The history of gay porn cinema.

[iltman]

Well, Shelter my friend, I've never been a Lord and I've never had a stately mansion in the English countryside, but my working class background has never stopped me from sucking lots of cock, and to love what I do...

One of the reasons why I felt emotionally close to Peter de Rome after watching Ethan Reid's doentaries (though I've of course never have met Peter, as iltman has) was what he said about his guiltless childhood and youth sexuality and his many sex partners from very early years. My thought was "- WOW! I found my spiritual older brother!"

one of the most powerful feelings i got from my conversation with Peter and others was envy for their guilt free adolescence, coming from a middle class conservative background sex was unmentionable and it took me decades before i could successfully move away from the guilt it engendered in me.

 

[iltman]

Thanks a lot iltman! Oh the noughty conservative Lords...

the thing is in the UK the upper classes have always been sexually adventurous! its the middle classes who have been the leaders in sexual repression. I heard plenty of stories from my interviewees regarding the sexual shenanigans of the upper classes including several members of the royal family.

 

[gorgik9]

I fully agree on the moralizing middle classes!

 

[haiducii]

Croatia: Beyond The Pink Curtain

You’ve been to the Czech Republic, France, Germany...and now you are ready for something new? Pack your bags and come with me to Croatia! But before boarding a plane I want you to know that this is not a story about the porn industry in Croatia (it doesn't exist!), it is a story about everyday life of LGBT people in Croatia, like Iva and Marija from a Croatian movie called Fine Dead Girls. They are a young lesbian couple who rent a flat in Zagreb and try to hide their relationship from a homophobic landlady. In some ways it is a very accurate picture of the Croatian society today. The movie was the Golden Arena winner in 2002 at the Croatian Pula Film Festival and the best Croatian movie of the same year. It's not a masterpiece, but it is a "must-see" movie from modern Croatian cinematography and I would recommend anyone to see it. You can download the movie with English subtitles HERE.

Croatia is trying to promote a ''gay-friendly'' image but it looks more like lip service to EU standards than serious change. The entire world has seen the pictures of Croatian towns Zagreb and Split and the gay pride during which several people were injured just because they were brave enough to say who they are and more importantly who they love.



This video, taken four years ago in the city of Split, most clearly shows the scale of opposition and the bravery of participants in the event. As you can see in the video there are a number of heterosexual people supporting the event. (Note: ''Ubij pedera'' means ''Kill the faggot''.)

The most happening place for gay culture is Zagreb, the capital of Croatia, a charming city that around 800,000 people call home, which is the only place, so far, you'll find openly gay clubs. Well, the truth is that in the other parts of the country lesbians, gays and bisexuals do not have many social settings where they can socialise. Outside Zagreb, Rijeka and Osijek there is no LGBT infrastructure. In Zagreb there are two organizations and several informal groups offering discussions, sport activities and choir singing. LGBT people can also socialise at places like libraries, night clubs and saunas and in events such as the Zagreb Pride, the Queer Zagreb Festival and occasional exhibitions.

But of course, Croatia is much more than its capital city, and it also offers a breathtaking range of beaches for holiday makers who wish to have a little summer fun in the sun. The great news for LGBT tourists, is that there is also gay life to be found at Croatia’s gay beach destinations. While there is no official gay-only beach in Croatia, you will have absolutely no problem in finding yourself a patch of warm sand surrounded by local gay people. There are more and more places in Croatia that are gay friendly. Rab island in Croatia is the most gay-friendly summer destination on the Croatian coast. By many it is considered as the most open and there have been many talks that this island would soon start organizing exclusive gay parties. Still Croatia does not have an official gay-only beach (READ MORE) and it probably will not have for some time, but that does not mean you should not visit this Mediterranean pearl. But remember, kissing and hugging in public places is not recommended even if it is allowed by the law. Nonetheless, I strongly suggest open behaviour only in gay clubs and bars.

On 29 June 2002 the very first Pride march of sexual and gender minorities took place in Zagreb’s park Zrinjevac, where dozens of participants were beaten up by extremists. Reports say the marchers, numbering about 200, were subjected to jeering and heckling from some bystanders and that, despite the police presence, a tear gas cannister was thrown at them. Parades are now held regularly although under heavy security. The head of the lesbian association Kontra, Sanja Juras, said the march would provide an opportunity for gays and lesbians in the conservative, Catholic country to "come out". Zagreb Pride 2002 ''outed'' homosexuality in Croatia, embedded it into Croatian reality and served as the foundation for creation of public discourses on homosexuality in Croatia.

Croatian lesbians, gays and bisexuals have faced and experienced many transformations of their social status in the last decade. From 2002 homosexuality has gained media attention and has become visible through the LGB organizations’ advocacy for LGB human rights, and public, political and media discussions about the nature and origins of homosexuality and the extent of rights homosexuals should be ascribed to. Two opposing sides were established through these debates. The right-wing conservatives were defending heterosexual ''family values'', while the left-wing social democrats and liberals were defending LGBT human rights. However, these debates were most often reduced to the issue of defending or attacking the ''normality'' of homosexuals. Public opinion surveys also show that there is a strong division in views about homosexuality. According to a public opinion poll conducted by the Puls Agency in 2002, 47% of respondents would make friends with homosexual persons, while 50% would not. 41% of them believed that the rights of homosexual persons are endangered. About 39% of respondents would also grant the right of same-sex marriage.

