(Not for kids or the sexually modest)
A particularly well-made ad in my e-mail on 6/8, which I’ve cropped so as to split off two aspects of the composition:
(#1) The Band of Four, who I’ll refer to unimaginatively as Man1 though Man4 (they’re actors, of course, posed for this ad; I’ll give you their stage names below); the first three apparently have their gaze fixed on Man4 (possibly their leader, but certainly their conduit to the world outside their little group, as his gaze is to the side, on us, the viewers of the photo)
#1 shows the four men in close conference with another, the suggestion being that they’re what I’ve called a male band (more on this to come); they could be a sports team, a singing group, a smash-and-grab robbery gang, a police unit, frat brothers, a band of musicians, a street-corner gang, a faculty committee, a religious study group, an improv troupe, and so on, or just a bunch of buddies who hang out together.
But wait. They’re all shirtless, or quite possibly naked. And seriously buffed. They’re also racioethnically diverse. Who are these guys? What is this group? What are they conferring about? And, while we’re puzzling, where are they? In the midst of yellow-focus tropical foliage, it seems. (That’s obviously a stage setting, but it’s undeniably tropical in intent.)
The characters are in Brazil, in multiethnic Rio de Janiero, where the actors were filmed in one episode of the recent gay porn flick Muito Quente:
(#2) The actor’s professional names: Man1, Andy Rodrigues; Man2, Gael; Man3. Caio Rodrigues; Man4, Axel Rockham; the title is Portuguese muito quente ‘very hot, piping hot, boiling hot, scalding hot’ (corresponding to Spanish muy caliente), and to judge from the trailers, the sex is indeed very hot, smooth and enthusiastic — but if sex talk is a thing for you (as it is for me), you should know that almost all that impassioned dirty talk is in Portuguese
#1 is the top, face-and-torso, half of a composition designed to sell videos. The genital action, which I can’t show you on WordPress, is in the bottom half; the first three men are in fact not looking down at Man4, but at their own very sizable hard cocks, and Man4 (gazing at the viewers, inviting them in) is holding the shafts of Man1’s and Man3’s cocks, while Man2 has his fist at the base of his own cock, so that the three cocks make their own sub-composition within the larger photo. What they’re conferring about, wordlessly, is the power and beauty of their dicks; they’re sharing the urgent desirability of their bodies.
All of these body parts are artfully arranged, in a satisfying composition (crowned by the facial expressions) — so fulfilling my design specs for gay porn ads (on which, a bit more below).
The background. Male bands and design specs for gay porn ads.
— in my 1/6/21 posting “Another 1966 Superbowl moment”, talking about a group of straight buddies who’d come together to the gay baths to get sexually serviced before the big game and describing
a type of social group in modern American culture: small- to mid-sized groups of affiliated males, sometimes formally constituted, sometimes informally, that serve to organize significant aspects of the social life of men: gangs, sports teams, male social clubs, informal friendship groups …, etc.
I chose to call these social groups male bands, borrowing band from anthropology. And from its use for an infantry company in the book
Band of Brothers, subtitled, E Company, 506th Regiment, 101st Airborne: From Normandy to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, by Stephen E. Ambrose, … an examination of a parachute infantry company in the 101st Airborne Division in the European Theater during World War II. While the book treats the flow of battle, it concentrates on the lives of the soldiers in and associated with the company. The book was later adapted into a 2001 miniseries for HBO by Tom Hanks, Erik Jendreson, and Steven Spielberg, also titled Band of Brothers.
The book rests upon interviews Ambrose conducted with former members of E Company, 2nd Battalion, 506th Parachute Infantry Regiment of the 101st Airborne Division. The veterans were having a reunion at a hotel in New Orleans, Louisiana; the interviews were conducted as part of a project to collect oral histories of D-Day for the National D-Day Museum in New Orleans. Ambrose was intrigued with the bonds that had developed among the members of Easy Company.
… Shakespeare’s Henry V, from which the title of the book is derived:
From this day to the ending of the World, … we in it shall be remembered … we few, we happy few, … we band of brothers.
— in my 5/29/24 posting “Design for sales”, on design specs for an ad for a gay porn video: what should it show? Three criteria (from seven) that are immediately applicable to the Muito Quente ad:
— it shows the … participant’s dicks and as much of these as possible
— it’s a careful compositon of attractive bodies (which will catch, and hold, the viewer’s attention)
— the faces tell an emotional story (to draw the viewer into the action)
June 16, 2024 at 4:27 am |
My title A band of four is, by happy accident, a double Sherlockian allusion, to The Sign of (the) Four and The Speckled Band.