Brent Corrigan, Porn Star

An Homage with some Considerations about Porn in General.

Part 1: The Look




The future is hard to predict. We do not know for how much longer Brent Corrigan will be producing porn; his ambition aims into the direction of a career in theatre and film. Apparently dressed. And being aware of the fact that crossover careers from porn to mainstream are rare but not impossible one can assume that having a career in both, mainstream AND porn, simultaneously, is probably not working.
Brent Corrigan has set his mark in porn already, no doubt. You could say, five years are half a decade, who started earlier can retire sooner. Yet I do not agree that “Big Easy” has been an achievement that cannot be topped. Even though it points in a fascinating direction I still see a lot of potential that has not been fully exhausted in this project.

In that sense I do hope that Brent will go beyond the limits yet again, but I know him well enough to be sure that he cannot be pushed in any direction, not into and not out of porn.
So if his adult career as a very young man slowly comes to a halt this seems to be in any case an appropriate moment for an homage. Most of this has been written some weeks ago and was originally planed as an argument as to why I see the bottom (or the woman in straight porn) as the centre of attention, as the ruling person in any porn movie. The ground for these arguments has been paved by my earlier reflexions on penetration and enjoyment in porn. http://lana-e.blogspot.com/2009_07_01_archive.html
I felt provoked to express these thoughts in public by certain signs of weariness about his status as premium bottom Brent showed in his blog (in comments to the post http://myblog.brentcorriganinc.com/?p=895 now gone due to technical reasons) Even though I would not discourage his ambition to strive for higher goods such as being nominated best performer or best personality for the awards of his liking I wanted to make clear that the status of best bottom should not be underestimated.

Brent Corrigan is a creature of many faces, but I never considered it appropriate to label him a “boy next door” kind of type. He is the rather unusual sum of unusual elements. And it is one danger of the trade he is in that the beauty and appeal of the performer is being dissected into an assemblage of fetishes and partial objects. In order to not end up as a monstrosity, and be it a monstrosity of beauty, one needs one strong feature, one element that dominates and outshines the rest. And counter to commonly held opinion in Brent’s case its neither cock nor ass, but his eyes. Catlike and heartbreakingly androgynous when he was in his teens. Nowadays still large, hazel and doe-like, but displaying a decidedly more masculine expression sparkling with ambition and intelligence, sometimes even mischief.
However, we rarely get to see them in his movies. And maybe with good reasons. To be addressed by such a strong expressive gaze would almost intimidate the lusting stare of the porn consumer focussed on his/her favourite body parts.
It is interesting to note that the extensive convention of female porn actors addressing the camera, habitually glancing ridiculously submissive glances at the anonymous spectator while gagging on a cock, does not have an equivalent in gay porn. This is all the more notable as other mannerisms of submission, including making eyes at the top while giving head, are clearly very similar. There is something about the theatrical act of the female performer confessing to be a whore and a slut that does not translate into gay culture. One reason might be the convention of “naturalness” in gay porn. Any exaggerated theatricality would be perceived as “drag queen like”, and drag queens, for very disquieting reasons, are excluded from the realm of sexually desirable subjects. SM porn is a significant exception though; it is loaded with hilarious and utterly unnatural displays of dominance and submission. Yet even here, no direct addressing of the camera.
While this riddle stays unsolved for the moment we return to Brent who likes to keep his lids half closed to display a row of silky eye lashes that could inspire yet another eccentric fetish in me. This predominant expression signals that the subject is completely involved with his own enjoyment and the gratification of the other. He is utterly concentrated and concerned. He acts as if we would not be there, we and our obscene accomplice, the camera. Lately he has created a situation for himself that allows for an undisturbed and smooth dramaturgy of the scene, directed from the inside by the main protagonist. In the old days though, the dirty old Cobra days, there were very discreet moments when we see young Brent suddenly dropping out of the little bit of role-playing that is needed for a sex scene and glancing a private, brief, annoyed look at the camera that apparently is the reaction to some director’s command balked at him and cut out later, commands such as “Moan loader” or “Push your dick down”. It would be a wonderfully nerdy sports, – and I encourage the readers to do so, – to produce stills of all those little moments; and reconstruct what the commands might have been.

In this particular example of EPBD the command probably was to lift his right arm which he does the next moment very slowly and deliberately.

Since then the professional in him has established certain moments to consciously open his eyes. The submissive look upwards while serving a cock, as in “The Porne Idenity” is “done” and slightly fake. Closer to an authentic expression but still a convention is the look that hovers in between addressing the audience and the in-scene partner to announce imminent orgasm, like a moment of testimony. This almost desperate expression, as in “Velvet Mafia”, the second scene, combined with contorted neck muscles and lifted shoulders, is a truly heartbreaking and deeply arousing mixture of acting and experiencing it for real. Still, it occurs only rarely and in larger productions, such as the one by Falcon, where “acting” it bigger is demanded.




