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Language, Gay Pornography, and

Audience Reception
a
William L. Leap PhD
a
Department of Anthropology , American University , Washington,
DC, USA
Published online: 08 Jul 2011.
To cite this article: William L. Leap PhD (2011) Language, Gay Pornography, and Audience Reception,
Journal of Homosexuality, 58:6-7, 932-952, DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2011.581944
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Journal of Homosexuality, 58:932–952, 2011
Copyright © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
ISSN: 0091-8369 print/1540-3602 online
DOI: 10.1080/00918369.2011.581944
Language, Gay Pornography, and Audience

Reception
WILLIAM L. LEAP, PhD

Department of Anthropology, American University, Washington, DC, USA
Downloaded by [Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona] at 05:39 27 October 2014
Erotic imagery is an important component of gay pornographic

cinema, particularly, where work of audience reception is con-
cerned. However, to assume the audience engagement with the
films is limited solely to the erotic realm is to underestimate the
workings of ideological power in the context and aftermath of
reception. For example, the director of the film under discussion
here ( Men of Israel; Lucas, 2009b) intended to present an erotic
celebration of the nation-state. Yet, most viewers ignore the par-
ticulars of context in their comments about audience reception,
placing the “Israeli” narrative within a broader framework, using
transnational rather than film-specific criteria to guide their “read-
ing” of the Israeli-centered narrative. This article uses as its entry
point the language that viewers employ when describing their reac-
tions to Men of Israel on a gay video club’s Web site; this article
shows how the work of audience reception may draw attention to
a film’s erotic details while invoking social and political messages
that completely reframe the film’s erotic narrative.
KEYWORDS language, semiotics, cinema studies, gay pornogra-

phy, audience reception
Several years ago, Champagne (1997) urged researchers to stop “reading”

pornographic films as if they were literary texts, that is, context-free doc-
uments whose significance can be grasped once the researchers complete
their own context-free assessment of textual message. “An insistent recourse
Address correspondence to William L. Leap, Department of Anthropology, Battelle T-23,

American University, 4400 Massachusetts Avenue, NW, Washington, DC 20016, USA. E-mail:
wlm@american.edu
932
Language, Gay Pornography, and Audience Reception 933
to close analysis necessarily obscures some of the social functions of gay

pornography in particular,” Champagne explained,
distract[ing] us from a consideration of the way that the exhibition of gay

pornography makes possible a social space in which dominant forms
of sexual subjectivity might be (re)produced, challenged, countered and
violated. (p. 77)
Gay pornography has other social functions that are worth exploring, when
we “stop reading films” and, in Williams’ (2004) phrasing, begin to “take
pornography seriously” (p. 5). The social function of concern to the research
project reviewed in this article is audience reception. Production companies

identify the messages that a particular item of gay pornography is intended
to convey and film critics (and academics) offer their assessments on the
effectiveness of the film’s attainment of the intended goal. But rather than
“speaking for the audience” in that regard, I want to bring audience voices
into the conversations that examine gay pornography’s message. Moreover,
instead of “reading the film” for the viewers, I am interested in understanding
what viewers themselves are decoding through their participation in the
work of audience reception.
This article is divided into five sections. The first introduces an example
of a gay pornographic film, Michael Lucas’ (2009b) Men of Israel, where,
as the film’s director explains, the erotic scenario addresses a particular
political and persuasive goal: the legitimacy of the state of Israel. The
second section suggests that the non-erotic messages are often associated
the erotic display in gay pornography and cautions against efforts to the-
orize the pornographic message solely in terms of its erotic content. The
third and fourth sections describe a language-centered approach to the
study of audience reception and explain how this approach helps disclose
what viewers of particular gay pornographic films have to say about the
viewing experience and its outcomes. The final section returns to Men of
Israel and examines viewer comments about the messages they find in
that film and the disjunction between the director’s intention and audi-
ence reception that these comments suggest. From that basis, the article
reiterates the need to include audience voices in any project that pro-
poses to “stop reading films!” and to start “tak[ing] (gay) pornography
seriously.”
MEN OF ISRAEL
On July 23, 2009, after an extensive print and electronic media campaign,
Lucas Entertainment released a 116-minute, all-male, sexually explicit DVD:
Men of Israel (Lucas, M. dir., 2009b). Wording on the DVD’s box cover
934 W. L. Leap
advised that Men of Israel was the “the first gay adult film shot in Israel with
an all-Israeli cast.” Furthermore, the connections between location and erotic
imagery were a recurring theme in the description of the film presented on
the company’s Web site:
ISRAEL—a country of sun drenched beaches, breath-taking vistas and

the world’s hottest men. Lucas Entertainment’s MEN OF ISRAEL features
a fine selection of tanned and chiseled muscle hunks, showing off their
gorgeous bodies and sexual prowess. MEN OF ISRAEL includes five hard-
core scenes, filled with deep throat dick sucking, intense ass pounding
and more! (Lucas Entertainment, 2010)
Representatives of the adult film industry greeted the release of Men of

