When I started Black Boy Addictionz last fall, I knew that some of the videos I wanted to make would be controversial. I think a mischievous part of me actually ENJOYS pushing people’s buttons….just ask my family and friends, I’m sure they’d tell you that I’ve mastered the art of provocation 😉 !
I anticipated that a lot of guys, both black and white, would be turned off and in some cases PISSED off at my decision to film scenes where masculine black males (even “thugs,” in some cases) perform “submissive” sexual acts with white males. The vast majority (probably 99.9999%) of gay interracial porn consists of the stereotypical hung black stud fucking the hell out of a sissy white bottom, to the point that any departure from that stereotype strikes some as “unnatural” and distasteful. This is so deeply engrained in our conceptions of gay interracial sex that the amateur producer Joe Schmoe recently coined the term “reverse interracial” to describe scenes where the black male sucks dick or gets fucked by a white guy. I’ve even heard from some black guys who go so far as to say it’s “racist” any time a white man takes the “top” role with a black guy. [To be fair, I’ve also heard from MANY guys, both white AND black (and neither), who WELCOME the change of pace.]
What I *DIDN’T* anticipate, however, was the kind of negative, even HOSTILE, reaction by some to the “straight seduction”/”gay for pay” theme itself (regardless of its racial make-up). I’ve been accused of exploitation, rape, manipulation, cruelty, torture….Hell, reading through some of the comments on my X-Tube clips, you’d think I should be reported to Amnesty International for crimes against humanity!
I’m beginning to think that a lot of this hostility comes from a lack of familiarity with the history and diversity of gay erotica, and a very limited exposure to AMATEUR porn in particular.
A big part of it is generational, I think. Most of the negative feedback comes from young black guys who’ve only been watching gay porn for a couple years at the most. They’ve been raised on a porn diet of predictable, black-only porn scenes where the “tops are tops” and the “bottoms are bottoms.” Videos like mine are as foreign to them as everything else that happened before 1990 😉 . They seem to have no idea that my videos are part of a genre that’s been around for decades!
I’ve been obsessed with “straight boy” porn since I first started watching porn in college. For the longest time I was addicted to the young Adonises of Bel Ami, beautiful straight boys from Eastern Europe who the legendary director George Duroy would recruit from poor villages into lives of “gay for pay” porn. My influences since then are too many to describe here. They range from comically staged fantasies to gritty, documentary-style “reality porn” depicting actual straight boys selling their young bodies for cash.
I suppose it’s fair to question the “morality” of such films (just as I suppose it’s fair to debate the “morality” of porn itself).
I have to confess, however, that what some find morally reprehensible are the very same things that turn me on the most! While I certainly don’t condone rape or violence, there’s a huge gray area between passionate, eager lovemaking and the extreme of non-consensual sex, that has a lot of erotic potential.
Themes like economic coercion, prostitution, the “deflowering” of virgins, reluctance, initiations/hazing, sex in exchange for money or favors, etc. have always held a powerful erotic appeal for me in literature, film, erotic fiction, AND pornography. These themes have a long and vibrant history in both gay AND straight erotica, and I don’t see why their relatively mild manifestations in my own videos should be so shocking or offensive.
Over the next few weeks, I plan on presenting some of my porn inspirations on this blog as a way of better explaining where I’m coming from, and preparing readers for the release of my potentially controversial next video (I’m calling it Corrupting Cortez, if that tells you anything).
And that brings me to a kind of predicament I’ve gotten myself into with my videos, the “Catch 22” mentioned in the title of this post.
Some of my videos, like The Schoolboy and the Thug, will feature only black models in relatively conventional action scenes (but hopefully with a unique amateur vibe). The problem is that a lot of the fans for these types of videos do NOT enjoy interracial scenes, at least not the type that I’m making. In fact, a lot of them are the same folks who find my “gay for pay” films so disturbing and offensive.
Conversely, a lot of you who enjoy my videos for their interracial and/or “gay for pay” themes have complained that a video like Schoolboy is boring and unappealing.
It’s going to take some time before I know how much cross-over there is between these two camps. My fear at the moment, however, is that I’ll risk alienating both groups by offering videos they simply don’t like (or find offensive).
My feeling as I write this is that I should follow the advice given to me by one of the main guys at AMVC when I started making videos: Stick to the stuff that turns ME on, and trust that those turned on by the same things will buy my videos and remain loyal fans, while those who aren’t will eventually move on to producers who better satisfy their erotic tastes.