I personally love the announcement of a male orgasm in porn, as it seems pure luxury. There has been a lot of discussion within the feminist critique of male dominated porn about the obvious, visible character of male ejaculation, – the “money shot” –, in straight porn and how it dominates the dramaturgy of any scene. Which is absolutely true. Still, to the extent to which the male orgasm is also a matter of enjoyment and not only a sign of a job being accomplished it has its own imaginary dimension. That’s one reason why I, – as a female porn consumer, – strongly reject the demand of some feminist porn activists to simply ban it from any woman-friendly porn. What a childish revenge ! So if, – probably rather in gay than straight porn, – a man is sighing “I am coming!” to announce an event that everyone can see he might also give the cameraman a sign where to point the camera. But in addition to that he supplements the anatomically obvious with voice and facial expression as if to perform a split in between the physical and the symbolic dimension of the act. After all, all we get to see is some white liquid oozing or squirting out of a tube. The fact that this is accompanied by intense lust and emotion only a human voice and face can testify to us. By doubling this seemingly banal event with its announcement the male orgasm regains a certain dignity and mystery that some like to ascribe to the female orgasm, even though in most cases, – and mine for sure, – it is as much of an anatomically distinct and punctual event, and sometimes as mechanically achieved, as male orgasm is.
It is by the way truly amazing, – and to me much more of a scandal than the display of male ejaculation, – that this mysterious and cosmic event that some men see in the female orgasm is in general absolutely absent from straight porn. The women do never announce or display any particular moment when they actually come, if they are not squirting. It appears that an event without a visible equivalent is not worth marking. Thus the female curve of arousal and release that in real life has its specific structure and demands different practices and rhythms of sex is absent from straight porn. Women whimper and moan from the first to the last moment of intercourse as if being tortured by a permanent orgasm born in the anatomically ignorant minds of some men. This convention is for sure far more damaging for heterosexual relations being influenced by porn, and a far stronger sign for male dominance in straight porn than any display of ejaculation. It signifies that woman does not have her own time and timing in porn and really only serves as a tool for male gratification.

In general the Brent keeping his lust to himself and the Brent openly looking into the camera are two very different creatures. The moderation of the scenes in “Summit” shows him too slick and businesslike to blend well into the passion of the scenes. And he even seems to comment on this sharp contrast between performance and moderation in the brilliant little epilogue, the beautifully photographed performance of a full body orgasm with his head hanging over the edge of a couch, seemingly ignorant of the camera, but then staging the interruption of a private experience with the cameraman (probably Grant) shouting “Hey Brent!”, and with a jerk of the body coming back to his still heavily breathing but alert moderator’s self apologizing for not having been able to resist.



It seems that Brent has to push himself a bit to look back at us. But there is one quite hidden little performance that bridges the gap in between looking and not looking in the most tantalizing and seductive way; and it is significant that it occurs in a very intimate solo scene in which every glance is not directed towards an anonymous audience but personally towards the cameraman; the cameraman Grant Roy who as a (then still or already former) boy friend and business partner was able to provoke all sorts of teasing, flirtatious but also slightly annoyed expressions.
In the solo of “Just the Sex” Brent changes smoothly and rhythmically between looking at us (at Grant) and at himself. Every look seems to comment on the desire his body evokes in the onlooker and thus heighten it. Still, in a tiny, unnameable shift this look can melt into a genuine offering of himself. As if the diva-like, annoyed expression of “Is this what you want” can tip over into a warm, open “Do you want me?” in any moment. Those amazing eyes seem to arrive at an expression of real vulnerability and devotion the more they try to keep a cool, sober, slightly amused look. And we drown in their dark soft glow while Brent is playfully slapping his pale swollen dick against his stomach with adolescent yet charming pride.

Kicked out of the Global Village. My Brief Visit in Thingyville

New idols is what you acquire while you are busy worrying about the old ones. Apparently Brent Corrigan is about to sneak out of porn; or maybe not. If he does, a quarrel with his business partner about the freshly launched website would not be a convincing reason, even less so now when he could build on his growing fame. To quit porn now would be very very unreasonable. But who said that a 22 year old moody and eccentric diva makes reasonable decisions? But as I said, that is another story.
In the long weeks of silence I grew more and more fascinated by a whole different type of star performer. Like many others I first noticed him and began to be interested in him when he played Mark Antony in HBO’s amazing show Rome. And that fact alone is already a clear indication that the British actor James Purefoy is a very untypical movie star. He managed to sail below the radar of superstardom till the age of 41 (Rome started 2005). In an interview he blamed his own “self destructive” character for not getting some of the major parts he auditioned for – James Bond one of them. Obviously he did not quite want to become part of the Hollywood dream factory; even though British actors like Jude Law, Ralph Fiennes and lately Clive Owen found their way to stardom. The trajectory of his career starting with classical Shakespearean theatre and setting a mark in a long series of British period dramas is wound and peculiar. Counter to his claim of avoiding typical Hollywood material he appeared in “Resident Evil”, an infantile, computer game style zombie movie, in 2002, without further consequences. Ever since I started to observe David Duchovny’s struggle to do anything meaningful after his part as Agent Mulder in “X Files” I am fascinated by the difficult periods highly significant and talented actors sometimes have to go through if they cannot or do not want to be typecast for their whole career. For Duchovny came “Californication”, a witty, naughty and well written show in any sense tailor made and modelled on the body and soul of its main protagonist. For Purefoy came Rome, an ensemble drama dominated by a mostly brilliant British cast, but leaving space for one character slightly outshining the others with his powerful, sexually charged, arrogant presence of audacious and finally tragic debauchery. James Purefoy’s Mark Antony. That no doubt deserves a post of its own I had already planned to write, and another one on NBC’s “The Philanthropist” with Purefoy in the leading part, a significant example for honourable failure.
I would have written those posts if not something would have come in the way that deserves an homage all of its own. I came about the apparently most active fan forum jamespurefoy.proboards.com, hosted by the website jamespurefoy.us calling itself “America’s Home for the Darling James Purefoy”. As an ardent James Spader fan I already had my experiences with one of those proboards, the so called “James Spader Meeting Place”. I do not quite know if they are really all the same, but now that I know two cases I might suspect so.