The changes in visibility of the LGB community were accompanied with legal recognition of sexual minorities’ human rights and protection against discrimination. Since 2003 ten laws have been adopted which include anti-discrimination clauses on sexual orientation. These laws do not recognize any specific sexual identity or particular need of the LGBT population; they only point at characteristics (race, ethnicity, religion, etc.) of socially vulnerable groups among which sexual orientation is mentioned as well.

In 2003 same-sex relationships were formally recognised in the Same-Sex Partnership Act. It grants only 2 out of 27 rights enjoyed by married heterosexual partners: the right to inheritance of half of the joint assets accrued by the couple and the duty of care for the partner. The law does not afford same-sex unions with the benefits of the national social, pension or health care system. Therefore the value of this law is symbolic rather than practical.

In 2013, Croatian voters have backed proposals to ban same-sex marriages in a referendum. Two-thirds of those who voted approved changes to Croatia's constitution to define marriage as a union between a man and a woman. The referendum asked whether the constitution should be amended to define marriage as "the union between a man and a woman". A petition backing the referendum, drawn up by a Catholic group, received more than 700,000 signatures. Almost 90% of Croatia's population of 4.4 million are Roman Catholics and the Church had strongly urged a "Yes" vote. The vote also received support from 104 members of Croatia's 151-seat parliament. The plan for a referendum was allowed parliamentary scrutiny after a Catholic group called "In the Name of the Family" gathered enough signatures to pass the required threshold of support. "Marriage is the only union enabling procreation. This is the key difference between a marriage...and other unions," said Croatia's Cardinal Josip Bozanic in a letter read out in churches.

Nevertheless, since the introduction of the Life Partnership Act in 2014, same-sex couples in Croatia have effectively enjoyed rights equal to heterosexual married couples in everything except adoption rights. However, separate legislation does provide same-sex couples with an mechanism similar to step-child adoption called "partner-guardianship". The unions will be called “life partnerships” and not “marriage,” but will be defined as a form of family, and protected by the country’s Constitution. The first life partnership in Croatia took place in Zagreb on September 5, 2014 between two men. ''This long-awaited legal recognition of our unions means that all family forms are equal, that they deserve to live in a safe, happy environment and that the dignity of every person, regardless of his sexual orientation, is inalienable'', said Marko Jurcic of Zagreb Pride.

New Eurobarometer report '' Discrimination in the EU in 2015'' shows that 48% of people in Croatia believe that gay, lesbian, and bisexual people should have the same rights as heterosexual people, and 37% of them believe same-sex marriages should be allowed throughout Europe. Better days are ahead for LGBT people in Croatia, and I think it's finally time for Croatia's Pink Curtain to fall.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks haiducii for this great and well written post! I think its great to read about gay life in other parts of the world than USA and Britain. Please don't get me wrong - I don't regret that people write about the US and Britain, but in my opinion it's extra nice when people write about other countries...

I've tried to do my bit on the Scandinavian front, but when it comes to contemporary gay life in the Balkans, haiducii is the master!

The great thing is to get the insider perspective, and I would like to see more insider toughts from many other countries - France, Spain, Italy, Holland, Poland etc etc!

Another thing: Haiducii and myself had a discussion some days ago about broadening the perspectives of this thread. We're not into stopping to post about gay porn and its history, but we're rather explicitely giving ourselves the permission to not only post about gay porn but also about so many other things.

But maybe that's the way it always has been in this thread...

 

[gorgik9]

Peter de Rome, part 2

I hadn't really planned for a Peter de Rome part 2, but since Haiducii managed to find another collection of shorts and post it in his own special de Rome-shorts thread, and he explicitely asked me to write some more I just had to do something about it. But please don't be too disappointed with me - I know I'll stand at a kind of theoretical distance in this post...

So the shorts collection in its entirety is in chronological order and beginning with the shorts already linked to in my first post http://www.gayheaven.org/showthread.php?t=519198#24163882620031607 : "Scopo" 1966, "Double Exposure" 1969, "Hot Pants" 1971, "The Fire Island Kids" 1971 and "Underground" 1972; and then Haiducii's later additions: "Moulage" 1971, "Daydream from a crosstown bus" 1972, "Green Thoughts" 1972, "Mumbo Jumbo" 1972, "Prometheus" 1972, "The Second Coming" 1972 and finally "Brown Study" 1979.

Having watched all these shorts it becomes in my opinion obvious that stereotypical hardcore really wasn't at the center of Peter de Rome's creative heart. He was much more about arousal and imagination than about getting it on and off, and much more about titillation than about ejaculation. More eroticism than hardcore - and I like that! Gay porn hardcore following all the standard stereotyps often gets dreadfully boring, boring, boring.

But Peter de Rome's short movies are never boring and thats because they never followed the stereotypes of gay porn narratives and gay porn casting.
Sometimes I'm puzzled asking myself: "- But what on Gods green earth is he up to?", but that in some sense comes closer to realism than the perfect reproduction of standard patterns.

In this post I'll take Peter de Rome's shorts as an excuse for discussing a couple of things in gay popular culture, and my specific reasons for doing so besides Peter's shorts is a book published a couple of years ago by Danish historian Peter Edelberg titled (in my own English translation) "Big City Attracts: Homosexuality, prostitution and pornography in Denmark 1945-1976". More specifically my inspiration has been Edelberg's long chapter on Danish gay porn magazines, "Trace of an erektion: Homosexual erotic iconography 1949-1979".

The special questions I want to engage are - first - that while its obvious that Peter had a special fling for the male black body, but maybe he also followed at the same time a collective cultural pattern more European than American?