Israel with enthusiasm. In fact, Chris Ward (2009), head of rival adult-video
production company Raging Stallion Studios, posted the following message
to his blog site on July 6, 2009, after reviewing one of the images of Jonathan
Agassi and Avi Dar engaged in “intense ass-pounding”:
. . . As many of you may remember, Michael Lucas and I often have

been at odds with each other—it’s all part of the vigorous competition
between rival studios, I guess. But today I received this image in the
mail and I am astounded. As a pornographer—and by that I mean an
artist who deals with erotic imagery—I have to say that this is one of
the hottest images I have seen in a long time. Lucas is certainly going to
have a huge hit with his new Israeli film. Congrats, Michael. This is great
porn.
Interestingly, as Michael Lucas, the film’s director, pointed out repeat-

edly in the interviews connected to the film’s release, Men of Israel was
not intended entirely as a presentation of homoerotic display. Lucas is an
outspoken supporter of Israeli self-determination and an equally outspoken
critic of those who oppose Israel’s efforts to maintain national security, and
he undertook this project—filming Men of Israel along with two additional
films, Inside Israel (Lucas, 2009a) and Michael Lucas’ Auditions Volume 31:
Israeli Auditions (Lucas & Mr. Pam, 2009)—as a means of communicat-
ing his intended political message. He explained these intentions during
an interview posted on GoGay, a major Israeli GLTBQ Web site, on May
26, 2009:1
From every morning to night, in every country of the world, what you
see and hear about Israel is dreadful. An image has been created that
Israel is a violent state, mostly Muslim, not advanced and ugly. But this
is a country where gays can walk the streets and be out in public. I
arrived here in order to film a movie to shake off the negative images
and show the beautiful sides of Israel. I do not think there is a better
way to do that than through porn. (Rums, 2009)
Judging by these remarks, one of Lucas’ goals for the Men of Israel
project is to “shake off the negative images” that have come to be associated
with the state of Israel in the international arena. These negative images
position Israel as socially backward and in conditions of turmoil, both of
which are characteristics of a society that has yet attained the status of a
fully developed, modern nation-state. In a modern nation-state, according
to international standards, everyday life is characterized by tolerance, safety,
stability, and security, not conditions that are “. . . violent, . . . not advanced,
and ugly” (Rums, 2009).
Lucas sees Israel as a modern state, not as a backward society, and
to demonstrate the point, he turns to an argument that circulates widely in
the international human rights arena: a society confirms its attainment of

modernity through a public acceptance of gay-subjects-as-citizens (Oswin,
2007), whereas displays of intolerance and hostility toward the national gay
presence indicate that a society has failed to attain modernity and remains
loyal to premodern traditions. Equating Israeli modernity with expressions
of tolerance for gay people, while referring to societies marked by “violence,
not advanced and ugly” as “mostly Muslim” calls to mind news media reports
citing the persecution of homosexuals throughout the Islamic Near East and
underscores the ideas that gay visibility is a marker of a nation-state’s modern
attainment.2 Understandably, the storyline in Men of Israel is about gay men
claiming a public presence—walking the streets, socializing in cafes, having
uninhibited sex on apartment balconies, in crusader forts, and on the beach,
all the while showing no expressions of restraint, fear or caution as they
publically affirm their sexuality. Moreover, through this reiteration of gay
visibility in the Israeli setting, Lucas confirms that Israel is a land of progress
and promise and that “violent . . . not advanced and ugly” properly applies
to the “mostly Muslim” locations that lie outside, not within, Israel’s national
border.3 This is why, as he explains, he “do [es] not think there is a better
way to [convey his pro-Israeli message] than through porn” (Rums, 2009).
To be sure, Michael Lucas is not the first filmmaker to use gay pornog-
raphy to express nationalist or other political messages. For example, since
the beginning of the Second Iraqi War, production companies in the United
States and Western Europe have released a variety of “gay porn” with mil-
itary related themes.4 These films display the military environment as a
homoerotic paradise, a terrain filled with servicemen so confident in their
masculinity that they freely pursue any form of erotic engagement with-
out any apparent fear of compromising their status as militarized or as
masculinized subjects.
Similarly, in the 1980 and early 1990s, when welfare rights issues were
being debated in the U.S. Congress, and some U.S. politicians were propos-
ing that the urban poor had been living “on the public dole” for far too
long, production companies in the United States released films that offered
glimpses of daily life in the inner city, intersecting homoerotic liaisons with
936 W. L. Leap
stereotyped images of lawlessness, poverty and urban decay.5 Here, as in

the films that eroticize the military environment in time of war, and as in the
case of the Michael Lucas films that use erotic imagery to uphold the moder-
nity of the Israeli nation state, gay pornography does more than display an
enactment of masculine homosexual desire. Sexual sameness is positioned
in relation to social context and within social message, and the framing of
the positioning in both cases is far from detached and objective.
GAY PORNOGRAPHY:6 COMPLEXITY EXTENDING BEYOND

THE EROTIC MESSAGE
A long-standing critique of gay pornography begins here. Feminist argu-

ments have traditionally described pornography as “. . . a gender specific
genre produced primarily for men but focused obsessively on the female fig-
ure” (Gubar, 1989, p. 48.) From this description comes the binary framework
in terms of which discussions of gay pornography are often framed. Thus,
Barry (1979) argues that gay pornography “. . . acts out the same dominant
and subordinate roles commonly associated with heterosexual pornography”
(p. 206). Dyer (2005) recognizes gay pornography’s repeated reflection of
“the desire to achieve the goal of a visual climax” (p.7) that is also fore-
grounded in “straight” pornography, adding: “In so far as [gay] porn is part
of the experimental education of the body, it has contributed to and legit-
imized the masculine model of gay sexuality, a model that always implies
the subordination of women” (p. 7).
The binary is not always drawn in gender-specific terms, however.
When McKinnon and Dworkin (1988) define pornography as the “graphic
and sexually explicit subordination . . . through pictures and/or words”
(p. 138), they include men, as well as women, children, and transsexuals as
objects of subordination under pornographic inflection. Moreover, Kendall
and Funk’s (2003) content-centered discussion of gay male pornography
reveals a “sexualized identity politic” that relies on the inequality found

between those with power and those without it. . . . [L]ike heterosex-
ual pornography, gay pornography offers a virulent form of propaganda
promoting a masculinity that is associated not only with degradation
of women but also with the degradation of men who are seen and
sexualized as “other.” (p. 95)
Additional studies of gay pornography now make it clear that the priv-
ileged gay masculinity claiming dominance over women and over men
who are seen and sexualized as other is not a unified category, however.
Some forms of this privileged gay masculinity are associated with urban or
metropolitan settings (Mowlabocus, 2010) as well as with the rural terrain
or “the heartland” at distance from the metropolis (Leap, in press). There is