Those forums are highly maintained, apparently closely knit communities with a very active administration and a table of rules that are carved in marble. Anyone who is not either part of the founding generation or of a meek and humble character is surely up for an interesting time.
Whenever I stumble into such a forum I always have to think about the irony of how the proverbial prediction of the “global village” came true in an almost literal sense. The term was labelled to indicate that telecommunication and new digital media will shrink the global society to the size of a village. And certain segments of web 2.0 outdo themselves in becoming villagers. As if the anarchy and anonymity of the web were unbearable to some they are suspicious of strangers and re-enact the control mechanisms and finally the moral (mostly sexual) censorship of small village communities. In an open medium without any owner there emerge “hosts” who claim to administer the rules of a certain domain. In some of those boards (not the JP forum though) they indulge in the staging of vertical hierarchy, attributing the labels of “gods” to senior members to make the “new member” feel like the paria he is. Web forums become the symbolic space of a re-enactment of aristocratic and authoritarian regimes where the ancestors dominate those who come later, where the owner(s) of the house have absolute power, where basically no democratic mechanism is accepted that rules the outside world.
On the other hand, a fan forum such as this, peopled by adult women who discuss issues about an attractive male actor, is teaming with sexual energy. It would merit studying this particular phenomenon of collective female fandom, adult fandom that differs significantly from teenage frenzy. The women on this forum outdo each other in detailed analysis of the anatomy of the star, they compete in posting significant photos and commenting them with witty and naughty remarks. Actually I liked that and so, even though I had been warned, I tried to enter this community. I could simply not refrain from mentioning a tiny problem I had with the site. And that was its hilarious regime of self-censorship.
The problem starts with a site like that being a performative self-contradiction. The rules are supposed to respect the privacy of the star worshipped. Yet almost every photo and every post on the forum is to a certain extent invading his privacy. The only rule that applies is a strict separation of artistic manifestations and the private person. I am quite sure that no one on the forum is a potential stalker. As a crazy member of fan culture I can well understand why one dissects one’s idol down to the nipple, even though this is one more symptom of the cannibalistic nature of fandom, the Dionysian “tearing apart of the God” I mentioned before. Still, an actor who decides to play his part like Purefoy played Mark Antony, with such brooding sensuality, has to accept the consequences as long is they stay within the symbolic distance of the medium; consequences that might seem both embarrassing and flattering to him if he should bother to notice them.
I always thought the best protection of a star from the erotic zeal of his fans is his blissful ignorance. So the additional emphasis on child protection and “13+ friendliness” on the JP Proboard seems to be nothing but yet another symptom of this particular shame the fan feels for her own madness; for nothing can be more absurd and more self contradicting than the administration of this supposed teen friendliness.
Close ups of nipples, lips and buttocks are anyway not the right material for teens. If the administrators were serious they would have set up a strict and meaningful censorship. Also, Purefoy is not the actor who attracts any significant teen following. He is 45 now, he displays signs of a slightly decadent, intellectual European with a Leftist past. He takes care of a young son. Why should any teen visit a site in his honour? And even if a teen would stumble on the site accidentally he would find nothing that could be more dangerous to his or her premature dirty mind than the tons of free porn he or she can easily find anywhere else. But hey, there is no accidental stumbling as one has to apply for admittance. So why on earth can’t the site be the adult site that it obviously is? Well, it can’t.
What are, finally, the exact mechanisms of teen protection? Well, no frontal nudity. That’s understood. The classic taboo Purefoy broke with grandezza in the famous episode S01e04 of Rome. The countless mentioning of that small scene without permission to post the picture gives an impression of suppressed Victorian libido that is not at all in tune with Purefoy’s own liberal and very relaxed approach to nudity and sex. Still, innuendos can be fun. So let’s accept this. I for one would have done so, even though I would like to know when exactly the bare ass of a man stopped being dangerous to the adolescent mind while his cock still is.