My second question is when, where and why the modern stereotype gay male porn story in visual media emerged.

Before we can productively engage in these questions, it's necessare to compare Danish and US obscenity legislation and censorship, but also to take a peek into the gay erotic magazine market 1950-1980.

Comparing Danish and US legislation.

When Denmark repealed the legal prohibitions against pornography in verbal media 1967 and in visual media 1969 it became the first Western country in history to fully legalize all pornography, with Sweden following suite a couple of years later.

I think it's important to point at a couple of central differences between US and Scandinavian obscenity law besides the content on the laws. First the Scandinavian prohibitions were articulated in a couple of specific national laws later to be repealed by the national parliament. We're not talking about 50 different state laws which was the US case.

Changing obscenity laws in the US in the 20th century usually meant that the US Supreme Court decided on changing the interpretation of the very concept of obscenity, but usually not changing the letter of the law as such. The summary of these differences is that it's easy to point to specific dates in the Scandinavian case and tell when pornography became legal, but in the US case it's rather a historical process with fuzzy edges.

US obscenity legislation came out of the British legal tradition and in particular the Obscene Publications Act of 1857 and the first important court case Regina v. Hicklin in 1868, when the judge handed down a specific legal test - the Hicklin test - deciding on the legal interpretation of the concept of obscenity. The Hicklin test governed US obscenity legislation until the late 1950s, when the Supreme Court started making a series of new legal tests to replace Hicklin.

A second important difference was that mere nudity in the image of the male body never was criminal under Danish law, not even in the 1950s.

The market of Gay erotic magazines in Denmark, 1949-1979.

Following Edelberg it's possible to systematically compare the magazines and their typical iconography during three decades, 50s, 60s and 70s.

Magazines in the Fifties.

Denmark had three gay magazines in the 50s and "Vennen", starting publishing in 1949 and stopping in 1969, was in many ways the most influential and well known Danish mag in the 50s. "PAN" (1954-1979) usually didn't publish erotic pics and "EOS" (1958-1971) with its gay leather fashion iconographically belonged more to the 60s than to the 50s.

"Vennen" in many ways had quite old fashioned iconography with origins in turn-of-the-century photographers like Wilhelm von Gloeden, Wilhelm von Plüschow, Arthur Schulz and Vincenzo Galdi and German gay magazines of the Weimar era.

One of the most important characteristics of the way "Vennen" used erotic images was the dominant use of single images while the use of photo series was very seldom. And the photos were b&w not colour. Using colour in gay erotic magazines didn't start becoming usual until the 1970s.

The most common figure in the 50s iconography were slender teenage boys in their upper teens. The teenage boy wasn't a figure of identification for the readers, he was rather the erotic object for the readers gaze. The first frontal nudity photo - but of course without erection - was published in "Vennen" in Januari 1951.

Magazines in the Sixties.

Typical 60s magazines were "EOS" (though started already in 1958), "Male Models" (1961-1968), "Manège" (1966) and "Wonderboy" (1966-1968).

There were several traits in 60s iconography obviously differing from the 50s.

First gay leather fashion, bondage and fetishism became a central part of the iconography, in particular in "EOS" an "Manège".

Second, while the iconography of the Danish magazines had been strongly influenced by turn-of-the-century and Weimar era photo before, it instead came much closer to modern American beefcake iconography in the 60s. And another thing becoming very popular in Danish mags in the 60s were the big muscular BLACK hunks, maybe more popular in Denmark than in contemporary US mags.

Magazines in the Seventies.

Typical mags of the 70s were "Pagan Male" (1969-70), "Homo Action: Pornography in Color" (1970-78) and "Coq" (1971-79).

It's obvious that the legalization of porn in visual media would have an immediate effect on the iconography in the magazines: All sex became fully explicite almost over night, but there were also other profound changes.

Publishing in full colour was so new it had to be advertised in the title of some magazines. Another important change was that the long reign of the single image was over, paving the way to the narrative picture series of varying length.

The picture series early on became very stereotype with few variations: The guys met, started immediately taking off their clothes and went on with the wanking, sucking and fucking. The ending was as stereotype as the beginning: a shot squirting in each others faces.

Another interesting differance is that the importance of the very muscular beefcake models from the 60s were on the wane in Danish mags in the 70s. This had partially to do with the dominance of the picture series in the new decade, combined with change from soft erotica to hardcore. The iconography of the 50s and 60s had been dominated by a set of different ideal figures - the longing beautiful boy, the beefcake hunk, the leather teen, the gay fetish guy etc - distributed through single pictures, not series.

The dominant figure in the 70s became the ordinary guy acting in everyday life situations - in tandem with varying numbers of other ordinary everyday guys in picture series of varying length. And all in colour!

Peter de Rome's shorts.

I had planned to write much more, but its gotten very late and I think I'll have to stop, but hopefully I've managed to point to a couple of things:

Maybe his strong attraction to black bodies isn't a matter of individual taste only, and maybe he followed patterns more European than American.

To understand Peter de Rome's originality as a film pornographer I also think it's useful to analyze the stereotype porn as the background from which he emerges and stands out.

And maybe I just now got an idea for another post: Analyzing the porno stereotype....

 

[haiducii]

And maybe I just now got an idea for another post: Analyzing the porno stereotype....

That's actually not a bad idea

Thank you for inviting us to Danish journey with you!