also a particular category of masculine subject who appears in urban and
non-metropolitan settings—the “twink” who is not privileged, yet. This is a
young, ephebic-like (gay) male character who is often used and abused by a
fully masculine character, or who may engage another “twink” in some form
of seemingly abusive liaison. But at no point is the twink’s masculine poten-
tial called into question by the details of the homoerotic narrative, whatever
his location in the film’s display of the dominance hierarchy. Frequently,
viewers make clear in their comments about these films, twinks are in fact
real men in training (Leap, 2010).
Moreover, the privileged gay masculinity needs not be defined solely on
the basis of gender. As Kendall (1997) explains, at issue here is a particular

form of masculine embodiment whereby dominant gay subjects are expected
to be “young, muscular, good looking, preferably white, and definitely able-
bodied” (p. 44), while dominated subjects, thus, become associated with
an embodiment of difference. Fung (1998) observes, for example, that “[i]n
the vast majority of North American tapes featuring Asians” that circulated in
the early 1990s, “the narratives privilege the penis while assigning the Asian
the role of bottom: Asian and anus are conflated” (p. 121).7
Examined carefully, the privileged masculinity with its connections to
dominance-in-difference is part of a larger complex of messages about sex-
ual subjects and sexual politics that gay pornography places on display.
Extending arguments in Williams (2004), Bernardi (2006) observes:
One need only watch the genre with a critical but open mind to know
that, like Hollywood films and television, [pornography] offers spectators
a great deal of complexity, even humor, like it or not. (p. 222)
Further complicating matters, in some cases these messages assume contra-

dictory forms. For example, Waugh (1995) recognizes that gay male subjects,
as a group, occupy a privileged status in the current social moment and
sees the depictions of “challenge” and constructions of “protected space”
associated with gay pornography as evidence of that privilege. Even so,
Our claims to space, private ghetto or public, have not been achieved
except incompletely and provisionally, always subject to invasion and
revocation. . . . Our pornography in fact reflects the recognition of this
insufficiency. . . . Our greatest visibility may be in the ghetto, but our
fantasies and our everyday lives are elsewhere. (p. 314)
Under these circumstances, confining the gay pornographic message to

a specific theme runs the risk of oversimplifying the work of representa-
tion with which gay pornography is engaged.8 For example, Dyer (2005)
observes, as part of his argument against the idea that gay pornography
(and, perhaps pornography in general) is “characterized by [an] absence of
narrative” (p. 4).
938 W. L. Leap
The desire that drives the porn narrative forward is the desire to come,
to have an orgasm. . . . In filmic terms, the goal is ejaculation, that
is, visible coming. . . . [T]he goal of the spectator is to see him come
(and, more often than not, probably, to come at the same time as him.)
(p. 5)
In part, Dyer explains, the focus on ejaculation is an attempt to confirm the

reality of the erotic activity that the film displays:
[I]f you don’t see semen, the performer could have faked it (and
so you haven’t had value for money.) But partly too it has to
do with the importance of the visual in the way male sexuality is

constructed/conceptualized. (pp. 5–6)
T. Dean (2009) uses a similar argument to explain the allure of bareback

porn (male-centered homoerotic films displaying consensual anal sex where
the penetrating partner does not use a condom):
What we like about porn is the spectacle of bodies losing control of

them, bodies overcome by a will other than their own. Porn’s appeal
lies in its rendering visible or even palatable the peculiar loss of control
entailed in the experience of orgasm. (p. 106)
Anyone who watches gay pornography will recognize the features of

the visual narrative display to which Dyer (2005) and T. Dean (2009)
refer and will understand why Dyer and T. Dean consider these features
to be significant. Certainly the come shot and its associated depictions
of “loss of control” are recurring features of the pornographic narra-
tive, scene by scene, and will capture the gaze each time they occur.
But come shots and loss of control do not take place independently of
social subjects, and limiting their discussion to the occurrence of orgasm
says nothing about the intersections of masculinities, race and ethnicity,
class, regional location, and other factors that make such an occurrence
possible.
But noting who is coming and who is (or is not) losing control is
still not a sufficient corrective for this problem. Such comments allow
researchers to engage more of the complexity of the pornographic display—
what Champagne (1997) terms a “close textual analysis of the porno [graphic]
image” (p. 76). Furthermore, many studies have used close textual analy-
sis effectively to explore the details of specific gay pornographic films and
unpack the significance of the film production in several locations (see, e.g.,
Barnard, 2004; Berry, 2000; J. Dean, 2007; Hoang, 2004; Joshi, 2003; and
Mercer, 2004).
My point is that researcher-centered comments do not necessarily reflect
what viewers are decoding as they watch and respond to the indicated
images and, for that reason, these notations leave the complexity of audience
reception largely unexplored. I also see studies of gay pornography that

foreground the researcher’s perspectives while overlooking what viewers
have to say about the viewing experience as a problematic stance for the
same reasons that Champagne (1997) wants researchers to “stop reading
films!” (p. 76). Both practices produce only limited accounts of “. . . the social
and historical conditions in which certain kinds of text circulate” because,
without paying attention to the work of the viewing subject in the context
of reception, these studies fail to address “. . . the everyday uses to which
subjects put such texts” (p. 76).
In his work, Champagne (1997) is particularly interested in clarify-
ing “. . . the way that the exhibition of gay pornography makes possible
a social space in which dominant forms of social subjectivity might be

