Gay Pornography: Representations of Masculinity and Sexuality

The primary aim of this book, which is the first monograph length study to focus on contemporary, commercial gay pornography, is to explore the iconography, themes and ideals that gay pornography produces and constructs. The book argues that gay pornography cannot be regarded as one-dimensional, but that it offers its audience a paradigm of plural masculinities that are more nuanced and ambiguous than they might seem and that the internet has generated an exponential growth in the sheer volume and variety of this material, and facilitated far greater access to it. Using both professional and amateur examples the book discusses how gay pornography has become part of a wider cultural context in which modern masculinities have become 'saturated' with contradictory and conflicted meanings. The book makes the fundamental argument that pornography is no longer meaningfully understood as a marginal cultural practice but instead is part of the landscape of popular culture. The book argues that gay pornography is an especially fruitful site for interrogating manifestations of sexualised modern masculinities and constructs the conceptual framework of ‘saturated masculinity’ to make meaning out of the proliferation of models of masculinity that gay pornography produces that extend beyond the genre