 

[haiducii]

Serbia: Beyond The Pink Curtain

It's probably the law of paradox that says that the country to provide the next significant contribution to gay culture would be Serbia. Petrol bombs and rocks were hurled at Pride marchers in Belgrade in 2010, where 5.000 police had to guard 1.000 very brave people. But a film about the battle to stage a Serbian Pride has just claimed the crown for 2011 at the country's box office, easily outpacing fellow gay icons The Smurfs in the No 2 slot, with an incredible 500,000 admissions across the Balkans so far.

Surprisingly, Parada (The Parade), written and directed by Srđan Dragojević, isn't a solemn arthouse lecture; it's a cheeky, crowdpleasing comedy about a former Serbian para who gets a job providing security at Pride. You can download the movie with English subtitles HERE.

In Serbia, in particular, The Parade’s popularity is evidence of a postwar country rebounding from the ultra-nationalism and the bloody wars of the 1990s, aided in no small amount by the European Union. Director Srđan Dragojević’s none-too-subtle messages about tolerance and cross-border reconciliation boldly affirm Serbia’s—and all of the former Yugo states’—EU bids, which are the motor of democratic reform in the region. Gay rights are a litmus test for liberal bearing in postwar, post-autocratic societies, and a prerequisite to joining the European club.

Three years ago Serbia took a giant step up the EU ladder, attaining candidate status. If the likes of Lemon, Pearl, Rocco, and Halil can join together to protect a gay pride parade, maybe the entire region can live up to human rights norms and take their place in the European community.

All former Yugoslav countries seem to have taken a different tack on homos at different times. Slovenia decriminalized homosexuality in 1976, Croatia and Montenegro in 1977, Serbia in 1994, Macedonia in 1996 and finally, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1998. However, in 1994, Serbian politicians, in the middle of the Bosnian war, found the time to pass a law legalizing homosexuality. In 2003, they made anti gay-speech illegal. Through adoption of the new Penal Code, which came into force on 1 January 2006, Serbia lowered the age of consent to 14 for all sexual relationships. In March 2009, the Serbian Parliament finally adopted the comprehensive Anti-Discriminati on Law and Article 21 of the law specifically bans discrimination based on sexual orientation and allows the right to privacy, as well as free expression of sexual orientation. In 2010, gays could serve in the military. Serbian LGBT rights activists transmitted the news within their communities, encouraging people to apply.

By 2009, the Serbian Parliament adopted four laws, which specifically ban discrimination based on sexual orientation: Labour Law (discrimination based on sexual orientation in employment was banned), Law on Higher Education (equal rights regardless of sexual orientation in those institutions) and two media laws, which permits the Broadcasting Agency to prevent the spreading of information encouraging discrimination, hate and violence based on sexual orientation. Media laws were the first in Serbian legislation to recognise sexual orientation as one of the basic human rights and forbid hate speech on grounds of sexual orientation.

Unfortunately, these laws are not adequately implemented in practice. The biggest problem related to the protection of LGBT human rights in Serbia is lack of implementation of these adopted laws as well as unreported homophobic and transphobic violence and discrimination.

In May 2014, Amnesty International identified Serbia as one of a number of countries where there is a marked lack of will to tackle homophobia and transphobia. Since 2011 public authorities have banned Pride marches on the basis of threats from homophobic groups. A march in 2010 was overshadowed by 6,500 angry counter-demonstrators. They attacked police, cars, shops, buses, and set fire to ruling political party's headquarters. It was the only gay pride parade to go ahead in the Serbian capital since 2001.

In 2001, Belgrade held its first-ever gay parade nd many participants were brutally beate by people identified as nationalists, members of right-wing organisations and some members of Serbian Orthodox Church. The police soon arrived and joined in the fight – beating up the gay people too.

Violence disrupts Serbian gay pride parade in 2001 (ENG subs)



In September 2014 Serbia Gay Pride march returned after four years. It took place in the capital Belgrade, amid huge security, including special forces and armoured vehicles. Participants marched through the centre of the city to the National Assembly, where ambassadors from numerous European countries addressed the crowd. "I feel phenomenal. Our efforts of the past three years have borne fruit," organiser Boban Stojanovic told Reuters news agency.

The social climate in Serbia at the end of the last, and the turn of this, century has been marked with very strong homophobia, prejudices, violence and discrimination against LGBT people. This atmosphere affected the low visibility (or invisibility) of the LGBT population in the public discourse of the country. Although Serbia ratified most of the international human rights doents and conventions, Serbian society is still characterised by strong prejudices and ignorance towards LGBT people, as well as the lack of understanding and tolerance towards everything that is different.

Regarding the transgender population, the situation is very complicated. On the one hand, Serbia has probably the best doctors and experts team in the entire region, but on the other hand, legislation on the issue of gender marker change absolutely does not exist in Serbian legal system. Transgender people are even more vulnerable; hate and violence against them resulted in the murder of one transsexual woman, Minja Kočiš, in January 2009. The murderer of transsexual woman was sentenced to 35 years in prison in July 2014. Because of lack of legislation, transsexual persons depend on the goodwill of officials who are responsible for changing the doents in Serbian municipalities. The fact is that people from all around the country must come to the one particular municipality in Belgrade because that is the only place in Serbia where they can change their doents after the gender reassignment treatment.

Transsexual people face a reportedly higher chance to get fired from their jobs when undergoing gender reassignment procedures. Also, transsexual persons usually cannot afford hormone treatment and since gender reassignment treatment is not covered by health insurance, sometimes the transition process is very long. Due to that, a significant number of transsexual persons have entered the sex industry which make them even more vulnerable to discrimination and violence. Moreover, according to existing laws in Serbia, prostitution is still criminalised.