(re)produced, countered and violated” (p. 77). In my project, I am interested
in other aspects of what Champagne terms “social functions of pornography”
(p. 77)—and, particularly so, messages about sexuality, masculinity, author-
ity, and power that are animated through the work of audience reception,
even when these messages are not part of the outcome that producers and
directors intend.
STUDYING AUDIENCE RECEPTION
Audience reception is not a neglected theme in studies of gay pornogra-

phy, by any means.9 Moreover, researchers have used several approaches
to data gathering in their studies of the audience reception experience:
anonymous surveys, administered face-to-face or through online formats;
one-on-one interviews; focus groups; and structured screenings (where a
group of respondents watch scenes from pornographic films and then talk
about the imagery that they have just viewed). The data gathering for my
studies of audience reception are in part, modeled after the procedures used
in those studies. Similar to the case in my gay language research projects, I
am more comfortable working within an informal, unstructured, conversa-
tional framework, relying on friendship networks and snowball sampling to
establish contacts for these conversations, while being mindful of the need
to secure an appropriately stratified respondent sample.
But unlike in my previous gay language research projects, the primary
source of information for this study includes viewer comments about audi-
ence reception and its outcomes that emerge outside of formal and informal
contexts of face-to-face discussion.10 Relevant sources include:
● blogs, chat rooms, and other public-access Web sites dedicated to dis-
cussions of specific categories of pornographic films, particular gay porn
stars, or specific porn-related topical interests;
940 W. L. Leap
● Web sites that regularly feature reviews of gay adult films once they are
released, providing space for viewers to post comments about the reviews
and the films; and
● Web sites maintained by membership-based gay adult-film rental compa-
nies, which encourage club members to post comments about films once
they have returned a film that they have rented and watched.11
Formally structured interviews and informal conversations allow me to

focus conversation around a specific issue, for example, a viewer’s reaction
to an actor’s performance, the significance of a particular scene, the viewer’s
thoughts about the location of the film, and so on. They also allow me to
match the viewer’s discussions of audience reception about details of per-

sonal background. Online posting at times allow the management of topics
in the direction of my research interests, but just as often, such focused
questioning meets with resistance from fellow chat room participants.12
Moreover, online postings provide little information about the respondent’s
personal background, so the respondent’s age level, race and ethnicity, and
gender and sexual identification and other details that are often important
to linguistic inquiry are not directly indicated and have to be inferred from
details encoded elsewhere in the posting. Fortunately, some respondents
post multiple messages to the same Web site. When that happens, I am able
to compare postings over time and note the consistencies or variations in
the respondent’s language use across specific postings. Often, those com-
parisons allow me to develop a user profile for a given viewer, which may
include indications of regional, ethnic, or age-related linguistic styles. Using
a corpus linguistic framework as a mode of analysis (see below) also helps
identify general trends in the data set and compensates for the absence of
evidence about specific social inflections.
Finally, and drawing now on my observations of spoken language use
enabling formal and informal discussions of gay pornography in research
settings and in various social domains, I want to suggest that online post-
ings have certain advantages over data gleaned through interviewing and
focus group discussions, for purposes of gay pornography-related audience
reception studies.13 As mentioned above, Web sites and chat rooms often
limit researchers’ attempts to create focused discussion on a single topic or
theme. Those limits reflect the fact that Web sites and chat rooms are spaces
where commentary and discussion usually unfold without reference to the
boundaries that constrain such exchanges in real-time settings. For example,
those who post comments on Web sites or in chat rooms are not required
to respond to adjacent remarks, and ordinarily a moderator will not gen-
tly chide the respondent who refuses the obligations of turn taking. While
Web sites and chat rooms require compliance with expectations of genre and
style, compliance yields results that are very different in their linguistic detail
from the expectations that structure participation in formal interviewing and
survey-taking. There, the conversation is always time-compressed and view-

ers are repeatedly reminded of their obligations to respond to the interests
of the research agenda and remain obedient to strict rules of ordered and
sequenced turn taking.
Additionally, discussions in Web sites and chat rooms may take the form
of individual postings involving a small number of viewers and appearing
at a single point in time or as a longer sequence of postings involving
multiple viewers and extending over a longer period of time. In instances
when there are longer sequences, postings that address other topics may be
intermingled within the discussion and interrupt the flow of ideas. In face-
to-face discussion where a tightly sequenced coherence of topics is valued,
such disruption would require immediate work of repair. On Web sites and
chat rooms, disruptions of sequence are unremarkable, and participants have
multiple ways of maintaining continuity, including the Web site’s hyperlink-
support.
DATA ANALYSIS
There are several issues of data analysis that need to be addressed, of

course. When viewers talk about their experience of audience reception,
they pursue acts of “retrospection narratization” (Kleinman, 1988, p. 51),
in that they revisit a sensitive, and often emotionally charged activity that
occurred at an earlier point in time. The goal of such commentary is not
limited to “. . . fidelity of historical circumstance, but rather the significance
and validity in the creation of a life story” (p. 51). Portelli (1991) observed,
when introducing his study of Italian village life during World War II, “the
oral sources used in this study are not always reliable in point of fact. Rather
than being a weakness this is, however, their strength; errors, inventions
and myths lead us through and beyond facts to their meanings” (p. 2). The
same comment applies to the written and online sources that are of interest
to me in this project. I use two approaches to data analysis to guide the
movement through and beyond facts to locate significance and validity and
meaning.
First, and borrowing techniques of corpus linguistics (Huntson, 2002),
I follow the principles of concordance, collocation and comparison, and
annotation as ways of determining the significance, validity and meaning
of particular forms of linguistic practice (what linguists call tokens) that
appear in a viewer’s remarks about a film. Tokens could include words,
phrases, metaphors, forms of question asking, evaluative remarks, state-
ments of agreement or resistance. The work of concordance identifies all
of the occurrences of a given linguistic token in the remarks, and identifies
the materials immediately adjacent to the token in each of the occurrences.
942 W. L. Leap
The work of collocation systematizes the associations between token and

