Tag Archives: porn

José Arroyo in Conversation with Tom Waugh on Hard to Imagine

May 27, 2022UncategorizedAthletic Model Guild, Gay Male Eroticisim in Film and Photography From Their Beginnings to Stonewall, Gay Visual Cultures, Hard to Imagine, Hirschfield, Physique Magazines, porn, Queer Histories, Tom WaughNotesonFilm1

The groundbreaking and influential Hard to Imagine: Gay Male Eroticism and Photography and Film from their Beginnings to Stonewall is coming to its 25th anniversary. I talk to Tom Waugh to ask about the intellectual and social context in which the research took place, the methods developed to produce it, the way materials were gathered, who was interviewed, the many barriers to its publication, how the book was received then and why it continues to be so influential now. The video contains images from the book and other sources to illustrate the discussion which albeit vintage are nonetheless explicit. One of the struggles of the book, and one of its glories, was to publish such images in a scholarly context.

For those who need to avert their eyes, or who simply need to wash the dishes, I’ve also turned the interview into a podcast.

The podcast can also be listened to on Spotify here: https://open.spotify.com/show/2zWZ7Egdy6xPCwHPHlOOaT

and on itunes here: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/first-impressions-thinking-aloud-about-film/id1548559546

José Arroyo

Big Joe by Samuel R. Delaney

May 19, 2022UncategorizedBig Joe, Inpatient Press, Offprint 2022, porn, Samuel R. Delany, utopian fictionNotesonFilm1

A handsomely produced book I bought at Offprint 2022 from Inpatient Press, lavishly illustrated by Drake Carr and Sabrina Bockler. I hope the ugliness of the cover was a deliberate choice, as it is not representative of the marvellous drawings inside. It’s a shaggy, good-natured, kind-hearted book which I don’t know whether to categorise as political porn or as explicit utopian function. It’s probably both. A young vagabond hooks up with two older guys in a movie theatre, has such great sex with them that he follows them to the trailer park in the outskirts of town where they live; and joins their extended multi-racial inter-generational tight-knit community where they all have mutually pleasurable sex — in many positions and with generous portions of a variety of personalised kinks — with each other, singly and in various groupings, non-stop and explicitly conveyed. My first book by Samuel R. Delany and it won’t be my last.

José Arroyo