were working under the auspices of Ginzberg v. United States which enabled the prosecution of obscenity. By 1974, an extensive police investigation and intimidation campaign had crippled Jaguar Productions; police seized film material which is now located in the University of California, Los Angeles Stanley Fleishman papers archive.
1980s