Speaking of ass, or maybe “arse”, as Purefoy would have rather put it, – and he played with the American and the British version of the word in the San Diego episode of “The Philanthropist” – that leads me straight to the nitty gritty of JP Proboard censorship. I do not know if the board censors “arses”, but surely it censors ass. Not the picture of said body part but the WORD! And not only that filthy dirty word but any part of a word those disgusting three letters appear in. As if fearing that the misguided dirty mind of a teenager would see “ass” any time it would read “class” that word appears as “cl***” on the page.
Who will ever be able to explain the American fear of evil words to me? The American culture fears “bad language” more than nude display and for sure more then the display of extreme violence. What is that exactly? A leftover of the Puritan past? Yet with the fear of an evil syllable we enter the new realm of the irrational magic of letters, a realm that reminds me rather of witchcraft than the holy script. And that new magic has been created by some badly programmed semantic filter that does not make a difference between words and syllables, or between the names for certain body parts and their synonyms. If you write that “the cock crows in the morning” this glorious program censors it as “the thingy crows in the morning”. Just to make sure.
The thingy. A very regular word on that board. A British, and may I say rather vulgar expression hijacked for the sake of American teen care. When I read that word I see a middle-aged British woman with the corners of her thin lipped mouth pulled down in contempt as she is referring to some tiny shrivelled up penis. That word as substitute for any, or maybe only some anatomical expressions might not have the power to protect any adolescent soul but for sure it has the power to destroy any adult’s appetite for said anatomy.
Now, a caring morally concerned American housewife and mother who happens to entertain a little crush for a British celebrity in her spare time might find the forced use of “thingy” and the crossing out of one particular syllable a tiny and insignificant prize to be paid for the much higher good of child protection. Yet if that good is so very high, why doesn’t anyone bother to use (or program) a more intelligent software? Because language is a good that does not deserve even the tiniest bit of care? That is a pity, as some people on the forum surely know how to express themselves. It stays a secret why they accept a semantic regime like that. Well, I can’t.
I am one of those odd people who still appreciate the freedom of expression, who love language and think that it has profound aesthetic and poetic qualities, qualities that shape one’s life and personality and should therefore not be manipulated by an idiotic software program.
Therefore my strange encounter with the “thingy” taught me a powerful lesson; how I, a profound lover of both sex and words – by the way, the word “sex”, root of all evil, is not being censored on the board – deeply love those words, “cock” and “cunt” and “ass”. I could never live without them.
Just think back of George Orwell’s 1984, the authoritarian imposition of newspeak. Nowadays everyone laughs about “Big Brother” because we are simply living with him already. It is just amazing to see how this regime has already seeped into every single pore of language and communication, in the internet most of all.
Imagine that one day you would wake up in a world where all the proud, juicy, pulsating “cocks” and “cunts” and all the supple quivering “asses” of this world would have been melted into one big neutral flaccid pool of “thingys”. Wouldn’t this change of naming have an influence on our lives? Wouldn’t it change the perception of our bodies, maybe even our anatomy?

To borrow an example that shows the very hiatus between this forum and the class and style of the object of its affection: “Rome” is a great big carnival of carnal excess and dirty language, produced by decadent Europeans for an American market. In s02e01 Servilia, Ceasar’s former lover and mother of Brutus, shows contempt for Antony’s famous speech at Caesar’s funeral, one of the most famous speeches in theatre and film history the series oddly left out (would have loved to see Purefoy deliver that). She states that any pantomime could have performed that speech. And Antony replies with a glorious expression of scorn, "Lucky it was me then, or you'd be on your knees sucking pantomime cock!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y8B5jSLaAPA
some regime of censorship would have forced him to say “sucking pantomime thingy”, not only the rhythm of the line would have been ruined.

Well, I deeply despise any censorship. In my country censorship is associated with the corrupt and reactionary regime of Metternich. And while regimes like China and Iran continue to impose censorship any seemingly trivial regime of self-censorship in a supposedly democratic society should not be treated too lightly. As a means to an ethical end such as the protection of adolescents it is clearly dysfunctional. Still it is spreading and about to become a netiquette that might soon exclude anyone who does not accept it. One does not need to be a theorist of culture to know that the politics of signs and words is not trivial and does have political and existential consequences. If not so, why should the banning of certain words be in the interest of the youth?
And any censorship is simply the restriction of freedom. And freedom to me still is a very very high good.

After I left a comment the administrator sent me a pm informing me that the rules of self censorship should not be discussed in the public section. I asked the administrator of jamespurefoy.proboards.com about the reasons for this regime. And I wrote a funny little text without one dirty word, but lots of words containing ass and thingy. I cannot reproduce it here as her answer to my questions came quickly. She temporarily disabled my account.

UPDATE

This is the funny little text I wrote (actually the plain member of the forum liked it)

Indeed, he has cl***, and he is s***y too. I am sure there are m***es of people out there who share those views. I also love to hear the b***, well rather baritone of his voice. Already when the thingy crows in the morning I am busy ***essing the various qualities and ***ets of this man. What is most charming about his man? His eyes? His lips? His chest? Or maybe those thingys that cannot be named? And when I see him as knight I wish I were his l***. I would even adore him if he rode a wild *** and not a proud horse.
No, I confess, the best thing I ***ociate with him is his daring, uncensored, sensual access to his work as an extraordinary actor; no one can be ***imilated with that excellence; take the way how he decribed the nudity of the Mark Antony scene as a way to show that this man does not give a flying thingy to appear nude in front of a man that is below his cl***.

And this is what the administrator wrote to me:

"If you do not like the rules of this forum you are more than welcome to delete your account and leave. Other wise all Rules and Guidelines are to be followed.

As for your censor complaint concerning words such as "thingy" replacing certain words it is actually built into the Proboards forum.

Also if you have any further complaints you are not to air them on the forum itself as that is not the place for it. You may PM either Norbert or myself.

