Wakefield Poole or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Gay Pornography
At its very best, cinema offers a mirror where audiences can see themselves and authentically feel that they are not alone in the winding river that is life. In my experience growing up – more specifically, as I found my place in society as a gay man – cinema offered this to me. It offered a doorway to seeing my own internal desire and fears within Luca Guadagnino's Call Me By Your Name, it gave me comfort in the power of expressing myself as a queer individual in Jean Cocteau's The Blood of a Poet. It taught me how to carry the weight and pressure of being a gay man with the weight of my communities' tragic history in Nicholas Stoller's Bros. I found deep and authentic parts of my lived experience conversed about on the big screen, giving me a sense of belonging and acceptance that I was not alone in these thoughts and moments even when the community around me failed to discuss or digest these concepts openly.
Continually, I have sought out more queer cinema to find a deeper lexicon of cinematic understanding not just regarding what was happening in my head, but also within the soul of my community. Naturally, this journey exposed the highs and lows of representation with some concepts being hit out of the park and some being incredibly lacking or misunderstood as creators attempted to translate them to the limits of modern cinema. Specifically, throughout all of this, there never was a reflection of the core sexual experiences I was facing. Sex is seldom like it is in the movie. One doesn't become shirtless and embrace the flesh of another body slowly as the camera pans down and conveniently cuts to the next peaceful morning just before any genitalia or sexual action is shown.
While this can be said about most sexual encounters on screen, there was something deeper to be noticed. Even in genre filmmaking where many queer voices retreated for more freedom in what they could show and express, gay sex was something continually overlooked outside of extremely rare examples, especially when one is considering specifically MSM (men who have sex with men) content.
When I made note of this observation, frustration grew. Suddenly, the films that once represented me like the clothes on my back felt like nothing more than a costume worn for performance. These experiences, these lives, these were not truly mine. Sure, they might be pieces of my experience, but these were not holistic nor were they honest about the truth of what it meant to be gay. Being gay is, at its deepest core, a statement on sexuality. It is a statement specifically on sexual desires. In a time when so many want to applaud efforts in gay representation on screen and celebrate increased representation, it felt impossible not to feel anger at the complete ignorance given to the authentic meaning of what it meant to be gay. My life, my identity, and my sexuality were not allowed to be shown on screen, yet these same projects used every ounce of my trauma and emotional turbulence.
Rather than exploring the complexities of being gay as a sexual orientation, films rather decided to reduce their queer offerings to looking at how the identity relates to society, traditionally with a requirement of queer trauma being available for mainstream audiences to feel empathy for and feel good about themselves for enjoying. While it would be horrifying to see a man actually have sex with another man, Andrew Haigh’s All of Us Strangers can literally resurrect a gay man’s family to suggest there is no way to emotionally move on with one’s life without clichéd coming out trauma; Jane Campion, a publicly identifying straight woman, can be applauded and even take home the Best Director award at the Academy Awards for her generic look at how toxic masculinity can cause queer pain in The Power of the Dog, a take that was neither presented authentically or poignantly within her film. Yet still, these pathetic offerings get applauded and celebrated by largely straight populations as needed works for the increased recognition of queer cinema – just please don’t include any of the actually being gay part.
So many used the tears of broken families or terminal diagnoses to make themselves feel important and worthy. To project an image that these traumas were somehow at the core of gay life. Yet, when it came to a simple physical action, the film turned away, scared and pitiful. To take my pain, my suffering, the weight on my shoulders, the loss of life that still haunts my community, and not have the respect nor the nerves to truly express the creature that lives inside of me is an unbearable fire that burns just thinking about it. While there are exceptions where the soul of a film does ring true and the perspective rests on a foundation still worthy and honest, more and more films fail, feeling cheap and disrespectful to the truth behind the gay experience.
While it is obvious that most mainstream cinema would try to turn away from the physical act of sex, the near complete absence of it was noteworthy. Even beyond this, however, there was a noticeable inequality given to films that dared to push a bit further with their sexual encounters. Just this last year, despite showing only brief genitalia, Ira Sachs’ Passages received an NC-17 rating while Matthew Lopez’s Red, White & Royal Blue got an R rating with no nudity and the sexual sensibilities nearly of a Hallmark feature. MSM relationships are undoubtedly under attack when it comes to censorship when it comes to most cinema, making the chances of seemingly ever seeing the true queer soul get explored on screen feel like a dying hope more than a possible future.
