(About men’s bodies and man-man sex, in very plain talk, with only a little bit of linguistic interest — so not for kids or the sexually modest.)
What is this man so earnestly fixed on?:
A penis, which he’s about to fellate avidly. (The full picture, and some details, in #6 in the AZBlogX posting linked to below.)
On AZBlogX, an extended pictorial essay “Poised to prong, psyched to suck”, on the representation of fellators in publicity for gay porn. Here’s the text (without the thoroughly X-rated images), edited down somewhat to concentrate on the visual conventions in a corner of the gay porn world, but preserving the style of the original, which uses lots of street vernacular.
This is an essay on the representation of man-man sex in the publicity shots for gay porn — not in the porn itself, but in the stills used for publicity. These aren’t screen shots, but carefully posed photos designed to advertise the flicks themselves: buy this (or rent this or view it on demand, but pay for it), it’s **hot**!!! (As I’ve noted before, not infrequently these photos show things that never actually made it on screen.)
Visual gay porn is focussed, first of all, on dick; secondarily on asses: these two as sources of sexual pleasure. The overriding principle is Everything To the Max: really big — magnificently long and thick — cocks, in particular, accorded Maximum Visibility. The porn actors jack those cocks (their own or each other’s) off, suck them and get theirs sucked, fuck with them or get fucked by them, and all the while the cocks are the stars of the action, the top draw for the men using the videos for their own pleasure, so of course the films show as much of the stars as they can, for as long as they can. This drive for Maximum Visibility is much greater in still shots, of course.
In videos, a cock shown in all its splendor can be — will be, must be — engulfed, in part or in whole, in a mouth or asshole, but more of it will soon be back on view. On the other hand, in still shots, you have only the frozen moment; a photo of cock plunged to the hilt in ass or mouth shows no cock at all, and is therefore not even technically X-rated. In any case, many men find such shots unsatisfying (I find them quite moving, since they depict the deepest possible union between two bodies), so we get publicity shots in which cocks are shown in their entirety (poised to thrust into mouth or asshole) or almost so (with only the tip inserted). The latter approach, which I’ll call tipping, is a compromise between Maximum Visibility and another principle of visual porn, Carnal Connection, calling for actual physical engagement of two bodies. The other, less carnal, approach I’ll call gearing-up.
My impression is that tipping is by far the dominant approach in publicity shots. #1 on AZBlog shows a recent all-tipping mail ad from the C1R company for some Cocky Boys videos — which I was going to post anyway because of the remarkable athleticism (so wonderful to look at, so unlikely in real life) in the ad for Hung Flip Fuckers.
The real topic of the AZBlogX posting, however, is gearing-up, because it was featured so prominently in an issue of Adam Gay XXX Showcase (Vol. 8 No. 7, January 2001) I recently unearthed (from only 15 years ago, but in some ways an artifact from another world).
In tipping shots, the enthusiasm of the receptive (cock-taking) partner isn’t at issue; after all, the guy has the dick in his mouth or (partly) up his ass. But for gearing-up shots, things are not always so clear. For fuck shots, you’ve got the fucker poised to prong the hole, and the hole has usually arranged himself to convey his enthusiasm for the deed (humping up for doggie sex, for instance). In any case, all he really has to do is offer his asshole, make it available.
But for suck shots, you’ve mostly got the insertive partner doing the offering, and the prospective fellator showing, somehow, that he’s psyched to suck. I find these gearing-up for cocksucking shots almost always somewhat ridiculous, unintentionally funny. So many choices for the cockhound: how to position himself vis-a-vis the engorged treasure, what facial expression to display, what to do with his mouth (and tongue). The fellatee, meanwhile, can just stand (or sit or lie) there, offering his stiff rod, and his face can take on any expression appropriate for a guy engaged in having sex, of any kind (including solo jacking-off) — but the fellator is having a social encounter with a much-desired phallic partner. Hablale, to paraphrase Almodóvar.
The AZBlogX posting then surveys 10 Adam Gay images of such encounters, from three jack-off flicks released in 2000. Several are beautifully composed, several strike me as notably (unintentionally) funny, and one has an especially impressive implement, as I put it there. Some, of course, are artless or awkward. But they’ve all got dick.
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