Punch Drunk Porn: SPQR Hits Me, And It Feels Like a Kiss.
Can someone explain to me what it is going on culturally that’s put so many black eyes in porn? Staghomme’s latest — S.P.Q.R. — follows the pyscho-sexual trajectory that began with Bruce LaBruce’s Skin Gang, but has accelerated more recently with movies from Tony DiMarco’s Mixed Martial Arts epic Brutal to My Israeli Platoon, which features the rape of a theoretical Palestinian. In S.P.Q.R, Two Roman soldiers (above) work out their inner conflicts through a mix of punching and pumping). While it’s a great improvement on the old namby-pamby fight formula (see this or this or this for examples of men in porn slap fighting), the armchair sociologist in me can’t quite figure out why it seems to be flourishing.
Is physical violence a way of matching the real dark anxiety (and sometimes actual violence) elicited by bareback studios like Treasure Island and Dark Alley? Is it the rise of a new masculinity? A mainstreaming of BDSM? Part of a broader cultural response to endless war? Or is it just that, in a political climate relatively unconcerned with porn, distributors have become more lenient about mixing blood and boners? (After all, only a half-decade back, when we were shooting Wet Palms, we were routinely informed that every act had to be clearly consensual, and that no one could be restrained.) Ideas? Does a little make it hotter?
S.P.Q.R. (downloads at Staghomme)
— Mike
sxg July 25th, 2011 at 5:40 PM
Clearly there are precautions to take in doing anything that involves some form of pain. I hope that in this case everyone has been tested and that they make sure that blood does not make any contact to the other person’s orifices or open wounds.
With that said, I do find some sort of turn-on by this. I always had a fantasy of getting into a physical fight with big masculine butch guy only to end up making out and having the most roughest and passionate sex of all time. Would love to see UFC fighters end their fight like that!
Mike July 25th, 2011 at 8:36 PM
Have you seen Brutal? It’s like you commissioned it.
sxg July 26th, 2011 at 3:05 PM
yea Brutal was pretty good, but tbh the fight scenes kind of sucked. But the pairing was pretty good all the scenes with Angelo Marconi were hot, and I loved the ending since Ricky Sinz gets fucked. He comes off better as a bottom than a top.
Mike July 25th, 2011 at 11:20 PM
But this appears to be very fake violence. It’s less a mainstreaming of BDSM, more that mainstream porn is appropriating surface imagery from BDSM, and producing a palatable facsimile for their consumers.
Of course there could also be some mileage in the idea of fetishising certain ideas of masculinity.
manu July 26th, 2011 at 2:15 AM
THis is extremly hot!!! Love the videography , costumes and Eliad Anastos Wooooooooooooow Staghomme is the most original and interesting porn site at the moment . They put out extremly hot stuff and there is not one “wooden” performance”, performers are always into what they’re doing . Love it!!
Mike July 26th, 2011 at 8:21 AM
Yeah, Staghomme is consistently great.
cid July 26th, 2011 at 6:09 AM
Well many say that gay 4 pay porn is a representation of self-hate and internalized homophobia. Staghomme are big into gay 4 pay aren’t they? And since gay 4 pay saturated gay porn has now become in a way less powerful, so maybe this violence is a new expression of self-hate and self destructiveness. The darkness and genuine bleakness in bb studios, that don’t usually use gay 4 pay models, does have a feeling of wanted self-destruction and pernicious hedonism.
Maybe 90% of gay porn does involve some kind of expression of self-hate. Whether through sexual violence, dangerous unsafe sex acts or idolization of straight men and degradation of gay men.
Mike July 26th, 2011 at 8:20 AM
Oh, I don’t think it’s as bad as all that. In fact, I’d say that 90% of gay porn involves some sort of expression of self-actualization. Or at the very worst, just reflects the gay culture in sharper relief. The media effects argument has never held much water with me — I didn’t buy it with Murphy Brown, and I don’t quite buy it with barebacking (as much as I don’t like it as a production standard) or violence. Even the 90s straight-man-seduction narrative has largely abated. Sure, it’s cartoonish. Sure, it’s over-the-top. We shouldn’t place more burdens on it than we place any other form of media — from blockbusters to reality TV. Media doesn’t have a direct correlation with real life, except to conservatives and psychoanalysts.
Staghomme’s Heatstroke: All The Glory, None of The Blood July 26th, 2011 at 1:43 PM
[…] we work out the larger significance of SPQR, Staghomme’s blood and circuses epic, I thought it might be worthwhile to post this gorgeous scene of Damien Crosse getting fucked by […]
Tom August 8th, 2011 at 6:20 AM
Most gay men know that ecstasy in the extreme is a combination of pain & pleasure.