The history of gay porn cinema.

[haiducii]

Scally Lads

Deep within the fist-stretched bowels of the gay fetish scene, Britain’s working class and their budget sportswear chic have become objects of sexual fascination. Tracksuit bottoms tucked into white socks, trainers, caps, hoodies and clunky Argos gold are all eroticised by scally gear fetishists. Much like the biker-loving leathermen and boot-licking skinheads of decades past, scally fetishism perpetuates a long-standing cycle of re-appropriation of working-class aesthetics within the gay scene.

Phil Hamill, the founder of Tr4ckies.com sees this as a natural step in cultural evolution: ''Gay fetish always marries itself with the street culture of the generation that came before it. You have these younger gay kids watching these cultures develop around them in their formative years. As they become older they start to wear the gear, sexualising it and it becomes a fetish.''

If you live in the UK you will probably know all about the phenomenon of scally lads and chavs. The scally lads thing has been going on for at least 15 years in the UK (maybe longer). It’s not exactly news. This fetish, in particular, is said to have grown out of the happy hardcore club scene that flourished in the Greater Manchester area in the late 90s. While the term ''scally'' has been used in the region to denote working-class youths with a penchant for violence and criminal behaviour for decades. The word actually derives from the word scallywag, meaning a person who was sharp and street wise, perhaps a small time thief. The evolution from scallywag to scally appears to have occurred around the mid-nineteen seventies and early eighties, and is widely associated with the Liverpool/Merseyside region of North West England.

The guidelines for being a scally lad are very specific: straight-acting, blue collar, under 40, and into wearing tracksuits, white socks and hats. ''It’s a lot like drag, but at the other end of the spectrum'', Sc4lly Lad Phil Hamill tells Vice. ''A lot of guys in this scene have normal jobs, like working in an office or a bar - they’re not selling drugs from a council flat - so it’s a form of release. It’s roleplay, pretending to be something different to what you are.''

The fetish has become so popular that there are now entire NSFW websites devoted it, including UKSc4llyL4ds.com, 5ket3oy.com, and 5neaker5ex.net. Most of the British gay fetish sites appeared on the web three to four years ago – the two exceptions being F4dsFeet, online since 2003 and Tr1g4 Fi1ms, which has been committing burly builder orgies to celluloid since 1997.

L4ds Feet is celebrating its 12th Birthday. The site features over 130 models, 750 videos and 110000 photos of gorgeous lads showing their feet, socks, trainers, boots and shoes. It is one of those "don't judge a book by its cover" sites. The garish header with its bevelled and embossed text logo is right out of 1999. But it would be a mistake to bypass the site because you'd miss out on a huge library of foot fetish content, and some of the most unique I've seen.

Chris a 32-year-old British guy with a huge foot fetish, and he appears in over 370 of the site's videos playing with a variety of guys. Chris is stocky with size 11 feet, and he looks younger than his age - I would have pegged him for his mid-twenties. L4ds Feet is his labor of love where he fully explores his kinky fetish. Most of the guys on the site are British, but there are other Europeans here as well, and they range from 18 to around 25 years old. There are a variety of body types from slim to gym fit and from athletic to nicely muscled. The guys here are amateurs and most are fairly cute.

There's plenty of regular foot worship like massage or guys sucking toes and licking soles, but there's so much more, too. And it's not all about bare feet either; there are half a dozen videos with fucking and a handful with guys jacking their cocks while playing with feet, but the lion's share of the videos have no full nudity or hardcore sex. The very best thing about L4ds Feet is the variety of action. The videos are good amateur productions with decent lighting and sound. Some of the older videos could be better quality, but it's still quite watchable.

L4ds Feet has been around for 12 years and the site owner, Chris, just can't get enough of bare feet. So many sites are slapped together with videos featuring the same thing over and over, but Chris takes great care to show us everything that turns him on about foot play - he really is a kinky fucker. Take a look at the video HERE and I'm sure you'll agree with!

Although incredibly niche, this isn’t an isolated scene confined to the fringes of the UK’s gay underground; it’s just as popular in France, where they hold annual ''Mister Sportswear'' competitions, and enjoys sizeable followings in Holland, Germany and Italy. Ladz, a bi-monthly sportswear fetish party in Amsterdam, regularly attracts 400 to 500 punters, while Tr4ckies' Facebook page has over 22,000 likes. To put this into perspective, that’s almost a third as many as popular gay cruising app Grindr.

Scally fetishists are particular about the brands they buy and how they wear them, with most admitting that no matter how hot someone is, a poor choice in footwear can be the difference between a hook-up and a lonely wank at home. Adidas is the most popular choice of tracksuit, while Nike is the overwhelming favourite in footwear. Like the super-sized jewellery and pimped-out rides you see in rap videos, this brash exclusivity resonates with working-class machismo, explains Alex Taylor, Tr4ckies' advertising director: ''I’m from Manchester, and there were always scallies in school. For them it was all about status symbols, usually represented in footwear.'' While most people derive sexual pleasure from physical acts, like rim jobs or asphyxiation, fetishists draw erotic gratification from clothing. Download two horny scally lads sex video HERE!