adjacent material, and identifies the recurring associations as they appear
within and across examples. The work of annotation traces the connections
between each association and related meanings outside of the indicated text,
paying particular attention to the structures of power and the assumptions
of ideology and belief and other details of social context that are relevant to
the film which the viewer is describing, and the context in which the work
of audience reception (including the online posting) took place.
Next, drawing on recent work in mediated discourse, I assume that
audiences understand the messages presented on screen through forms of
“overhearing” (Bubel, 2008). These are practices that people use to make
sense out of real-time speech events in which they are not active partici-
pants but which they are still able to observe. Unlike the case in real-life
conversations, film dialogue is designed to be overheard by nonparticipat-
ing observers, and the narrative scenario is constructed in ways that directly
support the audience’s participation in this work of reception (Tannen &
Lakoff, 1994). Even so, the “overhearing” of the film is still a real-time speech
event and segments of real-time speech events are always unclear. Under
those circumstances, viewers use as their source of clarity their “members’
resources” (Fairclough, 2001, p. 118). These “common sense assumptions,
many of [which] are ideological” in basis (p. 118), provide viewers with
an orientation to the film and to the viewing experience; these assump-
tions are also validated through the viewers’ participation in the reception
process, and may also be modified in certain ways through that process
as well.14
What viewers record when they post comments on the Manhattan
Men’s Media (hereafter MMM) Web site is the outcome of the work of
overhearing.15 Even if overhearing is not limited solely to the film’s presenta-
tion of verbal script but applies to second-hand observation of a broad range
of visual and other communicative practice, viewers’ comments will include
assumptions drawn from members’ resources that are relevant to the work of
audience reception as well as observation drawn from the viewer’s individ-
ual insights. Portelli (1991) referred to the same situation in his work with
Italian life stories, when he noted that the stories he collected were filled
with details that were “not always reliable in point of fact.” However, he
continued, “errors, inventions and myths lead us through and beyond facts
to their meanings” (p. 2). Techniques of concordance, collocation, and anno-
tation, and other forms of text analysis applied to viewer comments posted
on the MMM Web site and similar sources allow a similar movement—this
time, a disclosure of the “common sense assumptions” that guide viewers of
gay pornographic films in their reception and indicate what they understand
about the messages that these films place on display and how they come to
know it.
WHAT WE LEARN: MEN OF ISRAEL AND THE NEED TO TAKE

AUDIENCE VOICES SERIOUSLY
Now I return to Michael Lucas’ film, Men of Israel, and using this viewer-
centered approach to data analysis just described, I review viewer comments
about the film, looking for the common sense assumptions that orient
viewers’ remarks about a film that was intended to “to shake off the neg-
ative images” of Israel—“a violent state, mostly Muslim, not advanced and
ugly”—and showcase instead “. . . the beautiful sides of Israel” (Rums, 2009).
I tried organizing some focus groups in fall, 2009, but found very few
interested participants within the network of viewers who are ordinarily
eager to be part of these groups, when my research project requires it, or

