CarnalNation

Bigger Than Life: The History of Gay Porn Cinema From Beefcake to Hardcore
By Jeffrey Escoffier
Running Press
$24.95, 368 pp.

Though I'm not, I confess, much of a consumer of commercial porn videos (I much prefer to jack off to still photos and amateur stuff), I opened Bigger Than Life with a sense of anticipation. Touted as "the authoritative work on gay porn cinema," it was written by Jeffrey Escoffier, a smart, politically savvy author I'd known slightly and admired greatly during his sojourn in my hometown of San Francisco. And when I was researching a book I edited, Homosex: Sixty Years of Gay Erotica, I was struck by the resonances between many pieces of erotic writing and the zeitgeist of the eras in which they were created. There was no reason to believe visual porn wouldn't display some of those connections. All reasons to look forward to a good, juicy read.

Sadly, the book is a big disappointment. Yes, the author has no doubt done valuable research, and there are some fascinating things in Bigger. Escoffier charts a logical trajectory from the early period of gay porn loops, through the glory days of the 1970s, to the rise of videos, DVDs, and the Web. Along the way, he touches on the careers of many of the better-known studios, directors and actors (or, as more accurately called here, "models."). So far, so good, and if you were coming to the subject with no prior knowledge, rather enlightening. It's tough to figure out just who the target readership for the book might be, though. While there's some juicy, if over-familiar, pornstar dish (Joey Stefano overdoses! Ryan Idol falls from a window!), it's difficult to imagine your average stroke-film aficionado being interested in a six-page account of Falcon Studios' leadership turmoil. On the other hand, though Bigger is as replete with cites as a PhD thesis, it's difficult to envision a queer-studies academician caring much about where Jeff Stryker grew up or whom ChiChi LaRue had a crush on.

Yes, there are some interesting looks at the mechanics of making porn films, but even those would have been stronger if Escoffier himself had attended and reported on shoots.

Worse, for an ostensibly authoritative work, there are distressing gaps. The book is thoroughly American in its focus, so there's no mention of Bel Ami Studios, the notoriety of German SM porn, or the work of Cadinot of France, and Kristen Bjorn, a Brit known for his work in Brazil, is quoted a couple of times but otherwise ignored. Pornstar Scott O'Hara is extensively quoted regarding HIV, but a listing of AIDS casualties omits his death, while mentioning the non-porno visual artist Keith Haring. And though we're informed that porn was "changed dramatically by the AIDS epidemic," we're not told—except for the use-a-condom controversy and a single crime-story film that Escoffier ties to a misreading of the slogan "Silence=Death"—how.

There's plenty of fertile ground to explore regarding spectatorship and gay porn. Richard Dyer, for example, has done some brilliant work in the field. Escoffier, on the other hand, seems to shun analysis. Despite blow-by-blow (sorry) synopses of a handful of films, he generally sidesteps critical judgment, repeatedly citing the winning of Adult Video News awards as proof of quality instead. (Indeed, there's barely any evidence that Escoffier has even actually watched any of the many films he discusses.)

In a sense, the book seems to preach to the converted. Despite Escoffier's rather indiscriminate celebration of stroke films, after plowing through the entire book, there were only a few films mentioned that I felt I'd actually want to see; the majority sounded like the same old dreck.

While the book situates porn within a context such bigger-world events as Stonewall, HIV, and the Mapplethorpe controversy, neither Escoffier nor his interviewees seem willing or able to address some thorny issues. We're repeatedly told that gay porn both reflects the preferences of its consumers and teaches viewers the ins and outs (sorry again) of male-male sex. But though he repeatedly delves into the gay-for-pay phenomenon, Escoffier never questions why, forty years after Stonewall, so many consumers of porn still valorize—or even tolerate—the icon of the brutish, literally impenetrable (ostensibly) straight man. Race is addressed late in the book, in a section celebrating the rise of "thug porn" that situates black and Latino actors in settings that often include prisons and rehab centers. When the CEO of one thug-porn production company, a man with a German-Jewish name, is quoted as gushing, "I love the macho behavior," the question of racist stereotyping is never raised. And neither is the matter of the virtual invisibility of actors of Asian descent, except in (unmentioned) "specialty" porn.

Most annoying of all, the book is distressingly slapdash, repetitive and full of errors. as badly put together as a grainy 8mm loop you'd watch in a booth at your local peepshow. Pornography in Denmark is erroneously called Censorship in Denmark later in the same paragraph. Three pages after we're told that LA Plays Itself "had no narrative structure," Escoffier calls the same film a "strongly narrative movie." And a paragraph on page 214 is repeated, almost identically, a hundred pages later. Even a minimally attentive reader may be left wondering whether anybody actually bothered to read the manuscript before it was sent to the printer.

I hope I'm not sounding too harsh here. The book does have its entertaining moments, and introduces us to a number of interesting characters. And I certainly believe that porn is a worthy topic for exploration, deserving a book full of incisive commentary, hot recaps, even a usable "Best Of" list for those who want to stock up on lube and treat themselves to a retrospective film festival. Unfortunately, Bigger Than Life is not that book.

Hell, there ain't even any dirty pictures.