Scally fetishists love ''stinky socks'' and a ''cheesy cock'', because it’s ''fucking manly, the smell of a real man''. ''Straight'' and ''straight-acting'' are words you see a lot on Trackies profiles. Everyone seems to be looking for an archetypical straight boy. It is an obsession with being a ''real man''. Scally fetishism is a fixation on masculinity. A fetish develops when sexually arousing, inherently human qualities become associated with an inanimate object. In the case of sportswear, it’s the macho posturing and boisterous, hetero-normative masculinity of the scallies who wear it. ''There’s this conflation of working-class masculinity and authenticity. Working-class men are somehow more authentic'', explains Murray Healy, the author of 1996’s Gay Skins: Class, Masculinity and Queer Appropriation – one of the earliest investigations into the gay skinhead scene.

 

[gorgik9]

Yay!!! We're on the posting track again! I'll give you some more qualified feedback late this evening or sometimes tomorrow!

But for a starter - it looks good! As usual!

 

[dargelos]

Scallies! My favorite type of boys (apart from all the rest)
Sweaty Nike Air Max and spunk stained Reebok trackies are beautiful things in themselves, but they are only one part of what makes the scally special. It's the attitude that is the real magic. A good scall has total absence of respect for authority or conventional respectabilty. A gay man has had to learn the hard way that what you are told about right and wrong from the church and state is all bullshit, we too have had to make our own way in the world playing by our own rules and that is what we have in common.
Scally crime is victimless crime, when a rich man sells an addictive drug he is the director of a whiskey company and he joins the conservative party. When a bad boy sells some harmless canabis he is called a drug dealer and joins the overcrowded prison population.
Despite the way that anyone who gets a pay rise imagines they have suddenly been upgraded from working to middle class, most people, 80% by my figures, are working class and that means most gay men and their conquests will be working class too. When Murray Healy writes;
''There’s this conflation of working-class masculinity and authenticity. Working-class men are somehow more authentic'',
It sounds like he's looking down on us, like he's observing ants through a microscope. Condescending twat.
But to get back on topic, it would be a crime to not mention the Eurocreme Rudboiz series to see what scally cock looks like in action. Now what those kind of videos need is a smell track, 'Sweat-o-Vision' Yes, I'd love that.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks dargelos! Interesting comments as always, and I also wanna share some thought on haiducii's Britporn-post.

First some thoughts on why I like british porn so much,which I do!

At rock bottom it's about that the working class lads are my kind of lads - the kind of boys I grew up with, the kind of boys I knew inside out, the kind of boys I had so, so ,so, so much fun and sex with. I was one of the lads, and I had my own band of very horny brothers.

Maybe everything we did wasn't 100% legal (which it wasn't), but for fuck sake it was harmless pranks.

What I don't like in the magazine articles haiducii is referring to and quotes, is the strong tendency of middle class men (journalists, writers etc) to objectify working class people in general and boys in particular, observing them like ants in a microscope in dargelos well found phrase.

But I'll clamp down on something particular: a word and the vocabulary it belongs to. The word is "fetishism". ( I just hope you won't take this as some kind of accusation towards you, haiducii, which absolutely isn't my intention.)

The portuguese word feitico was used in connection with different kinds of objects from West Africa by European merchants, travellers and sailors from late medieval and renaissance period on.

And this is what a fetish could look like!

From the mid-18th century European intellectuals started fabricating ambitious theories of fetishes and fetishism, based upon published travelogues.

French philosopher Auguste Comte and his German philosopher colleague Gerorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel became two of the most influential theorists of fetishism. In Comte's positivist philosophy fetishism was considered the most primitive developmental stage in the history of religion, more primitive than polytheism.

In Hegel's philosophy, fetishism was something peculiarly African. Hegel pontificated from Berlin, that Africans were utterly incapable of abstract thought, their ideas and actions were governed by impulse, and therefore a fetish object could be anything that then was imbued with imaginary powers.

In 1887 French psychologist Alfred Binet took Hegel's idea of the fetish object and started using it in the context of sexual psychopathology.

Binet's notion of sexual fetishism belongs to a modern medico-psychologic-psychiatric vocabulary used to pathologize diversity. The only sexuality acceptable to Binet and his evil minions is - guess what - procreative sexuality. "Sexual fetishism" is a secular version of the kind of sexuality acceptable to traditional christian moral theology.

What a "science"!

 

[gorgik9]

""Sexual fetishism" is a secular version of the kind of sexuality acceptable to traditional christian moral theology."

