Arnold Zwicky's Blog

(Relatively decorous text about decidedly indecorous sexual relationships, plus female nipples. So you might want to use your judgment.)

A 9/21 e-mail ad for a fall 2021 sale of Titan gay porn: the carefully composed background image of Man and Boy — presumably, a still shot advertising one of the 1000+ porn flicks on sale — exhibits a double vision of sexual dominance and submission:

(#1) Zeus and Ganymede, powerful man and beautiful boy (in modern gay terms, Daddy and Boy), OR Severin and Wanda, slave and his dominatrix (in modern gay terms, the Slave / Masochist, call him Servo, and the Master / Sadist, call him Domino)

Zeus and Ganymede is what we expect in a coupling of adult man and young boy, so older Servo with beautiful young Domino is a reversal of age expectations. But the older man is slipping his hand into the boy’s underwear, to minister to the boy’s penis; the boy is smiling knowingly at us, his audience, with insolent pleasure; and the boy is wearing a fur coat — together signaling that we have in fact stumbled upon a scene from the queer edition of Sacher-Masoch’s Venus in Furs.

I have no idea what the story line is of the video in question — it’s not unimaginable that it’s deliberately framed to go against what the photo seems to tell us, that the boy is actually smiling in anticipation of enthusiastically submitting to being used carnally by the older man. Not unimaginable, but unlikely. Alas, I haven’t yet identified the video in question (despite searching on likely title parts, and looking through about 400 DVD covers), so I don’t know the actual story line. But if anyone can track the video down for me, I’d be happy to add a synopsis to this posting — and I’d be very pleased to get an uncluttered version of the delicious image in #1.

Background: the primeval Daddy – Boy coupling. From my 8/10/20 posting “The pleasures of role reversal”, about the story

of the beautiful youth Ganymede, taken carnally by the powerfully priapic Zeus. From my 4/15/16 posting“Ganymede on the fly”:

On AZBlogX, some images from the Ganymede series on Priapus of Milet’s blog, showing (a version of) the youth Ganymede’s encounter with the God Zeus, told as an elaborate story in photographic images. Very accomplished stuff, also wonderfully erotic.

The conventional script is of the twink (young, innocent, boyish in build, small, smooth, beautiful, effete) taken by the macho man (older, experienced, hairy, muscular, big, aggressive, butch, tough).

All of this is obviously tinged by a reinscription of feminine vs. masculine in male-male terms.

And then these roles can be reversed in videos in which twinks take charge and use macho men sexually.

Background: Severin and Wanda. From Wikipedia:

Venus in Furs (German: Venus im Pelz) is a [1870] novella by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, and the best known of his works.

… The novel draws themes, like female dominance and sadomasochism, and character inspiration heavily from Sacher-Masoch’s own life [in which he submitted to the writer Fanny Pistor as his dominatrix].

… [The main story of the novel] tells of a man, Severin von Kusiemski, who is so infatuated with a woman, Wanda von Dunajew, that he asks to be her slave, and encourages her to treat him in progressively more degrading ways.

(#2) The Titian painting Venus with a Mirror, from which Severin gets the idea of Venus in Furs

At first Wanda does not understand or accede to the request, but after humouring Severin a bit she finds the advantages of the method to be interesting and enthusiastically embraces the idea, although at the same time she disdains Severin for allowing her to do so.

A parallel to #1. From Wikipedia:

(#3) The dominatrix character Vanda Jordan with the submissive character Thomas Novachek (on the cover of the Oberon Books publication of the script)

Venus in Fur is a two-person play by David Ives set in modern New York City. The play had its premiere off-Broadway at the Classic Stage Company in 2010 and on Broadway in 2011.

[Plot:] Thomas Novachek is the writer-director of a new play opening in New York City; this play-within-the-play is an adaptation of the 1870 novel Venus in Furs by the Austrian author Leopold von Sacher-Masoch and happens to be the novel that inspired the term “masochism”. The play begins with Novachek on the telephone lamenting the inadequacies of the actresses who have showed up that day to audition for the lead character, Vanda von Dunayev. Suddenly, at the last minute, a new actress called Vanda (Wanda) Jordan bursts in. At first it’s hard to imagine that she will please this very particular and exasperated writer/director: She’s brash, vulgar and unschooled. But she convinces him to let her audition for the part of Vanda von Dunayev, with the director/writer reading the part of Severin von Kushemski. Much happens during this dynamic reading, as lightning flashes and thunder crashes outside. Vanda shows astonishing insights into the novel and her character, and she performs what is in effect a terrific audition. They both become caught up in the characters they are reading. The balance of power is reversed, and the actress establishes dominance over the director, which is similar to what occurs in the novel.

This entry was posted on September 25, 2021 at 12:18 pm and is filed under Art, Gay porn, Gender and sexuality, Movies and tv. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.