who are willing to help me find men who would do so. Conversations
about the film on the chat rooms dedicated to discussions of gay porn
were always brief, and usually centered around about the exploits of the
film’s director or the attractiveness of a particular member of the cast. My
attempts to encourage discussion about the film were unsuccessful in these
online contexts. Asking whether anyone had heard about Men of Israel
gained the suggestion that I visit the film’s Web site. Asking if anyone
had seen the film elicited no response from ordinarily active chat room
participants.
So I turned to the Web site of Manhattan Men’s Media (MMM), a gay
video club offering club members an array of sexually explicit DVDs for
rental and purchase. Once members view and return the rented DVD, they
have the option of posting a brief review on the clubs Web site; a posted
review earns the club member a one dollar credit against the monthly mem-
bership fee (a modest incentive to create online reviews, I admit). The
reviews are edited to remove overly graphic language but are otherwise
posted as written. Reviews are displayed according to film title but view-
ers sign their reviews with a unique viewer name, and all reviews with the
same user name are connected by hyperlink.16 In some cases, the user name
is also linked to the identity the viewer maintains in the MMM chat room,
where online discussions of films and related topics also unfold.
MMM does not provide statistical profiles of its membership base as part
of its commitment to membership privacy, but one of their staff members
(personal communication, May 2010) indicates that they have members in
urban and regional locations across the United States, with clustering along
the East and West Coasts and in areas adjacent to the major metropolitan
and regional market centers in the upper Midwest, the Great Plains, and the
Southwest. Vocabulary choices and other features of style pattern unevenly
across the comments of viewers who post repeatedly to the Web site; some
of these patterns suggest that age differences are attested within the club
membership, as well.
944 W. L. Leap
“Hot” and “dude” are two such lexical items. Some viewers use hot
repeatedly when referring to men in a certain category of desirability (Leap,
2010); other viewers, referring to the same men in the same scenes, never
use that label. Dude is not so widely attested, although the significance
of the term in broader social discourse (Kiesling, 2005) suggests that those
who use it regularly have a specific generational location. Dude appears
in viewer comments only in instances where the viewer also uses hot to
refer to displays of desirable masculinity. A viewer who writes “hot dude” to
describe a male performer favorably is making a generational statement. A
viewer who uses neither hot nor dude in his comments could be making a
different statement about generation or indicating a less robust participation
in public gay and White culture, online or in real time, and less familiarity
with the language of that public culture, or both.
Men of Israel was released for distribution on the MMM Web site as of
September 5, 2009. I started to examine the viewer comments about the film
shortly after the film was released. To my surprise, but consistent with the
other reactions I had noted, there were relatively few posted comments—
especially, in comparison to the number of viewer comments that other films
receive upon their release. As of December 1, 2010, 24 club members have
posted comments about the film on the club’s Web site. By comparison,
43 viewers (approximately 79% more than those posting comments for Men
of Israel) posted comments about Lebanon (O’Neal, 2006), whose erotic sce-
nario takes place in and around the city of Beirut, during the first 15 months
that the film was available on the MMM Web site. Similarly, and during com-
parable time periods, 52 viewers (more than twice the number for Men of
Israel) posted comments about The Drifter (Leon & DiMarco, 2008), and
64 viewers (more than 2.5 times the number as for Men of Israel) posted
comments about Best Man 2: The Wedding Party (Bruno, 2008.) Like Men
of Israel, the marketing campaigns for The Drifter and Best Man 2 empha-
sized their powerful depictions of homoerotic intimacy. Unlike Men of Israel,
the directors of these films did not claim that their films displayed explicit
political messages.
Men of Israel was one of the films that was most frequently rented from
the MMM library during late 2009 and early 2010, according to the rental
club’s statistics. So, it was not the case that MMM club members were not
watching the film; rather, members watched the film but were not posting
comments about it on the MMM Web site at the same level of frequency asso-
ciated with the club’s other heavily publicized new releases. It is tempting to
explain the relatively infrequent occurrence of viewer comments about Men
of Israel on the MMM Web site (or in the real-time settings) by suggesting
that viewers had a negative reaction to the film’s deliberate fusion of polit-
ical messaging with homoerotic imagery and had no interest in discussing
the film any further. It may also be the case that the constraints shaping
public conversations about the Israeli question in U.S. society also discour-
aged some viewers from criticizing a film intended to provide a pro-Israeli
commentary. Brief discussions in focus group settings did not confirm either
of these claims, however. I did find some comments on the MMM Web
site suggesting that viewers were disappointed in the film. This sentiment
appeared less frequently in the initial postings but appeared with increasing
frequency over time, reaching 29% of the viewer comments (seven viewers)
by early September 2010. Interestingly, these comments did not voice objec-
tion to the film’s political agenda. They note the film’s failure to address the
viewer’s anticipated level of sexual intensity, and they frame that remark in
varying ways, for example,
● While the Jewish boys in this beautifully shot film are searingly hot, hot,
hot, there is something missing here. It doesn’t have the same level of
sexual intensity as other Lucas films. It spends too much time being artsy
and not enough time getting the viewer worked up. After all, isn’t that
what porn is all about. I’ll rent a Fellini film when want art . . . (rtdb,
December 30, 2009)
● The trailer was the best part of the film. I eagerly awaited the film, and
every part of it disappointed. It was poorly lit, the men had problems with
their hard-ons, and the sex dragged and had little enthusiasm. My advice,
don’t bother. (Rufus, March 13, 2010)
● Men of Israel has great things going for it. The direction is insightful, the
men are ultra-handsome, and the photography both of the men and the
land of Israel is thrilling. I was expecting that actors to be more mature
(hairy) in the Mideastern tradition, but the boys are beautiful and the sex
was inspiring. Lucas has an artist’s eye. (Jimboy, May 13, 2010)
Read along with the indications of viewer silence, these references

to viewer disappointment suggest that the audience reception of Men of
Israel as reported on the MMM Web site has not been consistent with the
outcomes of reception that Michael Lucas originally intended.17 Such con-
trast between encoding and decoding is not remarkable, in and of itself,
of course. But the contrast invites further attention to viewer comments on
the MMM Web site: If viewers are not foregrounding “the beautiful sides
of Israel,” what are the issues that orient viewer engagement with this film
(Rums, 2009)?
In some ways, viewers are quite divided in the matter of orientation.
For example, twenty-four viewers posted comments to MMM Web site as of
December 2010. While Michael Lucas intended that Men of Israel “. . . shake
off [its] negative images” and “show the beautiful sides of Israel,” only seven
viewers (30% of viewers) see this as a film that is specifically about Israel. Six
viewers (25%) acknowledge that the storyline of Men of Israel has some level
946 W. L. Leap
of Jewish or Hebraic affiliation, but do not specifically indicate the national

context. Moreover, eleven viewers (46%) do not explicitly acknowledge that
the film is about Israel as national location, geographic site, or cultural, social
or linguistic terrain.
Furthermore, while 7 viewers (30%) post comments to the MMM Web
site suggesting that the film is in some sense about the state of Israel, only
4 of those viewers (17% of the whole) include pro-Israeli statements in their
comments, in the sense of Michael Lucas’ intended agenda: They reference
Michael Lucas’ “trip to sexy Israel,” they note that “my passport is ready,”
and that “I want to go to Israel.”
Much more than seeing Men of Israel making a statement about “the
beautiful sides of Israel,” 11 viewers (46%) see Men of Israel making a

statement about Michael Lucas and the current status of his film career. Six
viewers (25% of all viewers) see this film making a positive career statement,
and five viewers (21%) see this film as a negative career statement. Finally,
9 viewers (37.5%) see Men of Israel as a film displaying beautiful men in
a beautiful, if unnamed setting, while placing no other message—political,
social, or spatial—on display. These men refer to the “handsome and hot
cast,” to the “men [being] so hot and in the moment,” although they say
nothing to indicate the “moment” where these desirable masculine subjects
are to be found.
Yet, while viewers are divided over how they understand the film’s
depiction of purpose, viewers show much greater consistency in their
description of the film’s messages abouthot men. In fact, 21 of 24 view-
ers indicate that Men of Israel is in some sense about hot men (either using
the term directly or in paraphrase). Moreover, two viewers criticize the film
because the men displayed there are not hot enough, making 23 of 24 view-
ers (96%) who reference some sense of hotness as a central theme in their
work of audience reception.
This consensus around hotness is an especially important observation.
It is the first of several indications that the viewers’ divided engagement with
Michael Lucas’ agenda has not led them back to “the goal [of] ejaculation”
(Dyer, 2005, p. 5) or “the spectacle of bodies losing control of themselves”
(T. Dean, 2009, p. 106). Instead, the viewers’ comments about hotness show
that the work of audience reception, while certainly erotic in basis, leads to
a very different outcome.
For one thing, viewers refer to the hot men that they find on screen and
make statements like “Israeli men are hot,” but their remarks never bring hot
and Israeli together to form a single, co-dependent collocation, for example,
“hot Israeli men.” Allowing the erotic and the national to function as inde-
pendent points of reference ensures that hot retains its ties to transnational
discourses of masculine sexual sameness. But more than that: this indepen-
dence of reference ensures that the viewers’ reflections on these hot men is
also freed from any obligations of national loyalty and can also be explored
in terms of broader frames of reference. Note the underlined segments of