I wrote this line too hasty; it's of course the other way around! Binet's notion of sexual fetishism was the abbreviated secular version of everything unacceptable to christian theology, and to nationalist politics.

France in the decades around 1900 was the only European country with decreasing - not increasing - population, something which made French politicians, military officers, doctors and scientists go nutters. The only acceptable type of French sexuality was the baby making sexuality - which of course is NOT the same thing as heterosexuality.

The german and austrian version of sexual psychopathology had a much more laid back attitude. Germany and the Habsburg Empire had very much a powerfull increase of population, the very opposite of the French decrease.

 

[dargelos]

Now is a good time for me to shamelessly exploit this story;
http://www.gayheaven.org/showpost.php?p=1800483&postcount=10
in which the boy is attracted to the jock but it's not him who he wants to have sex with, it's his shoes. Perhaps because he was brought up to believe that sex between men was dirty so he sublimates his desire onto an object related to the man and not the man himself.
Or perhaps something else, WTF, it was still a fetish.

 

[gorgik9]

Anti-Porn Feminism...

Hello y'all!

Let's get serious and heavy as in: Why is porn of great importance to gay men, homo boys, queers, faggots... ?

I'll quote Jeffrey Escoffier from an essey published last year. I think he's right and got his shit together:

"Porn, however, played a more significant role in the life of gay men than among heterosexual men, not only because homosexuality has been stigmatized form of behavior but because historically there were so few homoerotic representations of any kind. Gay men become sexually active adults without any socialization in the social and sexual codes of the gay male subculture. Pornography contributes to the education of desire."

In the same essey Escoffier points to another important thing:

"The transition from "beefcake", or softcore images, to sexually explicit hardcore porn films in the late 1960s was a change not only from one medium to another [...] but a shift that entailed a modification in the representation of homosexual desire from a focus on men as the objects of desire to men as the active agents of homosexual desire."

If this is so then the serious ambition to eradicate all porn, that the anti-porn fringe of american feminism engaged in from the late 1970s on, in tandem with the christian right wingers in american politics, would mount a serious threat to gay life in the western world. It may be so, that it was and is the christian right who had the political clout, but the anti-porn feminists delivered a new rethoric: Not the "good old" christian moralist rhetoric, but the new feminist civil rights rhetoric.

I hope it's totally clear that I'm very much an ANTI-anti-porn feminist. But I am a feminist, so I think it's of some importance to answer the question: - Feminism, what's that really?

Feminism - definition and early history.

I'll follow a very common definition stating, that feminism is a collection of movements and ideologies sharing a common goal: to define, stablish, and achieve equal political, economic, cultural and social rights.

But it's a bit more complicated to convincingly point to where it all started. Some names and dates are often mentioned as among the first feminists : Jeremy Bentham 1781, marquis de Condorcet 1790, Olympe de Gouges 1791, Mary Wollstonecraft 1792.

I'll go for Olympe de Gouges and marquis de Condorcet and the happenings in France during the first two years 1789-1791 of the French revolution.

Let's in particular look at an important change in the notion of what a citizen was and should be! The standard notion among Enlightenment writers before 1789 was, that to be a citizen you had to be a property owner; any citizen had to own some estate, otherwise you just couldn't be a citizen.

This of course is an important background to take notice of when reading the famous Declaration of the Rights of Man and the citizen proclaimed in 1789. But so much happened in the following two years, and in particular abbé Siéyès did lots of thinking up until the Constitution of 1791, when the general right to vote in political elections was proclaimed as the fundamental principle of political decisionmaking.

Two important things haggened during those two short years: first Siéyès discarded the old notion of the citizen / property owner, and came up with the citizen as any individual with right to take parts in political elections and vote.

Second what was proclaimed in the constitution of 1791 was the right to vote for all male citizens. So 50% of all French were excluded from the right to vote.

After the proclamation of the 1791 constitution, Olympe de Gouges published her book Declaration of the Rights of Women and the Female citizen, which with an admirable clarity showed, that concepts like "citizen", "individual" and "general right to vote" could be given two fundamentally different interpretation: one universalist interpretation, the other particularist.

Being an universalist means in this context that you believe there is such a thing a universal human nature, in which every single individual takes part.

But if you're a particularist you'll have it the other way around; the universal human nature will be considered not much more than a shallow figure of speach. The particularist will say, that there are different kinds of humans, so fundamentally other you just can't give women the right to vote or study at the university or do anything other than - as the Germans say - Küchen, Kinder und Kirche. "Kitchen, Kids and Church" - the "true" domains for women...

But we'll have to take a big leap from the French Revolotion to USA just after WWII!

Second wave feminism & Media Studies.

During the years of WWII millions of American women started working in the military industry, making guns, bombs, and ammunition and building ships and aircrafts, getting well paid jobs, an economy of her own, and considered fully competent to take difficult desicions on her own.