According to a 2010 Balkan Monitor survey, over 70 percent of Serbians ''strongly agree'' that ''homosexual relations are always wrong''. When asked ''Is the area where you live good place for gays and lesbians to live?'' only 22 percent of Serbians said yes in 2010. That's higher than Moldova, which had Europe's lowest percentage – seven percent. In contrast, all Western Europeans had rates of 40 percent or higher. The iron Curtain is now Gay Curtain.

In last ten years, there has been significant effort in improving the Serbian Anti-Discrimination Law, due to the European Integration process that Serbia has entered. This might be identified as a reason for adopting progressive legislation by the Serbian Parliament regardless of the high level of homophobia in society. Nevertheless, if you're gay, don't bring your fabulous pink shorts to Serbia just yet.

Annual Report on the position of LGBTIQ population in Serbia for 2014 is available to download as a PDF HERE.

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks haiducii for yet another interesting and well-written post on the Balkans!!!

I wonder if "Labris" is the name of the Serbian gay organisation?

It's also very interesting to get to compare the different former Yugo republics on gay questions. Another thing is that it seems Serbian politicos - just like Scandinavian politicos - are fond of making new laws, but not particularly fond of attributing the necessary human and economic resources for the effective implementation of the law. Sometimes when I'm in a bad mood I think politicians loves to make new laws just because they DON'T wont any substantial change... New laws without effective implementation is, as Shakespeare knew centuries ago, just "words, words, words".

I wonder if Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would say that the non-implementation of new laws are the negation of the negation...

 

[gorgik9]

Thanks haiducii for yet another interesting and well-written post on the Balkans!!!

I wonder if "Labris" is the name of the Serbian gay organisation?

It's also very interesting to get to compare the different former Yugo republics on gay questions. Another thing is that it seems Serbian politicos - just like Scandinavian politicos - are fond of making new laws, but not particularly fond of attributing the necessary human and economic resources for the effective implementation of the law. Sometimes when I'm in a bad mood I think politicians loves to make new laws just because they DON'T wont any substantial change... New laws without effective implementation is, as Shakespeare knew centuries ago, just "words, words, words".

I wonder if Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel would say that the non-implementation of new laws are the negation of the negation...

I've just looked at the report you uploaded and found out that "Labris" is the Lesbian organisation behind the report...

 

[haiducii]

I've just looked at the report you uploaded and found out that "Labris" is the Lesbian organisation behind the report...

UR right.

Labris = Organization for lesbian human rights from Belgrade

Check their website.

 

[gorgik9]

The Leopold-Loeb Murder and its consequences.

Do you think it was a mere coincidence that British tabloids like "Daily Star" and "Daily Express" started publishing speculations on Germanwings pilot Andreas Lubitz homosexuality and to discuss if his alledged homosexual desires in some way could be the cause of death of 149 people just a couple of days after the news of the plane crash on 25 Mars 2015?

And what to say about the speculations about the alledged homosexuality of Norwegian mass murder Anders Behring Breivik? Wellknown Norwegian novelist Karl Ove Knausgård told us in a long 2012 essay that Breivik could have become a mass murder because of how he handled his - alledged, possible, rumoured - homosexual feelings, and respected journalist Åsne Seierstad had about the same type of message in her 2013 book "En av oss" ("One of us").

Why is it that a homosexual or alledgedly homosexual serial killer - let's say a Jeffrey Dahmer or a John Wayne Gacy - will always hit the front page, while a heterosexual serial murder to become mythological must express the most extreme degree of evil, let's say a Ted Bundy luring women into his car by acting crippled?

There's some strange intimate connection between male homosexuality, disease, perversion and death, isn't there?

****************************************

The main subject of this post isn't the Leopold-Loeb murder - it's the fictionalizations of the murder in different media and genres, but of course I'll have to give a short sketch of what it was all about. If you want the story in full detail I can recommend historian Simon Baatz's book "For the thrill of it" (2008).

Why Vito Russo got it wrong.



The wellknown doentary "The Celluloid Closet" (1995) based on Vito Russo's book with the same title (1981, rev ed 1987) is very much focused on the different stereotypes of male effeminacy with all its swish movements, girlish behaviour and silly giggle. Sure the docu tells that we got a new stereotype of the homosexual man as a dangerous psychopath from the mid 1930s on, but it gives a very weak explanation and doesn't say more than it was because of the new strict Hollywood morals encoded in the Production Code from 1934 on.

I think that the main weakness in this explanation are two: First you can't treat movies and the movie industry as some kind of closed kingdom of its own. Hundreds and hundreds of Hollywood movie were and still are based on plays, novels and short stories, and you can't fully explain the new stereotypes in the films just by pointing fingers towards the Production Code.

Secondly, to understand the new stereotypes you have to look at things happening and trends emerging in American society in the 1929s and 30s. To spell out all the beans, we'll have to look at the Leopold-Loeb murder in Chicago in 1924 and the enormous mountains of newspaper articles published because of the murder. And then we'll have to look at the special American interpretation of the psychoanalytic theory of male homosexuality.

The Leopold-Loeb case has a brief mention in connection to Alfred Hitchcock's movie "Rope" (1948) in the film version of "The Celluloid Closet", but Vito Russo didn't say anything about this murder in his 1987 book, where the names Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb are non existant. Russo was too busy blabbering about sissies.

