(One photo of one bare-chested and one entirely naked porn actor apparently about to get it on, but otherwise it’s about facial expressions; the posting is, however, about a piece of gay jack-off porn, so it might not be to everyone’s taste.)
From Falcon | Naked Sword as before (when we got puppy play, way out in the fields of kink), but this time, just two hot guys — the actors Adrian Long and Angelo Marco — posed as if they’re about to get it on, Long as top to Marco’s bottom (his bottom being prominently displayed in the p. r. shot). Meanwhile, however, their gazes are fixed on us, the viewers and prospective buyers for their jack-off porn. Now, how to read their facial expressions?
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Long as top, Marco as bottom (in both senses)
The previous flash sale, in my 7/31 posting “Bad dog Mackenzie”, was advertised with a p.r. shot from the porn flick Bondage Garage, depicting a form of sexual interaction — gay male puppy play as BDSM — that few gay men have any actual experience of (but there’s always fantasy), so that I had to supply a lot of explanation, including how the two actors came to their parts in the scene.
This time, all we know is that these two guys are presented as about to intercourse, so pretty much any insertive-inclined actor paired with any receptive-inclined actor will do, and that exhausts virtually the whole stable of gay porn actors out there, and we don’t really have to inquire into Adrian Long and Angelo Marco’s qualifications for their roles in Falcon Studios’ I Want You (FVP215).
The scene might be hot, or pedestrian, or embarrassing — porn flicks can go wrong in so many ways; there is wonderfully made gay porn, reaching to the level of art within its utilitarian genre, but not an enormous amount of it — but right now I don’t give a flying about its quality. All I care about is the two actors’ facial expressions in this p.r. shot.
The expressions. My standard caution: facial expressions are inscrutable. You cannot tell what these men are trying to convey through their gaze and facial expressions, nor what the photographer was hoping they would convey, nor what a typical gay-porn buyer would read their faces
Both men have narrowed eyes, famously resulting from many sources, including squinting into the sun (a p.r. porn shot came by me recently in which this was clearly what was going on, with two guys posed by a pool in the blazing sun). They are both gazing at the viewer, AL directly, eye to eye; AM out of the corners of his eyes, in a side-eye-like gaze (but that might just because his body is turned to the side so that the viewer can appreciate his buttocks on offer).
Gazing at the viewer can be read in many ways: as bonding with the viewer (I’m with you buddy); as challenge to the viewer (Think you can handle this, faggot?); as an invitation (You can have this, dude); as a message of dominance (I’m hot in a way you could never be, submit to me), maybe even mixed with contempt (… you fucked-up pansy). (On these last possibilities, I note that many men, both gay and straight, get off on being abused and humiliated; the psychology is complicated.) There are no doubt other readings that haven’t occurred to me.
Further complication: it’s entirely likely that the two men, with their very different presentations of their bodies, also differ in what they’re projecting through facial expression and gaze.
Then the mouths. AL has his mouth half-open, possibly signifying psychological openness; or a willingness to fellate (thoughtful tops often perform this service for their bottoms, in real life and, routinely, in gay porn); or to kiss (routine in gay porn, and of course in encounters between familiars in real life; but often not made available in tricking with strangers, as being “too faggy”, as a number of men who are “just in it for the sex” have said to me); or as a prelude to a smile, of one kind or another.
AM’s mouth is fixed, apparently at the beginning of a half-smile, which would fit with his ingratiating presentation of his body — though there are, of course, many kinds of smiles.
Enough of the faces, what about the hair? Here we see what might be a moment of artfulness in the way the men are presenting themselves (a result of some collaboration between the actors, their handlers, and the photographer): AL’s body and face are presented so as to emphasize his role as top, with a butch persona; AM’s so as to emphasize his role as bottom, with an ingratiating persona, which would ordinarily map to a more femme persona.
But AM has the substantial, muscular body, while AL’s body is attractive, but lean, on the twinkish side. And, quite dramatically, AM has the butch haircut, AL the wild, “artistic” haircut. The various signifiers clash with one another, giving us not a uniform depiction of stereotypes, but images of real, complexly textured personalities.
I do understand that the opportunities for contriving artful presentations in the world of gay porn are slim; actors tend to be cast from whoever’s available at the moment, so that actors who have never seen each other before find themselves engaged in the whole range of male-male sex acts in front of the cameras. Yet some gay porn is carefully and thoughtfully cast, to achieve just the right mix of complex personas (we have records of the casting procedure in some of these cases). So maybe the pairing in #1 was just dumb luck. But it is delicious.
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