American popular culture and media during these years were flooded with images depicting women as competent and capable of enduring tough labour...

...but after 1945 came a fierce backlash when women became capable onla of getting married, getting pregnant and making herself beautiful for Mr. Right. Everybody had to move to Pleasantville, a life televised every night at 8 o'clock pm.



Secon wave feminism could possibly be described as a backlash to the big anti-feminist backlash around 1950, and symbolized by journalist Betty Friedan's famous 1963 book The Feminine Mystique.

American academia in the early 1960s had a new field of academic research and studies, Media Studies, that would become of great importance for Second wave feminism. Media Studies was a field of research using social scientific methods and theories (sociological, psychological, statistical and political science) to analyze media content in general and advertising in particular.

Of the greatest interest for feminist activists were of course studies looking into the ways media and advertising depicted the difference between male and female gender, and in particular there were two important topics, that would become fuel for feminist anger and used as an important political weapon.

First of all, an increasing number of academic media studies showed clearly, that contemporary advertising gave women extremely narrow gender roles, and that advertising media were a powerful set of tools and methods for reproducing these narrow roles.

Second and even more pointed was that media and advertising had a tendency to belittle men's violence against women, following the formula: "- She actually likes to get battered black and blue!"

Three organizations founded in the 1970s.

Women Against Violence Against Women (WAVAW)

Founded in spring 1976, Los Angeles.

Founding members: Julia London, Lynn Heidelberg.

Women Against Violence in Pornography and Media (WAVPM)

Founded in autumn 1976, San Francisco.

Founding members: Diana E.H. Russell, Laura Lederer, Kathleen Barry.

Women Against Pornography (WAP)

Founded in 1979, New York.

Founding members: Susan Brownmiller, Gloria Steinem, Susan Griffin, Robin Morgan, Andrea Dworkin, Dolores Alexander, Lynn Campbell.

Law School professor Catherine MacKinnon didn't engage in WAP work and meetings on a day-to-day level, but she became extremely influential through her many books, articles and lectures.

WAVAW versus WAVPM and WAP - the central differences.

First central difference: mainstream media versus pornography.

WAVAW:s object of criticism was mainstream media in general and advertising in particular, NOT pornography and this for three fundamental reasons: 1) Because they thought that mainstream media had a much greater impact on people's daily conciousness than pornography.

2) Because they feared that being "against pornography" would suggest a blanket condemnation of a wide range of sexual expression.

3) Because they believed that positioning themselves against pornography would raise the specter of new anti-obscenity legislation.

WAVPM stated the main difference clearly already in the name of the organization, saying that it was an organisation against "Violence in Pornography and Media", and WAP was of course even more clearcut.

Second central difference: Trivializing violence versus causing violence.

WAVAW didn't argue causality, but rather that media images of violence trivialized and condoned violent behavior against women, and suggested to men that women deserved and enjoyed brutal treatment.

WAVPM leaders argued instead, that the representation of women as sexual objects in violent contexts not only condoned, but actually incited violence against women. Laura Lederer and Diana E.H. Russell agreed that pornography was an "essential ingredient" of rape, and Robin Morgan had her famous soundbite: "-Pornography is the theory, and rape the practice."

National crime statistics do not bear out an increase in the violent crime against women during the 1970s, but certainly women's awareness of rape and other crimes and willingness to report them to the police reached new levels.

Third central difference: No and Yes to seeking government action.

In a february 1977 statement of principles, WAVAW flatly rejected legal measures and was unyielding in its opposition, making this position clear to WAVPM: "- Censorship does not work!"

WAVPM took a different position. Although the organization formally rejected censorship strategies in 1981, many of the founding members strongly supported legal measures to eradicate violent pornography. Prominent WAVPM leaders endorsed government restriction and condemned the idea that abstract speech rights ought to outweigh women's rights to bodily safety.

In shifting the terms of the debate to pornography and endorsing legal action, WAVPM also set the stage for the rise of WAP. When WAP organized in New York in 1979, it sealed the movement's transformation from anti-media violence to anti-pornography, sidelining WAVAW on the national scene as pornography emerged as the key movement concern.

Immanuel Kant went to the bedroom and found the main cause to all social evils; or: Catherine MacKinnon.

Law School professor Catherine MacKinnon didn't engage in WAP work and meetings on a daily basis, but there's no question about the influence of her many lectures, articles and books articulating, defining and describing the WAP / anti-porn feminist standpoint.

To understand MacKinnon's general perspective and in particular the central notion of objectification it's necessary to say hello to the German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), since as a moral philosopher MacKinnon is definitely a Kantian.

Kant's three most important texts in moral philosophy are: a) Groundworks to the metaphysics of Morals 1785; b) Critique of Practical Reason 1788; c) Metaphysics of Morals 1797.