The Leopold-Loeb Murder, 21 May 1924.

Let's start with a guided tour in Chicago!


On Wednesday 21 May 1924, 14 year old Bobby Franks was kidnapped close to his home in Kenwood, Chicago, and murdered somewhat later the same day by two men not much older than him, 19 year old Nathan Leopold and 18 year old Richard Loeb.

Leopold and Loeb were strange bedfellows and in many ways each others opposites. Both were college students from wealthy Kenwood families, but while Leopold had very few friends before meeting Loeb in the summer of 1920, being something of a loner, loving ornithology, heartily disliking sports and considered an aloof person, Loeb was gregarious, made new friends easily and something of an athlete, but also a heavy drinker. While Leopold liked to read and comment on the philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche, Loeb red as much pulp crime fiction he could find. And while Leopold became head-over-heels in love with Loeb, the latter was something of a womanizer.

But Loeb "allowed" Leopold to have sex with him now and again. In some ways it seemed Nathan and Richard was a dangerously perfect fit: Richard gave Nathan the man-on-man sex he craved, while Nathan was the perfect audience for Richard's illusions about himself as the criminal mastermind, also fertilized by all the pulp crime fiction. So they started conjuring up plans for a brilliant crime: - What about the most intelligent murder of all times? Just for the thrill of it?

They did their deed on 21 May but they weren't master criminals other than in their own imagination. Nathan Leopold and Richard Loeb confessed their crime to State Attorney Robert Crowe on Saturday 31 May, just ten days after the murder. Hence they ended up in police custody waiting for an epic court trial.

The Court Trial, 21 July- 10 September 1924.

It's important to understand the specific conditions for the trial to understand what it was about. Since Leopold and Loeb had already confessed their guilt, the trial wasn't about the guilt question. It was about the consequences of their guilt, about their punishment: Would they hang as Prosecutor Robert Crowe pleaded, or should they get lifetime in prison as defense attorney Clarence Darrow argued?

After all the court proceedings with the hearing of a large number of expert witnesses and the closing statements for the defence first and for the prosecution last it would be the ardous task for judge John Caverly to hand down the sentence.

The prosecutor had the simpler task. His strategy would be to make sure with the help of the state psychiatrists that Leopold and Loeb weren't legally insane, and, hence, could be executed. His next step was to argue for their actual death penalty.

Clarence Durrow's strategy for the defence was necessarily more complicated. Leopold and Loeb's confession of guilt couldn't be undone, and since it seemed highly improbable they were legally insane, this meant it was legally possible to give them the death sentence. So they could be executed, but should they? Probably the best chance to get Leopold and Loeb off the scaffold was to convincingly argue, that while they knew what they did and could tell right from wrong, their will wasn't free. It was overpowered by mental powers beyond the reech of the free will.

This is the point were the concept of homosexuality and homosexual desires comes into the argument: Persons overpowered by homosexual desires couldn't choose to do what they did. Homosexual persons were determined to do what they did by their homosexuality. Their homosexuality determined them to murder Bobby Franks and, hence, Leopold and Loeb shouldn't hang. They should get liftime in prison.

When judge Caverly prepared to announce his sentence on Wednesday 10 September 1924, anyone who thought that the prosecution had "won" the case and that Leopold and Loeb would hang could be excused for making this hasty conclusion, since Robert Crowe had done an expert job undermining the authority of most of the expert witnesses for the defence, and had manage to broadcast the message of Leopold's sexual perversion.

But this conclusion was hasty. It was judge Caverly alone who sentenced, and his sentence was they should spend the rest of their lives in prison. Some movies makes Clarence Darrow the "hero" who saved the lives of Leopold and Loeb, but that wasn't the case. It was judge Caverly.

Fictionalizing the Leopold-Loeb case and articulating the general stereotype of the homosexual man as a dangerous psychopath.

In this chapter I'll first talk about novels, plays and movies more or less directly based on the Leopold-Loeb case, and then talk about fictions articulating the general stereotype of the homosexual man as a dangerous psychopath but not directly connected to the Leopold-Loeb case.

Leopold-Loeb as fiction.

The first actually published work based on this murder is Petrick Hamilton's play "Rope" which premiered in London 1929 and became a huge commercial success, and it also became a radio play on BBC in 1939, so when Alfred Hitchcock adapted Hamilton's play as a 1948 movie (with James Stewart, Farley Granger and John Dall) there must have been a lot of people in the audience who had watched Hamilton's original play or listened to the BBC radio play.


Richard Loeb was murdered in prison in 1936 but Leopold would live to get a long life. In 1953 - having been in prison for 29 years - he asked to be pardoned to get a parole, which was denied, but what he got was a fierce public debate on the murderer and his crime, plus three new novels:
Meyer Levin's "Compulsion" (1956);
James Yaffe's "Nothing but the night" (1957);
Mary-Carter Roberts' "Little brother fate" (1957).

Meyer Levin's novel "Compulsion" was made into a movie in 1959 by Richard Fleicher with Orson Welles as Clarence Darrow, doing one of his most powerful screen performances in his career:


Newer fictionalizations have come up now and again, of which Tom Kalin's movie "Swoon" (1992) is among the most interesting since it's one of the very first works where Leopold's and Loeb's sexual affaire could be openly talked about:


The general stereotype of the homosexual man as a dangerous psychopath.