the following passages, by way of example:
● OK. Michael Lucas definitely proved himself He conceived of this move,

according to the excellent, hot informative extras as a vehicle for teaching
people that Israeli men are as hot as any other middle easterners. He is
right. They are. . . . (EQJ, November 11, 2009)
● I don’t know Hebrew for F#$%in’ Hot but it’s the only way to describe
Michael Lucas’ trip to sexy Israel. Jonathan Agassi and Avi Dar are smok-
ing hot guys who know how to use their bodies for maximum viewing
pleasure. This is the kind of Mideast piece that no one could resist. . . .
(studlvr October 16, 2009)
● Unbelievably hot. These men are so into their scene partners that this DVD
really separates itself from the herd. Some of them are Euro-skinny. Some of
them are superbly built. They all fuck like gay men who are having a good
time. Very good natural sounds from the men and pleasant background of
area music. Very beautiful, very different backgrounds . . . I can’t wait for
more. (brytboi March 25, 2010)
These references do not index the beautiful sides of Israel in the sense
that Michael Lucas intended, of course. They use erotic motifs to erase the
boundaries and distinctions that Lucas intends the film to foreground, using
a regional framework to replace a national politics as a frame of reference for
discussing the Israeli state and its sexual citizens. The problem is, the Israeli
state endures, in spite of the rhetorical formation of the viewer. In that sense,
studlvr’s reference to Men of Israel displaying homoerotic practices that can
produce resolution to the region’s political problems, (“. . . a Mideast piece
that no one could resist”) is deeply visionary but also deeply apolitical.
More seriously, perhaps, is a comment like the following, posted on
YouTube.com in response to the soft-porn version of the promotional
trailer for the film.18 Posting already on the Web page indicated doo-
biesmoke15’s eagerness to watch the complete video, having seen the trailer
and ErnaSack’s appreciation for Noar Tal, one of the film’s actors, who is a
“nice combi of twink with a stronger guy. . . . mmmmm yummie.” These
comments prompted liatb to ask: “were ist?” and EmotionHigh to post ”I
wish the Israeli army was really like that. Where were all of the gay hotties
when I was in service?” (Emotion high, YouTube.com, November 2009).
This comment describes the Israeli army with a metaphor—gay
hotties—that invokes images of muscle boys playing volleyball on South
Beach rather than a military force capable of inflicting the 2009 shock-and-
awe bombing of the Gaza Strip. This comment underscores my argument
that the work of audience reception is decentering references to the author-
ity of the Israeli state—as evidenced in some viewers’ silence, in the absence
948 W. L. Leap
of endorsement for Michael Lucas’ stated agenda in the viewer comments,

in the foregrounding of hotness and other regional and broader messages
when the film is discussed. But, it also shows that films like Men of Israel can
have persuasive impact on audience reception, even if the intended agenda
for audience reception is refused.
NOTES
1. For similar arguments, see the Lucas Film press release announcing the start of the film project
(Lucas Entertainment, 2009) and also his interview in the Israeli newspaper Maariv (”The Patriot,” 2008).
2. Ritchie (2010) considers the tensions stemming from the visibility of same-sex identified subjects
of non-Hebraic background in the Israeli state.