In the Groundworks (1785), we find a central concept: The Categorical Imperative, which is one single concept but with several versions. The version of importance to MacKinnon - and hence to us - goes like this:

Act in such a way, that you consider the humanity in your own person as well as in every other person never only as a means, but always also as an end in it self.

If you don't consider the humanity in every other person not only as a means, but always also as an end in it self, then - you're objectifying the other person; you're making the other person utterly dependant on your own will and, hence, you negate the other as a deciding and acting subject.

Or in other and more directly political words: You do not have the right to treat others as slaves!

The fundamental principle in Kantian ethics is this: Never act to enslave!

It is Catherine MacKinnon's fundamental idea, that pornography is an ideology legitimizing mens enslaving of and violence towards women.

MacKinnon's idea is a fundamentally wrong, misguided and downright dangerous idea.

If you think you'll get out of the MacKinnonite bandwaggon just because you're a gay man you're totally wrong. MacKinnon's minion Andrea Dworkin pontificated, that the penetrator is always "the Man" and the penetrated always "the Woman" - no matter what the conventional anatomy would tell you, which also means that sexuality is necessarily always only HETERO-sexuality.

What makes me seriously ill at ease is not that MacKinnon articulated so many ideas that myself and so many others have found patently false. What's truly disturbing is her and so many other WAP members consistent refusal to engage in any debate with their critics. To spell out the bloody beans: this is a patently non-democratic version of feminism.

Barnard Conference 1982.

In the early-to-mid 80s, other feminists, sex radical and lesbian feminists, started sensing, that censorship hungry MacDworkinites were becoming a much bigger evil than porn, getting closer the religious right wing in American politics.

The famous / infamous Barnard Conference held in Barnard College, New York, in 1982, a conference who's formal title was The IX Annual Scholar and Feminist Conference, with sexuality as its theme for the year 1982.

The members of the organizing committee - feminists like Carol Vance, Ellen Willis, Gayle Rubin and Ellen Dubois - thought that sexuality is a much broader theme and field of discussion than pornography, and since pornography had been publicly debated in America from early morning til after midnight in the proceeding 5-6 years, the two big anti-porn organizations (WAVPM & WAP) wouldn't be formally invited to be a part of the conference agenda.

This ignited the bloody feminist civil wars, The Sex Wars, followed by a new type of feminists occuring, the sex positive feminists, which also had another important consequence : the emergence of modern porn studies in USA, Canada, and Great Britain.

Many more anti-porn initiatives were launched after the Barnard Conference in the following years, but no really new ideas or arguments, so I think I'll stop here.

As two special treats I give you a couple of links to sites loaded with material of great interest for anyone dipping their nose in Porn Studies:
Anon URL
Anon URL

To end with we'll get Gayle Rubin's brilliant essey Misguided, Dangerous and Wrong as a pdf download in extenso:
Anon URL

 

[dargelos]

To open this topic is usualy to jump headfirst into a pit of vipers. There is this one thing evil about porn, that is the way it makes nice people talk nasty rubbish. The less they know about it the louder and nastier the rubbish. Here at least we all know where we stand, we have signed up to the free porn community havent we.
My own theory is that there is an unbridgeable chasm between men and women over porn, that overides differances of politics, education and religion, because we react in a different way to visual stimulation, this isnt about getting a boner, it goes deeper than that, and its not amenable to change.

 

[gorgik9]

To open this topic is usualy to jump headfirst into a pit of vipers. There is this one thing evil about porn, that is the way it makes nice people talk nasty rubbish. The less they know about it the louder and nastier the rubbish. Here at least we all know where we stand, we have signed up to the free porn community havent we.
My own theory is that there is an unbridgeable chasm between men and women over porn, that overides differances of politics, education and religion, because we react in a different way to visual stimulation, this isnt about getting a boner, it goes deeper than that, and its not amenable to change.

In this question, I really must beg to differ...

As far as I understand, this would mean that all women who has spoken and written fiercly against the Anti-porn feminists weren't "real" women, or at least not "real" feminists.

Which was just about what Iron Lady MacKinnon said: If you're not with me, I'll exclude you and refuse to talk to you...

In my view this doesn't sound much like female biology. It rather sounds like totalitarianism...

 

[dargelos]

to explain is not to excuse
the women who oppose antiporn hysteria dont do so because they love porn in the way we do, they are defending the right to free speech and supporting plurality of opinion.
at the other opposite end of the scale are the men who defend the worst kind of gonzo straight porn, that stuff does give ammnunition to porn haters
as with so many of the topics you raise there is so much more to say if only there was enough time

 

[gorgik9]

to explain is not to excuse
the women who oppose antiporn hysteria dont do so because they love porn in the way we do, they are defending the right to free speech and supporting plurality of opinion.
at the other opposite end of the scale are the men who defend the worst kind of gonzo straight porn, that stuff does give ammnunition to porn haters
as with so many of the topics you raise there is so much more to say if only there was enough time

I didn't get sour because of some try to excuse the anti-pornians, it's the attempt to explain the WAP / MacDworkinite position that's problematic to me.