In this anger and a continued search to explore the depths of queer cinema, I found Wakefield Poole. Poole was an eclectic creator long before he ever picked up the camera. A dancer, choreographer, television director, and Broadway director, Poole crafted a voice and confidence that translated well as he became a pioneer of gay pornography in the 1970s and 80s. Starting with 1971's Boys in the Sand, Poole not only revolutionized gay pornography but basically invented it in many ways. Poole didn't just show men having sex, Poole crafted authenticity to the souls and insertions throughout his career that made me feel seen for the first time in cinema all over again.
Poole's films are filled with an artistic longing desire. From the men wandering the nature of Fire Island in Boys in the Sand to the more inspired and abstract symbols of 1972's Bijou, there was no implication of what these men craved and needed: the need for the physical action of sex was explicit. As bodies met, Poole injected casual representations of typical gay sexual behavior like cruising and kink that still is unthinkable for most features. Poole was the first director to include cock rings and poppers, not as things for shock value, but as normal parts of the gay sexual experience. While, of course, these extremes would never be seen within mainstream cinema, their inclusion made these films something that represented the authentic lived gay experience in a way that feels meaningful and noteworthy.
Poole's films explicitly show that these actions have a humanity to them, that they are natural and not something to hide or feel shame from. Much like most pieces of modern queer cinema, these films were designed to reflect the gay experience outwards with all the power that naturally forms from the intention. The key difference between mainstream cinema and these works is the space pornography created, where the core roots of sexual orientation could be understood and represented, speaking to a larger use and purpose of pornography that is often overlooked or simply ignored.
Make no mistake that, despite being labeled as pornography, these works were in no way cheap or exploitative. Rather than believing that to be the true identity of all porn, maybe it is time critics open their minds to sexually explicit work and start to analyze and digest these works as being artistic and representative of something meaningful. This divide between cinema and pornography might seem wide, but the truth is that these walls are messy and largely fictionalized. Just as many films released in theaters are cheap and poorly made, many porn films are the same, but this doesn't erase the deeper potential and identity of the genre. While there is a distinct power within what this means for the portrayal of queer life, it is a message that applies beyond gay representation with the medium's perception of being cinema's ugly duckling feeling reductive and lazy.
Let me be clear, in no way am I arguing that all queer cinema needs to have explicit sex. There is, of course, a need for queer content that is accessible and appropriate for all ages. Likely, I would not be a fraction of the person I am today, or possibly even alive, had it not been for queer representation in the media I had available to me as I grew up. Even in the works intended for mature audiences, sex is not a necessary addition to every feature, but to act like somehow a total lack of it is representative of the true holistic gay experience is simply a joke. If the industry wants to use our trauma and our pain, it feels wrong for them to also treat the core of what it means to be gay as something obscene or lesser. Ultimately, one can not ignore the historic or modern importance of pornography in capturing what it means to be gay on screen, and for those wanting to commentate on the experience and how it is represented within cinema, it feels simply wrong to ignore or hide from this crucial cavern of cinematic queerness.
Sex is perhaps the most ironic piece of the human experience when it comes to its place in society. Humanity does not exist without sex, a physical action that releases pleasure and, in some forms, is the vital process required for reproduction and the continued survival of the species. Every creature, in their unique way, has sex, making it one of the most natural and universal acts known to life. It is almost comical then to see that in society, modest values have made the action one of the most complex and difficult experiences for the general public to accept and internalize.
While it makes sense that there would be a distinction found between these projects based on intended reaction and demographics, what is somewhat concerning is the lack of attention and understanding given to this side of cinematic expression, almost as if many critics and historians view these works as being genuinely lesser due to their attempt to give sexual satisfaction and pleasure to those who view them. Maybe many are simply not ready to accept the fact that those desires and actions are natural and would rather it stay out of sight out of mind, a somewhat pathetic thought considering these individuals are meant to be commentating on culture and art from a place of reality and perspective rather than a place of ignorant comfort and safety.
