Can we talk? I’ve had something on my mind for a while now, but I’ve been reluctant to bring it up. Finally, I saw one too many gay wrestling clips with a homophobic plot. In 2009, I think that producers and consumers of gay porn and homoerotic wrestling need to abandon the pre-Stonewall plot line that centers around the closet-case who gets violent when called out. Dan White has been dead and buried for over 23 years now, and frankly the idea that encountering an openly gay man should incite a reasonable hetero to violence (whether he’s eating twinkies or not) was always a hateful, bigoted lie.
The Celluloid Closet (both Russo’s fantastic book and the documentary based on it) present the history of gays in film nicely. For most of the history of movies, the only good gay was the gay who ends up killed off. Gay characters, or even just effeminate guys, have long been the object of on-screen (and off-screen) violence. Still today, I’d argue, gay men are counted as less than fully human and less than fully citizens.
So when our own erotica and porn features the plot of “gay panic,” I think it should be a MAJOR turn off (libido-wise and consumer-wise). I get it. Really I do. The story of gay panic violence turning into hot pounding sex (thus proving the closet-case a liar), has an element of humor. The guys who react most violently against homosexuality are, indeed, the likeliest candidates to own real estate in the closet.
But that moment where it turns violent, with the “straight” character lashing out in defense of his heterosexual bona fides, that just kills the mood. Seriously, there are thousands of fantastically hot plots for homoerotic wrestling (well, at least three or four plots). Gay panic is not one of them. For those masochists who can only get off on someone calling you “faggot,” seriously now, there are hotter scenarios to get beaten up to. For the sadists who can only get off by re-enacting a gay bashing… come on now, deep seated insecurity is the root of gay bashing. You can be more creative than that!
Some of my favorite plot devices in homoerotic wrestling include the cocky muscle jobber stunned by the skinny ringer.
I enjoy the underground wrestling tournament motif, which works fueled by asses on the line or solely by machismo.
I think one of the most novel recent ideas was Can-Am’s Fantasy Pro-Wrestling, with the horny consumer transported into the ring to re-write the scenario as it goes along to suit his sexual fantasies (the concept works better than the execution, though I adore Buck Wyld’s ass). Sadly, that consumer’s fantasies are awfully demure compared with this consumer’s fantasies.
I apologize if I sound preachy, here. Perhaps we don’t expect there to be a plot. Maybe I’m the only one who’s interested in the social context of my porn and homoerotic wrestling products. And please let me be clear, I’m ready to advocate for BDSM all the way! But I hope that we can turn the corner and leave the explicitly homophobic storylines to the homophobes.
Sidelineland 