Problematic for several reasons: First you say that women don't oppose the antiporn hysteria "because they love porn in the way we do" - well, in what way do "we" "love" porn? And who are "we", please, pretty, please?

You start sounding like a fierce paternalist and using the majestic plural, the pluralis majestatis, the way of speaking fit for kings and queens : "We Victoria Regina have graciously decided that...."

I definitely don't have any unqualified "love" for porn-in-general, not even gay porn-in-general. Porn in my opinion have a strong tendency to be ever so boring, and hopelessly crappy, sometimes dishonest, hypocrite and just plain old stupid.

But that doesn't mean that I'm prone to legal censorship, to legally prohibit some piece of porn just because I think it's crappy.

On the other hand I think that your idea that women can't have any other kind of liking of porn than just fighting for free speech is just plain factually wrong.

You have women working in porn not only as actresses but also as directors, producers and film photographers who obviously like what they're doing, women from Marilyn Chambers, Candida Royalle, Nina Hartley, and Annie Sprinkle on, and in later years all lesbian and female queer porn makers.

And I just can't imagine that Linda Williams, the Queen Mother of all Porn Studies professors, has dedicated her professional life as a Film Studies scholar since the 1980s to analyzing and discussing all kinds of porno and eroticism in all different kinds of visual media just because she wanted to fight for the freedom of speech.

Having read almost everything professor Williams has published I definitely don't sense the "unbridgeable chasm" between her ways of thinking and my own. OK I confess, there's more Thomas Waugh and Jeffrey Escoffier and Chip Delany than Linda Williams involved in my writings in this thread. But Linda was my first Porn Studies love...so to speak...

 

[mikk33]

With reference to the Brit Scally lads porn and fetishism. As a Brit, to me the obvious relationship is one of class. In a class based society like the UK, the objectification and exploitation of working class men/lads by middle and upper class men is about power and control from a class perspective. The "I have money and a higher social class than you , so I can buy or use you", whereas between working class lads its much more of an equal power/class exchange.
This is reflected in the Oscar Wilde case, where post-boys were rented out to upper class men by the hour. So the objectification of the hetero-homo class bias of working-class lads is acceptable because the exchange is essentially economic. The middle class were homo at public school therefore they are only transitioning towards safe arranged marriage, rough trade is about sex and can be discarded when used. So the scally becomes a sub-sect that exaggerates their working-class status. It is a badge of identity, that 'normal' men adopt to emphasise their heterosexuality and for gay men their 'safe' disguise' in working-class communities to hide their sexuality. It becomes an adopted costume for them both.

 

[gorgik9]

With reference to the Brit Scally lads porn and fetishism. As a Brit, to me the obvious relationship is one of class. In a class based society like the UK, the objectification and exploitation of working class men/lads by middle and upper class men is about power and control from a class perspective. The "I have money and a higher social class than you , so I can buy or use you", whereas between working class lads its much more of an equal power/class exchange.
This is reflected in the Oscar Wilde case, where post-boys were rented out to upper class men by the hour. So the objectification of the hetero-homo class bias of working-class lads is acceptable because the exchange is essentially economic. The middle class were homo at public school therefore they are only transitioning towards safe arranged marriage, rough trade is about sex and can be discarded when used. So the scally becomes a sub-sect that exaggerates their working-class status. It is a badge of identity, that 'normal' men adopt to emphasise their heterosexuality and for gay men their 'safe' disguise' in working-class communities to hide their sexuality. It becomes an adopted costume for them both.

Thanks for the great input!

Two things from me to you (and everybody else):

1) Haiducii will post a Brit Scally Porn part 2 now the up coming Sunday (19 april).

2) I heartily recommend british historian Matt Houlbrouk's great study Queer London published 2005, about queer life in London during a 40 year period 1918-1958. Houlbrook's fundamental point - which I think is fundamentally right - is, that you must look at queer life through a perspective of social class. Being queer can be many different things: The famous/infamous Dilly boys were effeminate working class lads, but there were also the ultra masculine working class queers, who could gladly bang the bosses daughter (or wife) in the morning, and hook up with cockhungry men in the evening.

And then of course the ever so respectable queers - the middle class queers...

 

[dargelos]

The undefined 'we' is a lazy writing habit of which 'we' are often guilty. Here it means the people reading this, who having all signed up to a website called the Free Gay Porn Forum Community, may be assumed to have a liking for porn. Not all porn, and not all the time, any more than joining a book club means that you enjoy reading any old rubbish.
Women don't need to consume porn the way men do in order to be able to be creative in the industry. It's a job, as a professional you research the market and deliver the product that is going to sell. A teetotaller can run a popular bar, an non driver can design a beautiful car.