An early example is Dashiell Hammett's detective novel "The Maltese Falcon", originally published in Black Mask magazine in 1929 and as a book in 1930, and made into movies several times, but the big classic is of course the 1941 version directed by John Huston and with Humphrey Bogart as Sam Spade and Peter Lorre as the villain Joel Cairo.

In the novel it was explicitely told that Joel Cairo was queer and the novel had a thick queer subtext, but in a 1941 movie you couldn't talk openly about queers, faggots and homos thanks to the 1934 Production Code. So how did you tell the audience that Cairo was queer? We know what John Huston did with the famous scene when Cairo meets Spade for the first time in Spade's office. Spade's assistent announces that the man waiting outside has a perfumed business card: "-Gardenia!", and then the oriental-like music:


I definitely disagree with Vito Russo's comments on Cairo: The point isn't that Cairo is effeminate, which he is. The point is that THIS specific effeminate man is dangerous, violent and potentially murderous.

The films of Alfred Hitchcock could merit a post of its own since few directors as creative and influential as Hitchcock has been so deeply marked by the idea of the homosexual murderer, the homosexual man murdering because he's homosexual. We meet this kind of murderer early on in Hitch's career in his British movies; his first "homo-killer" is Handel Fane in "Murder!" (1930) and considered the model for Brandon Shaw and Phillip Morgan in "Rope" (1948), Anthony Bruno in "Strangers on a train" (1951), Leonard in "North by northwest" (1959) and last but not least Norman Bates in "Psycho" (1960).


Some novels - later made into movies - with dangerous queer villains are Vera Caspary's "Laura" (1942) and Otto Preminger's 1944 movie; Patricia Highsmith's 1950 novel "Strangers on a train" and Hitchcock 1951 movie which I already mentioned, and another Highsmith novel "The talented Mr. Ripley" (1955) adapted to movies several times.

But maybe the most influential of all interpretations of the stereotype of the homosexual man as a dangerous psychopath is Robert Bloch's 1959 novel "Psycho" and Alfred Hitchcock's adaption with Anthony Perkins as Norman Bates and Janet Leigh as Marion Crane; in particular the famous shower scene which is the origin of the slasher genre:


The central figure and true protagonist of "Psycho" isn't Norman, it's rather his mother, Mrs. Bates, but we won't understand this is the case until the last few scenes of the movie:




To be more precise: The protagonist is mother Bates as the one side of Norman's split psychotic personality which emerged when he murdered his mum. The other side of the personality is Norman as the sad lonely young man, or maybe you could put it thus, that while sad lonely Norman is totally harmless, mother Bates is the murderous monster who can't accept that any young woman would like to meet Norman, and, hence, s/he kills them. Norman must be Mrs. Bates only true love. And mummy dearest the only love he can live with.

All of this comes close to the theory of the causes of male homosexuality dominating in American psychoanalysis in the 1940s, 50s and 60s.

"Boys Beware!"

Boys Beware is a short educational movie made in 1960.


What I'd specifically want to talk about is a line spoken by the speaker in this movie: "- Not all homosexuals are passive. Some resort to violence."

This isn't a random statement, it's an opinion reflecting a dominant tradition in American psychoanalysis, and in a way both "Psycho" and "Boys Beware" reflects the thoughts of American psychoanalysts in the time the movies were made.

But you can't blame Freud for the flood of homophobia gushing forth from 1940 on. Less than a year after Freud's death, analyst Sandor Rado published an influential article in 1940 dismissing Freud's concept of inborn biological bisexuality which started train of thoughts paving the way for the notion of homosexuality as a mental disorder; it was defined thus in 1952 in the first edition of the American Psychiatric Association's Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM). To be more specific homosexuality was placed under the category of "sociopathic personality disorder."

There's as always much more to say, but here endeth this particular lesson.

 

[Shelter]

Oh My God!!!! Dear Gorgik this was the most interesting essay I've ever read. Never before I've heard anything about the Leopold-Loew case. Is there a possibility to get the film SWOON? - But anyway Gorgik - for this essay my very, very thanks.

 

[gorgik9]

I'm really happy you liked this post, Shelter!!! Maybe we could ask haiducii if he can find Swoon as full movie somewhere on the net? You know he's the big expert on finding interesting things...

 

[haiducii]

Never before I've heard anything about the Leopold-Loew case.

You're not the only one. This is all very new to me and this very well-written (read: excellent) essay really opened my eyes!

@gorgik9: Thank you very much for your amazing post! :thumbs up:

 

[Shelter]

You're not the only one. This is all very new to me and this very well-written (read: excellent) essay really opened my eyes!

@gorgik9: Thank you very much for your amazing post! :thumbs up:

Dear Haiducii - and now it's again your turn. The ball is on your field! Will it be possible for you to help? - Anyway a big hug to you! p:big hug:

 

[Hyp]

So, was it common practice for guys in the 80s
to keep a tube of lube in their back pockets?

 

[gorgik9]

Well I've never understood why I should buy expensive lube tubes when you can use a can of vaseline and other unexpensive lubricants...

In particular not in the 1980s when I was a university student with an almost non-existant economy...Lube tubes? No way! Saliva, olive oil, vaseline...

 

[haiducii]

Artporn

Gorgik9, a man known as the world's greatest authority on gay porn history, once said: ''I think Antonio da Silva is one of the more interesting film makers of our time!'' So then I decided to try to dig up some information on Antonio Da Silva and his work.