I have been informed by Norbert that your account was disabled for two days. If you choose to participate after the two day period ends and the same behavior that caused your account to be disabled continues you will be banned from this forum."

Amazing, isn't it? Not even school masters talk to you like that anymore. Farewell to free speech!
And I was right, that idiotic software comes prepackaged. I am (still) lucky on Blogger. I can only hope that some geek community with a love for language will do something about it.

At the Bottom of Topping the Bottom is Top. Part 1: The Secrets of Penetration and Enjoyment

Diese Zusammenfassung ist nicht verfügbar. Klicke hier, um den Post aufzurufen.

Changing Idols – Confessions of a Complicated Fan

I am a bad fan, I am a strange kind of fan, I am a confused fan. I am in the peculiar position to be adressed by my idol. It is my own fault; I could not stay in the shadows of anonymity like most fans have to, even if they are desperate to be known. There is this one Zac Efron site that has this very official announcement to all the fans that they should not believe anyone who writes them as Zac, because it for sure is not Zac.

http://www.zefron.com/forum/showthread.php?t=90018

He does not have the time to write to any fan in person. And he said clearly in a Degeneres show that he does not use Facebook or Twitter, he calls his friends on the phone.
When it comes to Zac I expect to stay in this completely anonymous position, even though my niece who happens to be a society reporter actually did speak to him in person recently.
But when it comes to Brent, who still is another category and another type of star, I carelessly stepped out of this status by writing a text about him (for the catalogue of the Viennese art show “The Porn Identity”, now over; the catalogue (in German), in my opinion the best thing about that show, can be ordered at

http://www.vfmk.de/($Itbi1F_kTX6EERp5I8zcjC$)/s,showModuleObject3,9_q1klWYtB,cxW0_xm1dtqZgVG,4Fa0jtW3hxW2nB,8xa0nVX0_JH,nRXYoxF1m_

a2uAb1jRW28Rr1uwVYpRr04NTMsQ8NmAD,nB,9VG.xhtml

My insistence to send mail after mail asking for the photographers of certain pictures I wanted to use is just one half of the story though; the other half is Brent’s amazing willingness to communicate with fans in person; a very irregular willingness, but still probably a phenomenon in its own right; the specific communicational strategy of a person who plans his status as star on the basis of a web 2.0 strategy. In a way in his extremely open use of all the common platforms, blog, email, facebook and finally Twitter, he still acts like any other youth who has a MySpace profile. By doing so he seems to deny his stardom and at the same time boost it. Any other star would have a pr manager who sometimes even writes to strangers or fans using the name of the star, – a nasty habit that I can only hope will never seem appropriate to Brent’s management; as it is becoming obvious that with the new site there will finally be someone who takes care for the contact with the public. Soon this contact will be a lot more professional and predictable, and a lot less exciting than my odd chats with someone calling himself Brent Corrigan, who once waited for a plane at an airport in Pennsylvania, telling me that the only other person he was chatting with was his mother. I was a bit nervous because I sent far more messages than I received.
This whole story of me being a fan of a young gay pornstar is very peculiar, and does not offer me any code of conduct. There are times when I think I overdid it, that I have been to public with my comments, at the same time too private, too outspoken. Yet I had to give my fandom a creative and an articulate character. As I said before, I deny the supposed pathology and regressive nature of adult fan culture; but I recommend building a culture, a creative activity around it.
I was flattered and proud to be mentioned by my web name after the announced photo moment with Zac had not happened. In a way I already knew, as the universe had not imploded.
http://myblog.brentcorriganinc.com/?p=848, right under the Patrick Wolf clip.
But a little later, instead of being grateful for that honour, I managed to upset the little star who knows me. In a comment to his celebratory post about his shooting in Palm Springs I mentioned my disappointment about him not bottoming in any of the scenes and got him really pissed off (comments now missing due to technical problems). Hm. What does it mean?

The obsession with the stars seems often perverted, aggressive, and cruel because it does not only resemble a cult for the hero but also a totemistic ritual. The desired powerful entity, the totem animal, the spirit, the ancestor, works like an energy source. And as we know of many rituals around Gods that are brutally torn apart and reassembled later on, Osiris, Dionysos, Orpheus, to name but a few, the object of desire is also in danger of being destroyed. All the celebrities who are a bit afraid of their fans have their good reasons.

But me, knowing about the secret cannibalism of fandom, I don’t want to be one of those crazy over-demanding fans who just feed from their star’s every move. Or is this a law too profound to be overcome by simple will? What about those absurd demands addressed towards a stranger? In fact I do not really appreciate demanding anything from anyone. And so I am a bit sad that I came across as an over-demanding fan in that comment. The whole situation is full of misunderstandings.