 

[gorgik9]

@dargelos

I think you for some reason have a tendency to argue something else than the posts before. But maybe we should agree on a very friendly disagreement ?!

 

[dargelos]

If you detect a contradiction then remember that in order to understand quantum mechanics you must be able to accept that two mutually exclusive statements can both be true at the same time. And that q.m. is easy compared to the feminist porn war.
Also, if you think my line of argument is going nowhere you are right, as you usualy are.

Looking to the future, is there an article planned about the importance of the money shot? There's plenty to say on the subject.

 

[gorgik9]

If you detect a contradiction then remember that in order to understand quantum mechanics you must be able to accept that two mutually exclusive statements can both be true at the same time. And that q.m. is easy compared to the feminist porn war.
Also, if you think my line of argument is going nowhere you are right, as you usualy are.

Looking to the future, is there an article planned about the importance of the money shot? There's plenty to say on the subject.

About the future: no I don't think haiducii and myself have talked specifically about the money shot, but maybe we should?

However what I can give you immediately is two important text concerning the notion of the money shot:

1) Linda Williams: Hard Core: Power, Pleasure and the "Frenzy of the Visible". (1989, rev ed 1999),( specifically about the money shot: chapt 4: Fetishism and Hard Core: Marx, Freud and the "Money Shot");

2) Eric Schaefer: Gauging a Revolution: 16 mm Film and the Rise of the Pornographic Feature (in Linda Williams (ed): Porn Studies (2004), Schaefers essey pp. 370-400).

The interesting things about Schaefer's essey are two: First that as far as I know he's the first to give an attempt to a serious mediaeconomic explanation to why it all started happening at all.

The second interesting thing IMO is his detailed description of how incredibly fast the notion of "Hard Core Porn" changed during not much more than a single year.

If you're interested in writing something of your own on the money shot (or anything else) in this thread, please be my and haiducii's guest!!!

 

[haiducii]

Scally Lads Pt.2

Scally style began to define itself in the late 70's. John Robb in his book The Nineties: What the F**ck Was That All About? says: ''In Liverpool, experts point to the Scotland Road end of the city for the birth of the scally culture. This tight-knit community of rough inner-city housing is never short of life's little luxuries and yet never seemed to be tied to nine to five. It was round here that the first signs of scally culture emerged in 1977. And it was to Bowie that they looked as the style king. In the seventies David Bowie was god.''

The younger scals tend to have flicks, wear their jeans too tight and too long. Short-collared shirts, Slazenger jumpers and trainers ''zapped'' from Europe. Also if it's cold they either wear sheepskin coats or anoraks and maybe sheepskin mittens, borrowed from their sister. The older scals are different. They dress very ''sensible''. Short, sensible haircuts, tweed or corduroy jackets, short-collared checked shirts. Either jeans, or just normal sensible kecks. And shoes, so they can quite easily get into the poshest of clubs in Liverpool. Scalls are very cocky and arrogant. They are nearly all unemployed. But they don't seem to give a shit about that! They totally disregard anything to do with authority. They hate paying for things. They are also quite violent. They are very funny. And clean. They represent the real youth of Liverpool in these terrible, Thatcherised times. That was a 1982 description, written by Paul Du Noyer in his book Liverpool - Wondrous Place: From the Cavern to the Capital of Culture. Scally culture was the key culture of the 80's. Obsessed with clothes, pop and football, it was streaked with occasional violence and abrasive attitudes, and has dominated British culture right through the 90's.

Scallies are instantly recognisable through their distinctive ''group uniform'', gang formations and practices of agressive ritauls. As a local variation of the national ''chav'' phenomenon, scallies have a distinct clothing style and similar to chavs favour designer brand clothing, usually tracksuits and sports jackets, baseball caps and heavy gold jewellery. As one scally put it: ''A guy has to have the right sneakers, and his track bottoms must be tucked into his socks. It has to be a lot more obvious and on display. There is a concerted effort that goes into the look to stand out more than the average guy from a council estate. You want to show guys you’re into it and that it’s something that turns you on.''

So what's a British "scally". According to UK 5cally L4ds porn studio, founded in London in 2007, it's a guy who "wears sportsgear... is in his teens or early twenties... is usually working class or lower middle class ... and may have a shaved head or crew cut..." Although they’re now interlinked via the web, the varying scally scenes across Europe developed organically, and each has its own local customs. While they still retain a penchant for TNs, French scallies (known as kiffeurs) dress exclusively in Lacoste, even down to their socks—again, a reflection of the brand’s price and prestige. Dutch sportswear fetishism borrows from the 1990s gabber scene, hence the popularity of the Air Max Classic and Air Max 90.

