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Male Sex Work and Society (19 page)

BOOK: Male Sex Work and Society

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Mars-Jones, A. (1993, February 12). FILM/HIV positive role models.
The Independent
, p. 16.

Mass, L. (1990).
Dialogues of the sexual revolution: Homosexuality as behavior and identity
(Vol. 2). New York: Haworth.

Palmer, R. B. (1998). Hollywood in crisis: Tennessee Williams and the evolution of the adult film. In M. C. Roudané (Ed.),
The Cambridge companion to Tennessee Williams
. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Palmer, R. B., & Bray, W. R. (2009).
Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams films and postwar America
. Austin: University of Texas Press.

Pennington, J. W. (2007).
The history of sex in American film
. Westport, CT: Praeger.

Rich, B. R. (2004). New queer cinema. In M. Aaron (Ed.),
New queer cinema: A critical reader
. Edinburgh, Scotland: Edinburgh University Press.

Richmond, R. (1980, February 9). Fragmented story dilutes “Gigolo.”
Chicago Metro Times
.

Roudané, M. C. (Ed.),
The Cambridge companion to Tennessee Williams
. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Russo, V. (1987).
The celluloid closet: Homosexuality in the movies
. New York: Harper & Row.

Sanger, W. W. (1939).
The history of prostitution: Its extent, causes and effects throughout the world
. New York: Eugenics.

Scambler, G., & Scambler, A. (1997). Afterword: Rethinking prostitution. In G. Scambler & A. Scambler (Eds.),
Rethinking prostitution: Purchasing sex in the 1990s
. London: Routledge.

Scott, G. (1936).
A history of prostitution from antiquity to the present day
. New York: Greenberg.

Scott, J. (2003). A prostitute’s progress: Male prostitution in scientific discourse.
Social Semiotics, 13
(2).

Sikov, E. (1998).
On Sunset Boulevard: The life and times of Billy Wilder
. New York: Hyperion.

Steward, S. M. (1991).
Understanding the male hustler
. New York: Haworth.

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Sex for sale: Prostitution, pornography, and the sex industry
. New York: Routledge.

Thomas, K. (1969, June 29). John Schlesinger, English film director, looks at U.S.
Los Angeles Times
, p. R22.

Warhol, A., & Hackett, P. (1980).
POPism: The Warhol ‘60s
. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

West, D. J. (1993).
Male prostitution
. New York: Haworth.

Woolston, H. (1921).
Prostitution in the United States
. New York: Century.

Movie titles, directors, year of release

American Gigolo
(Paul Schrader, 1980)

An American in Paris
(Vincente Minnelli, 1951)

Bicycle Thief
(Vittorio de Sica, 1948; American release, 1949)

Blow Job
(Andy Warhol, 1963)

Boy Culture
(Q. Allan Brocka, 2006)

Breakfast on Pluto
(Neil Jordan, 2005)

Deuce Bigalow: Male Gigolo
(Mike Mitchell, 1999)

Echoes of Silence
(Peter Emmanuel Goldman, 1967)

Fox and His Friends
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1975)

Howl
(Rob Epstein and Jeffrey Friedman, 2010)

Hustler White
(Bruce LaBruce, 1996)

Kids
(Larry Clark, 1995)

L.I.E
. (Michael Cuesta, 2001)

Lola und Bilidikid
(Kutlug Ataman, 1999)

Mandragora
(Wiktor Grodecki, 1997)

Midnight Cowboy
(John Schlesinger, 1969)

My Hustler
(Andy Warhol, 1965)

My Own Private Idaho
(Gus Van Sant, 1991)

Mysterious Skin
(Gregg Araki, 2004)

Postcards from America
(Steve McLean, 1994)

Querelle
(Rainer Werner Fassbinder, 1982)

Skin & Bone
(Everett Lewis, 1996)

Sonny
(Nicolas Cage, 2002)

Speedway Junky
(Nickolas Perry, 1999)

Streetcar Named Desire
(Elia Kazan, 1951)

Sunset Boulevard
(Billy Wilder, 1950)

Super 8
(Bruce LaBruce, 1994)

Sweet Bird of Youth
(Richard Brooks, 1962)

Tarnation
(Jonathan Caouette, 2003)

The Killing of Sister George
(Robert Aldrich, 1968)

The Living End
(Gregg Araki, 1992)

The Roman Spring of Mrs. Stone
(José Quintero, 1961)

The Wedding Date
(Clare Kilner, 2005)

Wild Tigers I Have Known
(Cam Archer, 2006)

Endnotes

1
For more histories of prostitution published in the early 20th century that exclude a discussion of male sex work, see Maude Hadden’s
Slavery of Prostitution: A Plea for Emancipation
(1916), Tage Kemp’s
Prostitution: An Investigation of its Causes, Especially with Regard to Hereditary Factors
(1936), the League of Nations’
Prevention of Prostitution
(1943), and Howard Woolston’s
Prostitution in the United States
(1921). Woolston (1921) defines a prostitute as a “woman who practices indiscriminate lewdness for hire” and, in a footnote, as “any female who … commits adultery or fornication for hire” (p. 35). In defining what constitutes a
prostitute
, Woolston consistently incorporates a female gendering.