Most adult films are stultifyingly formulaic. An actor enters, a brief scenario is set up, and suddenly they're going at it. Not so with the work of Antonio da Silva, the mysterious auteur who doesn't like to show his face and whose erotic films have made the gay blog rounds again and again over the past year. In the span of only a few years, he has created a collection of innovative, thrillingly dirty queer short films that mix elements of experimental cinema, early gay porn, X-Tube, and surrealism to depict the unique ways gay men have sex today. His films can be categorized as experimental doentary films about male sexuality.

When the award-winning Portuguese artist filmmaker Antonio Da Silva first downloaded Grindr to his phone in 2010, he saw a puzzle waiting to be put together. The patchwork of faceless body parts serves for a striking image when taken out of context, as London-based Da Silva instantly recognized. ''It was funny to see that sometimes the head of a profile pic would sync with the torso of the profile right below'', the director says of the app's home page. ''I was amazed by the puzzle the pictures created on the screen.''

Da Silva remembers his beginnings: ''I started shooting ''Mates'' in 2010, at this moment of my life I had just came out from a relationship of 4 years, I was jobless and I just got my first smart phone. So I started to meet lots of men and also started to record most of the encounters.''

He has always been fascinated by male sex and sexuality. He became increasingly frustrated with how moving image explored this and have begun to make it the subject of his films over the last four years. The influence that Grindr puzzle had on Da Silva can be easily charted through the erotic short films he's made in the four years since his first encounter with the app: there's the dizzying hardcore depiction of online hook-ups in ''Mates''; a glimpse into the adoration and sometimes ageist fetishism of older men in ''Daddies'', the anonymous sex culture in a London public bathroom in ''Bankers''.

Many of his films doented a series of his (real) one night stands and London office workers cruising for sex during their lunchbreaks (in which he participated). ''Most of the inspiration come from the places I visited and the people I met. I am inspired from the viewers and the people that want to be in my films and artist and filmmakers like Wakefield Poole, Martin Parr, Werner Herzog, Lloyd Newson, Lars Von Trier, David Lynch, and Michel Gondry...I got totally obsessed when I saw Wakefield Poole’s films. I connect a lot with him, because he also has this kind of background in performance art and dance film, and suddenly moving to porn,'' Da Silva describes what and who inspires him.

With the objective of combining his interests in cinema, performance and visual arts, he undertook two master degrees in London, the first in Fine Arts at Central Saint Martins and the second in Dance for the Screen at The Place – London Contemporary Dance School. ''I came to London to study fine arts at Central Saint Martins, most of my friends are based in East London (Shoreditch and Dalston, author's comment) and I am also inspired with the all ''scene'' there,'' Antonio da Silva, a countryside boy without any contact with the gay world, explains key reason he moved to London.

Experimenting is the core of his work, he is interested in exploring different artistic genres, both in terms of technique and content. He does not consider himself a pornographer but a filmmaker with a taste for highly personal, quite beautiful and sexy explorations of gay desire. ''I don't have a problem with calling myself a pornographer, but there is a problem if people consider me just a pornographer and nothing else. Essentially I am a filmmaker and a kind of an artist who is interested in people and places.'' Montage (editing and sound) is central to all his work, so he spents lots of time choreographing all the material filmed. He doesn't do porn in the way porn is perceived today. Over all he considers himself as an artist, filmmaker, ethnographer and sometimes a choreographer working with pornographic elements.

There's no question that each of his films tap into the erotic potential of male bodies on film with aplomb, but what makes them surpass their mainstream counterparts in gay pornography is the willingness to explore themes in contemporary gay male culture at large, particularly those focused on the way sex has evolved in conversation with the rapid development of technology. The beauty of da Silva's films is threefold: it includes real people, its emotional, and features situations so real as to sometimes be uncomfortable.

Da Silva makes short erotic films combining elements of pornography, narrative and the art film – they could as easily be shown in an art gallery as in the cinema. His work is regularly screened at major festivals in Israel, Spain, Portugal, London, the United States, the United Kingdom, Norway, Brazil and more. In an interview with Gayletter last year, Da Silva said: ''It is clear to me that there is an audience for such work and many creative people are willing to explore that. A good example is the quality of the films shown in the past years at the Berlin porn film festival and the increasing audience attending it.''

Da Silva specializes in short movies on purpose because he loves short films. ''I never aim to do a feature length film, but actually I do think I’m gonna do one because people have so many questions about my films, and actually they are all a very long process to make, and um, you know, I might make a feature length film in which I explain to people the process, that’s it,'' Da Silva explains his future plans.

Filmography: Ecosexual (2015), Doggers (2015), Spunk (2015), Solos (2014), Limanakia (2014), Beach 19 (2014), Nude Dudes (2014), Cariocas (2014), Dancers (2014), Pix (2014), Daddies (2014), Gingers (2013), Bankers (2012), Julian (2012), Mates (2011).

HERE you can find / download Da Silva complete filmography (except two shorts from 2015: Ecosexual and Doggers).

BTW, Da Silva doesn't have a favourite but he can say that one of his preferred ones is ''Limanakia''. Okay, guys, which one is your favorite, and why is it your favorite? :thinking:

 

[takeitall456]

Well I've never understood why I should buy expensive lube tubes when you can use a can of vaseline and other unexpensive lubricants...

In particular not in the 1980s when I was a university student with an almost non-existant economy...Lube tubes? No way! Saliva, olive oil, vaseline...

Sorry to interfere but please remember oil-based lubricants, like baby oil and vaseline, are NOT safe to use with latex condoms. Water-based and silicone-based lubricants are safe and recommended.