3. For other sites where Lucas develops this argument, see Lucas, 2008a, 2008b.
4. Films in this category from U.S. studios have titles such as: Grunts: Brothers in Arms (Ward &
Leon, 2007) Gunnery Sergeant Joe McCool (Gage, 2006), Military Manholes (Senko, 2002), and Barracks
Glory Hole # 9 (Yates, 2006).
5. Films in this category include: Made in the Shade 1 (Ross, 1985), Young Warriors (Bronco, 1988),
Hooked on Hispanics 1 (Brennan, 1989) and Abduction in Spanish Harlem (Franco, 1992.)
6. When I refer to gay pornography in this article, I refer to gay pornographic films, specifically
films that are commercially produced for distribution through such for-profit venues as adult theaters,
bookstores, video stores, mail-order sales, rental services, and online viewing sites. “Underground,”
“amateur,” and additional genres of gay pornography can be distinguished by topic and by commercial
base, and will not be addressed in this article.
7. The argument is not limited to gay pornographic context. A similar linkage of sexual and racial
positioning oriented the U. S. military’s prisoner humiliation at Abu Ghraib (Massad, 2007, pp. 44–47;
Rudman, 2004) and is reflected in the place that homosexuality occupies in the intensified forms of
national desire widely attested in late modernity (Hayes, 2000; Kong, 2010; Puar & Rai, 2004; Žarkov,
2007).
8. This was one of the analytical problems posed by the early feminist arguments that defined
pornography in terms of a gender binary, as I explain earlier.
9. One of the earliest replies to the feminist critique of pornography noted that if pornography was
designed to legitimize masculinity through the subordination of women, then women‘s location as object
of the masculine gaze prevented them from occupying the subject position of viewer in the context of
audience reception (Gaines, 1987). Duggan and McCreary (2004) show that viewing gay pornography’s
displays of embodiment prompt a reevaluation of the viewers’ self-assumptions about bodily form, is one
of several studies demonstrating that audiences are actively engaged in a creative process of reception.
Morrison, Morrison, and Bradley (2007) review other audience-centered studies of gay pornography.
10. My comments about the usefulness of Web site and chat room postings in this section reflect
my interests in placing audience voices at the center of conversations about audience reception. Similarly,
data from formal interviewing, focus groups and questionnaires are highly appropriate in those instances
where research projects want to explore, for example, “The possible associations between pornography
exposure and the drive for muscularity, genital esteem . . . and the perceived importance of practicing
safer sex” (Morrison, Morrison, & Bradley, 2007, p. 33) or connections between audience reception and
other areas of sexual or psychological practice. Whether focus group data are more reliable than data
from Web sites and chat rooms for purposes of audience reception research is a topic for discussion
elsewhere, although my remarks about the effects that data-gathering contexts have on language use
(and, thereby, discussions of the viewing process) should indicate where my endorsement will lie.
11. Some sites may fall into more than one of these categories. The Web site for the video rental
club, Manhattan Men’s Media, has space for members to post comments about films they have rented
and also maintains message-board and chat room services so members can discuss interests in gay
pornography and related themes.
12. There is also an issue of disclosure: Revealing that I am a researcher shuts down the online
thread immediately. Failing to do so may solicit useful commentary, but under false pretense. My solution
has been not to raise questions or “force” the creation of viewer responses, but to work with whatever
online postings and exchanges are available to anyone who has access to the Web site. The database
proves to be rich enough under these circumstances, as we will see below.
13. The total number of interviews, focus group discussions and informal conversations for which
I have notes of language use (and content) exceeds 100, as of December 2010, with the participants
stratified by age, race/ethnicity and income level.
14. In the context of private viewing, viewers may “rewind” so that unclear segments of dialogue
or events can be replayed and reheard. Doing so disrupts visual continuity and (particularly in the case
of pornographic films) other domains of audience reception.
15. I discuss the MMM Website in the following section.
16. The hyperlink function is helpful in this project in two ways. By enabling comparisons of
content and language use across reviews, the hyperlinks help me situate a viewer’s comments about
particular films within broader discursive practice. Given that the identities of the viewers are otherwise
concealed the hyperlinks help me draw inferences about the details of viewer background.
17. Viewers have posted comments about Men of Israel on GayPornBlog.com and other gay
pornography-related Web sites. Here again, they do so with lower than expected frequencies for
film-related messages posted on those sites. The content of those postings echo the content-details
summarized here.
18. See http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3NaCqS0-5zk&feature=player_embedded (last visited
April 4, 2010).
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On: 27 October 2014, At: 05:39

Language, Gay Pornography, and

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00918369.2011.581944

PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR ARTICLE

Language, Gay Pornography, and Audience

WILLIAM L. LEAP, PhD

Erotic imagery is an important component of gay pornographic

KEYWORDS language, semiotics, cinema studies, gay pornogra-

Several years ago, Champagne (1997) urged researchers to stop “reading”

Address correspondence to William L. Leap, Department of Anthropology, Battelle T-23,

to close analysis necessarily obscures some of the social functions of gay

distract[ing] us from a consideration of the way that the exhibition of gay

project reviewed in this article is audience reception. Production companies

ISRAEL—a country of sun drenched beaches, breath-taking vistas and

Representatives of the adult film industry greeted the release of Men of

. . . As many of you may remember, Michael Lucas and I often have

Interestingly, as Michael Lucas, the film’s director, pointed out repeat-

the international human rights arena: a society confirms its attainment of

stereotyped images of lawlessness, poverty and urban decay.5 Here, as in

GAY PORNOGRAPHY:6 COMPLEXITY EXTENDING BEYOND

THE EROTIC MESSAGE

A long-standing critique of gay pornography begins here. Feminist argu-

reveals a “sexualized identity politic” that relies on the inequality found

or “the heartland” at distance from the metropolis (Leap, in press). There is

the basis of gender. As Kendall (1997) explains, at issue here is a particular

Further complicating matters, in some cases these messages assume contra-

Under these circumstances, confining the gay pornographic message to

In part, Dyer explains, the focus on ejaculation is an attempt to confirm the

do with the importance of the visual in the way male sexuality is

T. Dean (2009) uses a similar argument to explain the allure of bareback

What we like about porn is the spectacle of bodies losing control of

Anyone who watches gay pornography will recognize the features of

reception largely unexplored. I also see studies of gay pornography that

a social space in which dominant forms of social subjectivity might be

STUDYING AUDIENCE RECEPTION

Audience reception is not a neglected theme in studies of gay pornogra-

Formally structured interviews and informal conversations allow me to

match the viewer’s discussions of audience reception about details of per-

survey-taking. There, the conversation is always time-compressed and view-

There are several issues of data analysis that need to be addressed, of

The work of collocation systematizes the associations between token and

WHAT WE LEARN: MEN OF ISRAEL AND THE NEED TO TAKE

eager to be part of these groups, when my research project requires it, or

Read along with the indications of viewer silence, these references

of Jewish or Hebraic affiliation, but do not specifically indicate the national

beautiful sides of Israel,” 11 viewers (46%) see Men of Israel making a

in terms of broader frames of reference. Note the underlined segments of

● OK. Michael Lucas definitely proved himself He conceived of this move,

of endorsement for Michael Lucas’ stated agenda in the viewer comments,

of non-Hebraic background in the Israeli state.

Lucas Entertainment. (2010). Men of Israel. Retrieved from http://www.

Massad, J. (2007). Desiring Arabs. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.

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