Mainly the problem here is about changes. Brent is a specialist in changes, and some of them come across as quite abrupt, some are just a storm in the water glass, and prove to be reversible, and a lot of the zeal for changing himself, his looks, his image and the circumstances of his life is still connected to the urge to leave certain things behind. Those changes are also part of his star appeal, as the trajectory of his career so far has so closely been related to his readiness to share his everyday life with the public. If this life would not be exciting there would not be anything to share.
How to be the fan of an ever changing person? It is not always easy, because one main part about fandom is projection. There was one particular image, a look, a situation, an appeal one fell in love with. In this case I was for sure fascinated by more than one look, role, period of his transformations. Still I know that it was something particular that struck me. And I am also aware of the poetic and indeed a bit tragic fact that a lot of the elements that struck me are bound to the very circumstances this young man desperately wants to leave behind. And with my blessing. Those elements were a special vulnerability, a certain grace, a radiant appeal in situations commonly labelled “passive” or “submissive” that had the power to put exactly those labels to shame. I have trouble to accept that this person, this image I got infatuated with is only a passing stage of a person who grows up and moves on. The situation is, however, even more complicated than that; I do like some of the new elements, but I see something forced in some of the recent changes. And that’s were the communication problems set in.
Brent often complained that people do not accept that his looks change with the normal process of growing adult. I do not see a problem with that. Still, it is an altogether different story that he decided to completely change his body type while his body still transformed. To read that it is those bitchy, over-demanding fans like me who make him slave in the gym and fast really bothers me. This is so very untrue. How could I, a woman who finally made peace with her inability to ever become slender, “demand” of anyone to torture himself for a certain look? I always thought Brent is a naturally slender person. In short, I assumed he does not need the gym to stay slim. And growing up would probably not change that. Maybe I am wrong, I don’t know. I can just say that there is projection and there is counter-projection. Just like in psychoanalysis, where there is transference and counter-transference. Also the star projects his ideas on the fans. I think that it is Brent’s idea that his fans “demand” a certain look. I have an altogether different theory about his obsession with working out. Brent discovered early on that his body is his product, the basis of his personal economy. And it was perfect as it was and probably would have stayed perfect while growing adult. But this contradicts the culture of capitalism: you cannot earn money from an uncultivated resource. This would simply be obscene. The source of your income needs to be also the object of hard labour.
Ok, this is a frivolous theory, in fact I know that it is simply the love for muscle within the or one particular gay community. There is just nothing clever I can say about that, as I do not get the point.
Which leads to more complicated questions about the productive or indeed not so productive relations of feminist and/or lesbian culture to gay culture, an extremely rich and tricky subject, and finally to Brent’s complaint the people like me just want to see him take it up the ass, a claim that is hard to deny when it comes to simple fact, but needs a lot of elaborating to show how very wrong the vulgar and dismissive tone is in relation to it.

To Be Continued …

Zac and Brent about to meet. Will the universe implode?

As I am writing this the unbelievable, mind-blowing singularity is about to happen (if we trust Brent’s announcement http://www.brentcorriganinc.com/blog/?p=303#comments, and why shouldn’t we? ), and so much sooner than I would ever have predicted it to happen.
The twink “twinks” will be in the same room, maybe even shake hands (if nothing else) and snap a picture. Brent is strolling through the celebrity crowd at a (Disney sponsored) AIDS benefit in LA http://www.todaytrend.net/a-time-for-heroes-celebrity-carnival-sponsored-by-disney.html, marvelling at the silicone cushions some people have hanging from their faces like an innocent little Mowgli in the Hollywood jungle http://twitter.com/BrentCorrigan00 and looking for his better half to take a picture.
Obviously their haircuts have taken utterly different routes by now. Zak’s recent appearance at the MTV awards (http://justjared.buzznet.com/2009/06/01/zac-efron-mtv-movie-awards-2009/) has raised questions if he is really too lazy to see a hair dresser (as he had claimed at an Ellen Degeneres show http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7yyGcWE0t_g), Brent on the other hand saw his trusted hair person recently, actually to increase the difference to Efron, and with very convincing results.
http://www.brentcorriganinc.com/blog/?p=295
Funny chiasmic situation of a sloppy Hollywood prince and a well groomed porn star. However, don’t ask me about the prize of Zak’s suit he wore when receiving that oversized popcorn trophy, utterly distracted by a British comedian who had his bare ass planted on the face of one Eminem. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-csipe3TzMg

By the way, can anyone tell me why the “gay” dope of a fashion designer Baron is impersonating there is, of all places Austrian ??? Please throw in your 2 cents!

Anyway, so what will happen when the two finally meet? Will the blue of Zak’s eyes jump out of his pupils and slip into Brent’s hazel eyes, and vice versa, as my little “Whose eyes are this and what happened to their colour?”-quizz up there is insinuating? Or will, as someone else, – was it Jason Curious? –, once said, the universe simply implode? For we all know that a singularity does swallow everything around it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravitational_singularity.
Maybe 80+ celebrities will be gone by tomorrow!
Where is the genius Science Fiction/Horror director who does a short on that encounter!
Anyway, if we survive this, it gives me a good reason to continue my tale of twin(k) celebrities.