2
See also Abraham Flexner’s
Prostitution in Europe
(1914). Flexner quickly devotes one paragraph to homosexual sex work before moving back to heterosexual prostitution for the duration of the text, noting that “prostitution in Europe as an organized business is by no means limited to intercourse of persons of opposite sex. A homosexual prostitution … has developed on a considerable scale … In prominent thoroughfares, bars exist to which only women resort as well as bars to which no woman gets access” (p. 31).

3
Scott (1936) breaks down demand for male sex work into the following categories: “(1) The demand for the services of male prostitutes, owing to women being unavailable, usually where the sexes are segregated, as in army camps, barracks, prisons … ; (2) a preference for males, as in cases of true homosexuals who are antipathetic to the female sex; and (3) the acquirement of sexual perversion by those seeking abnormal forms of sex stimulation, and in certain cases as a means of avoiding the contraction of venereal disease or as a contraceptive method” (p. 184).

4
After exhaustive research, I have not been able to find any male protagonists whose occupation is explicitly figured as “sex work” featured as major characters in film until the 1960s.

5
For more about the work of Tennessee Williams in relation to the Production Code, see
The Cambridge Companion to Tennessee Williams
, edited by Matthew C Roudané, and
Hollywood’s Tennessee: The Williams Films and Postwar America
by R. Barton Palmer and William Robert Bray.

6
The films of Andy Warhol, for example, were often screened at art house cinemas and, according to Kelly Cresap (2004) at “underground venues, for friends and drop-ins at the Factory, at parties, at college campuses, at out-of-the-way theatres, and at rock concerts” (p. 203).

7
For more detailed accounts of
La Movida
, the work of Pedro Almodovar, and the relationship between the two, please see Epps and Kakoudaki’s edited volume,
All About Almodovar
(2009).

8
Paraphrasing the argument of Paul Julian Smith.

9
While
Fox and His Friends
is perhaps the most direct in its incorporation of male sex work as a characteristic of one of its main characters, Fassbinder’s films often incorporate minor characters (both male and female) who are sex workers.

10
In discussing
The Killing of Sister George
(Robert Aldrich, 1968), Vito Russo (1987) notes that a film of this era could receive the rating of X based “on theme alone” (p. 174). In this way, the X rating worked to reinforce the unacceptability of subject matter (in the case of
Midnight Cowboy
, that of male sex workers) just as much as it did a film’s actual content.

11
This confusion regarding the legality of male sex work (especially in relation to female sex work) has been present in the United States as well and is, perhaps, best summarized by Scott’s (1936) earlier statement that the gigolo’s actions hold “no criminality … and no perverse practices” (p. 186). Although Scott’s comment is in relation to moral criminality (as is made evident in the text), the inability for historians to clearly articulate the legal standing of male sex work is telling in that the first fully
legal
male prostitute in the United States started work at The Shady Lady Ranch in Nevada in 2010, according to Ronald Barri Flowers (2011, pp. 46-47).

12
Other NQC films to feature male sex workers include Bruce LaBruce’s
Super 8
(1994) and
Hustler White
(1996), Steve McLean’s
Postcards from America
(1994), and Everett Lewis’s
Skin & Bone
(1996). I limit this list to films produced through 1996 because the span of time that has been deemed to be a part of New Queer Cinema varies substantially. These films all fall within a generally agreed-upon canon of NQC films.

13
Mike begins to have flashbacks about his mother and falls into a stress-induced narcoleptic episode, which reinforces him as the “repressed” character type.

14
Alice Kuzniar (2000) makes a compelling argument that New Queer Cinema should be seen in concert with international film movements like the French New Wave and New German Cinema, “thereby suggesting an equally significant revolution in technique and subject matter” in her introduction to
The Queer German Cinema
(p. 1).

15
Of particular note is
Wild Tigers I Have Known
(Archer, 2006, executive producer Van Sant). Van Sant is also executive producer of
Kids
(Clark, 1995),
Tarnation
(Caouette, 2003), and
Howl
(Epstein & Friedman, 2010).