When I was googling about scallies I was asking myself when did they become the ultimate gay fantasy. To be honest, I have no idea. In Gay Times magazine I read an interview with a gay porn director who said: ''The main demand lies in America where they’re becoming obsessed with that English look – skinny pale boys who act rough.'' So, there is a market for scallies and chavs now, not as a consumer group, but as a product in itself. And the trend is global. In France there is a North African gay erotica scene, whilst in Germany one can even find gay nights based around the theme of Turkish immigrants. Indeed, it would seem the gay community has a brilliant inbuilt survival mechanism that can take any social problem and turn it into a party. Trig4 Fi1ms company was aware of it. An early pioneer of chav, scally, "straight lad" and working class gay films, started in 1997 with release of its first film entitled Skinhead, a mildly erotic doentary about the British skinhead phenomenon and its links to gay working class culture. Since then Triga has become one of the most prolific gay studios in the UK with several releases every year. BTW, last year the studio gave birth to a new production team in the guise of 5kin3ossFi1ms. Daniel Walton and David Henry have already grabbed people’s attention by producing some of the filthiest raw content the UK has seen in a while.

Many gay men experience in their adolescence a phase of self-doubt and self-loathing as they realise that their heart’s path swims against the maintream tide. Is the scally a character through which the gay man seeks to rediscover the clandestine excitement of his sexual awakening? Or as a blogger for Bent magazine put it – ''they want to do the guy who bullied them at school''.

The elite’s sexual obsession with the working class has historical foundations. We see it in the life of Oscar Wilde who had a penchant for renting rough penniless youths. We see it in Chaucerian Britain when particular boys were plucked from obscure peasant backgrounds to become courtiers and be doted on by fond masters. Perhaps in the past sleeping with a lower class of man enabled the homosexual to keep his (then illegal) sex at an arm’s length from his own social peers? Owen Jones concludes in his book on chavs that ''the demonization of the working class is the flagrant triumphalism of the rich who, no longer challenged by those below them, instead point and laugh at them''.

Let's finish this post with a ''practical example''. If you love your British scallys rough, dodgy and fresh off the street corners of your local council estate, then watch THIS VIDEO!

 

[gorgik9]

Haiducii's post on Scally Lads part 2 got me thinking of so many different things, and I think it gave me inspiration for - at least! - 3 or 4 new post. The only problem is, that when I get so many different ideas at the same time, I can get pretty frustrated because of the difficulties to find a clear articulation. It can feel like a mental meltdown of sorts...

But let's talk about at least a few different things! First - England to me - among many other things - is the "classical country" of all the working class youth culture: Teddy boys, mods, rockers, punk, skinheads - quite a long and rich story before scally & chavs.

But - second - there are styles and styles. A style isn't necessarily aesthetic (styles of clothes, music, films etc), you can have a style of arguing and thinking and the world got a powerful new british intellectual style in the mid-1960s: Center for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at the university of Birmingham, founded in 1964 by English scholar Richard Hoggart who was closely connected to historian EP Thompson, marxist theorist Raymond Williams and Hoggarts successor as leader of the CCCS Stuart Hall.

What scholars in the cultural studies tradition did, was to forge a new rhetoric ABOUT youth cultures / subcultures and it's stylistic expression. So cultural studies became an academic style to talk about, describe, analyze and interpret the styles of subcultures and it's social meanings. Stuart Hall and his student Dick Hebdige paved the way for using a language based semiotic model to analyze subcultural style, which is a extremely bad idea. A textualist model can not fathom sound, melody, song, movement, neither can it fathom colours and intricate patterns and the same goes for tactile quality and texture.

But more interesting than this purely theoretical criticism is the political / ethical criticism launched by filmmaker, writer, performer and underground cinema activist Duncan Reekie, who in his book "Subversion" pointed to the fact, that no matter what how much marxist revolutionary rhetoric surrounded CCCS, it was at rock bottom a profoundly cultural conservative project, constructed to fight the new commersial youth culture from America.

Thirdly - and maybe most important - I just can't understand why there should be any kind of serious difficulty understanding why lads have become "the ultimate gay fantasy". This is an extension of things going on for at least - at least!!! - some 150 years. It's about young men fabricating that special To-be-looked-at look for other men and boys to oogle, conciously making oneself stylish and sexy. Hrrmmm...I think we need another post on that later....

 

[W!nston]

I just can't understand why there should be any kind of serious difficulty understanding why lads have become "the ultimate gay fantasy". This is an extension of things going on for at least - at least!!! - some 150 years. It's about young men fabricating that special To-be-looked-at look for other men and boys to oogle, conciously making oneself stylish and sexy.

I can't understand it either! I love to oogle boys

Hrrmmm...I think we need another post on that later...

YES! Please