A Tale of Twin(k) Celebrities – Part Two: Gossip and Cultures of Admiration

It is amazing and sometimes frightening how the internet led to a whole new symbiosis of ordinary people and celebrities. It is bit too simple to reject celebrity culture in total as an immature idiocy of people who should “rather get a life”. For a majority of people the life they are able of getting is neither glamorous nor very exciting. And in all cultures people create heroic figures or sacred ancestors to extend the rather humble range of their existence. Why shouldn’t we? Of course this fragile bond with people one will probably never meet in person, or at least not really get to know, needs some caution and some cultivation like any emotionally charged relationship that is basically founded on imagination and projection. The perversion of celebrity culture as stalking is a sign for this specific culture gone utterly wrong; the stalker is a danger for him/herself and his “star” because he/she does not know and does not admit that his/her relation to his/her star is only a fantasy. By calling it fantasy I do not want to indicate that fantasy is nothing. Fantasies are powerful and productive. There is no life, at least no meaningful or fulfilled life, without fantasy. Still, fantasy has its own rules. Even though there is no relationship that does not include a certain amount of projection, a stalker mixes up real and fantasy relationships in an unhealthy way. He insists on sharing his everyday life with the star as if he were his spouse. He follows this person to force him into such a relationship. Yet a fantasy relationship is based on distance. A stalker does not respect this distance.
In the World Wide Web we can observe the ubiquity of a kind of gossip that is always about to transform into a paradoxical form of communication, long distance stalking or virtual cyber stalking. By speculating and commenting on any private, physical, sexual detail of the celebrity the fans do not respect any boundary or distance, as the distance in this case is a matter of the medium. Probably only a few of those posters would go as far as to inspecting their idol’s garbage or spending whole nights in front of their houses, but in the safety of global anonymity, protected by their arbitrary aliases, the users show the demands, the pretended intimate insights and even the jealousy of spouses. Does this cyber stalking pose an ethical problem that is somehow similar to actual stalking? This is very hard to tell. As I assume that no celebrity is idiotic enough to read all the gossip sites speculating on his/her body hygiene, sexual orientation and genital size no one gets actually hurt or threatened. Also his/her reputation does not really suffer as the status of such gossip does not inspire any belief.

I am not writing this to impose any moral judgment on internet celebrity gossip; the numerous and hilarious examples I am going to quote in the following post prove that I am obviously a consumer and sometimes even a contributor to this messy phenomenon. I do not consider myself to be extremely disturbed, and I have a life, but at different periods of my life I find myself devoured by some celebrity cult or another. It all started with rock stars at the age of 12, I was one of the biggest Rolling Stones and Mick Jagger fans alive, and even before that with my relentless and quite erotically charged admiration for Spock, and I mean Spock, not Leonard Nimoy, at the age of 11. Teenage celebrity cult is of course no anomaly, but it occurred again at later stages of my life, to my own amazement. The quite mature and intellectual pat of me watched this other part plunge into something many would consider infantile if not pathological at any age beyond 30. This did not, however, prevent me from indulging those crazy periods of fandom that after some time usually come to a natural halt when different important business takes over, a new and “real” love enters my life or my fascination for my idol is simply fading.
This was the case when in my thirties I was for a few years very smitten by the Australian rock star Michael Hutchence, singer of INXS, as a new version of the Jaggeresque sexualized rock star. After visiting a couple of concerts, – once I even travelled to London to see one, but also visited a friend, the good thing about fan culture is that it gives you the energy and courage to do things you would normally not do, often putting you into interesting new situations that in the end have nothing to do with the star, anyway, – after all this experiences and being aware of the fact that I was an intellectual woman in her early thirties, and not a screaming teen, I decided to finally get to know my star.
Now, many people claim that this is the one thing one should never try, meeting the idol in person, at least not if one wants to stay a fan. Precisely because fan culture is a matter of projection one can only end up disillusioned. Stories are numerous about the deep disappointment of the fan when realizing that the person he knew as a huge phantasmagoria on the screen turns out to be a surprisingly little man. In those cases the admiration does not survive the brutal shrinkage of the projection, in both meanings of the term. Still, as a good, well-informed fan I know the body height of my idols. So I was not shocked by the fact that Hutchence, when I finally did meet him in a hotel in Vienna, was a rather small and most of all extremely thin man. I managed to talk to him about world politics for a while that felt like half an hour and probably lasted about ten minutes. He informed me that he was financing resistance groups in East Timor and even exclaimed “Fuck the Indonesians!”, one phrase I do remember well, as the Australian accent is not always easy to understand. After a while it became fairly clear to me that this man might be charming and weirdly attractive in his own right, but seemed almost like another species, with all his ticks, his extremely short attention span and a personality marked by frequent drug abuse. After it was over I was not disillusioned but slightly numb and puzzled. After all, it was not this one meeting, but a far more tragic event that brought my fascination to a natural halt. I liked to think that it was the Indonesian secret service that staged such a miserable scene of auto-suffocation going wrong in a Sidney hotel room 1997. I tried to give my fandom a closure by writing an essay (in German) that can still be found online. http://novak.department.at/novak/australia/sternenschicksal.htm

I do in fact recommend meeting the star in person if possible. One should put one’s fantasy to the test; one should be ready to destroy the spell, or put it on another level. Is it possible to change from fan to friend? I don’t know (even though I managed with one of my early idols in Vienna, the amazing performer and film director Mara Mattuschka whom I admired as a diva on stage when I was a twen, and who is my friend today), but in any case this would mean ending one’s career as a fan. And this willingness to take the risk of a personal encounter, however clumsy and brief, is also one of the reasons why I could never choose a dead idol. I do not look for the analogy of a sacred ancestor but rather for the analogy of a Greek hero. I want to be able to follow his adventures. I did not fall for Kurt Cobain, but I liked his music a lot. When he decided to put the barrel of a gun in his mouth at the age of 27 he did not become an angel of Rock ‘n Roll heaven for me but someone I lost interest in immediately. Is that cynical? I don’t know. I just do not like to mix fandom with nostalgia. I need to give my odd habit at least a certain form, a culture. As I am a writer and an artist I am fairly sure that my periods of celebrity fascination are not, or not only a matter of regression but a form of inspiration. To me the star is a muse. And any artist who ever had a muse knows that she lives in another sphere and cannot be forced to contact by will. This is also the reason why my fandom usually takes on a creative character. When I had a period of fascination for both James Spader the actor and Alan Shore, the character in the TV show “Boston Legal” (my web name Lana Erosh is an anagram of this name), I started to write fan fiction. And this blog might be my new creative way to handle my most recent obsessions for twin(k) idols.

