Session 8: Erotic Politics and Differences
Chair: Tom Claes
The Revolution Will be Sexualized: The Gay Male Body as a Site of Resistance in Erotic Media
Theo Estes
Truman State University, Kirksville, MO, USA
In The History of Sexuality, Michel Foucault describes Western society as one that “demand[s] that sex speak the truth … [and] that it tell us our truth, or rather, the deeply buried truth of that truth about ourselves which we think we possess in our immediate consciousness” (69). In this belief, sex produces its own systems of discourse, which is inherently laden with power. This system of discourse is formalized in the areas of erotic media, which functions as a channel to demonstrate these power functions. The erotic is a creative force that functions mainly as a forum to uphold and reinforce the power structures that are already in place; however, this is not a necessary function of the erotic; the erotic can also function as a force that reconstructs the power of sexuality and speaks a “new truth.”
In my paper, I focus specifically on two films that were released in 2004: Bruce LaBruce’s The Raspberry Reich and Rafael’s Revolucion Sexual. I chose these films because their story lines are driven by revolutions, and their erotic content is also revolutionary, as they challenge traditional notions of sexuality and the sexual body. The paper focuses on the ways in which the films challenge notions of the link between male sexuality and violence; the boundaries between the private and public spheres; and how both videos recreate the boundaries of gender and sex within gay male erotic media, specifically the ways in which gay male erotica essentializes its performers into “tops” and “bottoms”. These films represent a shift in the world of gay male erotic works away from merely acting as “copies” of what is found in pornography that is directed towards heterosexual men; rather, they attempt to place the rhetoric of gay male erotica outside of the realm of heteronormative discourse.
The Eroticisation and De-Eroticisation of Sexual Disease
Allison Moore & Paul Reynolds
Department of Social and Psychological Sciences Edge Hill University, Ormskirk, Lancashire, United Kingdom
No abstract is presently available
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