It is after all a sad and trivial theory that fans are just lonely people who need to fill up the gaps of their life with invented relationships to people they don’t even know. In my case I like to think that I am simply hungry for as many, and most of all as many different types of relationships as I can have. The relationship to a celebrity, a distanced hero, does not replace any other relationship. I do have friendships, sometimes love relations, I have all sorts of relationships, why not also this one? And I am educated enough to give quite honourable examples from cultural history. I do not need to compare myself with a screaming teenager; I’d rather think of 19th century gentlemen who spend quite some time and money on their fervent admiration for an opera diva, an actress or a ballet dancer. In those high bourgeois days high culture was pop culture; and the frequent attendance of opera and theatre was as much of a sexually charged ritual as any rock concert is today. And isn’t it significant that this strictly male culture of sending one’s favourite opera diva flowers into her wardrobe, also without any hope of becoming her lover, does not suffer from bad reputation but is well respected as a sweet and romantic gentleman’s culture, whereas female fandom that only came up with pop culture, with Elvis and the Beatles, is considered immature and even pathological if it goes on beyond adolescence? Well, well, I smell gender trouble there.
As a woman I nevertheless identify myself as an admirer of the Proustian type. I follow my idol with a mixture of distance and fascination. I am erotically smitten by (in my case usually) male idol, no doubt, but I am not blinded by my admiration. Like any artist I am very much into detail. I follow the work of my idol like a Proustian character who goes to hear his Diva sing every evening, but sometimes also criticizes her for a bad performance; because only he has the right to do so, only he knows her so well, and knows how good she can be if she is at her very best.

To be continued …

Female Fan Site ?

"And with a little gay porn boy it was a resembling story. Before I discovered him, I wasn’t much interested in gay porn. From time to time (very seldom) I watched such videos but always remained indifferent. There was nothing to become a part of my erotic fantasies that’s why I preferred reading to watching. But one day, when I had nothing to do, I just typed on YouTube something like “young boys kissing” and started to watch the videos, one after another… they were so numerous (these videos), but there was only one among them that really touched me and made my heart pounding. It was a scene from Every Poolboy’s Dream. I watched maybe 20 or 30 times how Brenty (that’s how I call him now) seats on a sofa, leaning his back against another boy’s chest, then lets him take off his undershirt and offers himself for the numerous kisses… His hands, his face, his neck, his nipples and his cat eyes (I also noticed that his eyes were cattish) – his entire body was so tender and beautiful and his movements so magically slow and gracious that for me it was not a porn any more (it was obvious that it was a part of a porn movie), it was a dance of passion and beauty, a fascinating fandango, performed by a God of Love."

This was a quote from a mail an amazing fan of Brent Corrigan wrote to me. She lives in Kiev, with husband and kids. I hope that our email exchange will flourish as it had so far. I just post this -- interrupting my tale of twink celebreties for a moment, -- to address fans who are interested in any sort of exchange, not necessarily ON Brent but maybe around him. It is amazing enough to get to know people, women, girls who have the interest in a gay porn actor in common. Already this fact in itself is amazing enough.
I was still unsure if I should get involved in this as my personal interest got a bit more critical, complex, “adult” than it used to be a year ago. Also I noticed that for a while BC had contact with me (I put him on an art show in Vienna and wrote about him for the catalogue), but then stopped responding. I asked him about his opinion about a female fan site, he did not respond, but mentions it proudly in his chat on Unzipped.net
“BC: Ha! I have a ton of female fans of all ages. They are about to group and start a fan site I think. It's a big compliment to know I can reach beyond the usual demographic.”
http://blog.unzipped.net/2009/05/exclusive-brent-corrigan-chatting-saga-continues-episode-ii-of-iithe-fan-questions.html#more
In the next section my question is being posed (with a slightly disappointing answer but that is another story).
Well, maybe I am too full of myself, and there are other fans who want to start something; if so I would also like to know. If this was about my initiative that I discussed with a woman in Berlin who is very busy though, and wants to stay in the background, I would have preferred a more direct form of communication. To me, it makes a bit of a difference if as a fan or rather a participating observer I have personal contact with the person of interest or not. I am a critical observer; and as I am also working in the field of film and performance I like to give my opinion about the style and direction of artistic production. I like to extend this to porn, why not? Why not review it like any other filmic form?
Anyway, that’s where I am at now as a rather adult and therefore maybe atypical “fan” who had brief email contact with her “star”.
So write me.
I will not publish your comments if you tell me not to do so.