DANGEROUS, DESPERATE, AN D HOMOSEXUAL: CINEMATIC REPRESENTATIONS OF THE MALE PROSTITUTE AS FALLEN ANGELS. John Phillip Lay, B.A. Thesis Prepared for the Degree of MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS May 2008 APPROVED: Harry M. Benshoff, Major Professor Sandra Larke-Walsh, Committee Member Chwee Lye Chng, Committee Member Ben Levin, Director of Graduate Studies C. Melinda Levin, Chair of the Department of Radio, Television and Film Sandra L. Terrell, Dean of the Robert B. Toulouse School of Graduate Studies Lay, John Phillip, Dangerous, Desperate, and Homosexual: Cinematic Representations of the Male Prostitute as Fallen Angels. Master of Arts (Radio, Television and Film) May 2008, 132 pp., references, 136 titles. The purpose of this study is to frame the cinematic male prostitute as a “fallen angel” to demonstrate that the evolution of the cinematic hustler has paralleled historicized ideological definitions of male homosexuality. Because cultural understandings of male homosexuality frequently reflect Judeo-Christian ideological significations of sin and corruption, the term “fallen angel” is utilized to describe the hustler as a figure who has also succumbed to sin due to his sexual involvement with other men. This study constructs an epochal analysis of eight films that explores the confluence of the social understanding of homosexuality with the cinematic image of the hustler from the mid 1960s through the present. In doing so, this study shows that the image of the cinematic hustler is intricately tied to the image of the male homosexual in material cultures and eras that produce them. A filmography is included. Copyright 2007 by John Phillip Lay ii TABLE OF CONTENTS Page CHAPTER 1: PROSTITUTES AND ANGELS: AN INTRODUCTION. .................................... 1 The Male Prostitute: From Fairy Man to Deviant Child .................................................... 4 “Fallen Angel” Defined...................................................................................................... 9 The Hustler Film .............................................................................................................. 12 Chapter Breakdown.......................................................................................................... 18 CHAPTER 2: NAÏVE ANGELS AND PSEUDO-HOMOSEXUALS: UNDERGROUND CINEMA AND THE BIRTH OF THE GAY LIBERATION MOVEMENT.............................. 22 Populist Conceptualizations of the Hustler....................................................................... 23 The Hustler in Literature................................................................................................... 25 The Hustler in Film........................................................................................................... 27 My Hustler ........................................................................................................................ 30 The Meatrack .................................................................................................................... 38 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 45 CHAPTER 3: RUNAWAY ANGELS AND DANGEROUS HOMOSEXUALS: ANTI-GAY BACKLASH AND REACTIONARY CINEMA......................................................................... 47 A New Prostitute Classification: The Runaway ............................................................... 48 Alexander: The Other Side of Dawn................................................................................. 52 Forty Deuce ...................................................................................................................... 60 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 65 CHAPTER 4: DYING ANGELS AND DESPERATE HOMOSEXUALS: AIDS AND NEW QUEER CINEMA. ....................................................................................................................... 67 The Prostitute’s Progress .................................................................................................. 68 Postcards from America ................................................................................................... 74 Johns ................................................................................................................................. 80 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 85 CHAPTER 5: DOMESTIC ANGELS AND ASSIMILATED HOMOSEXUALS: POST-AIDS HUSTLERS AND THE MAINSTREAMING OF GAY IDENTITY. ........................................ 87 From Post-AIDS to Assimilation...................................................................................... 88 In the Flesh ....................................................................................................................... 94 Sugar............................................................................................................................... 100 iii Conclusion ...................................................................................................................... 104 CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION: ANGELS AND HOMOSEXUALS......................................... 106 APPENDIX: HUSTLER FILMOGRAPHY............................................................................... 111 WORKS CITED ......................................................................................................................... 124 iv CHAPTER 1 PROSTITUTES AND ANGELS: AN INTRODUCTION. The popular gay magazine OUT features a section on its companion web portal called “Hot Guy of the Day.” Each day the site posts a picture of a half-dressed model and allows members to comment on his relative attractiveness. Comments range from cynical indifference to enthusiastic approval. In one such case, a young model named “Jesse” stands in nothing but his “tighty-whities” as he cradles his crotch in one hand and gazes indifferently into the camera. Very early in the comment string, Jesse is established as “a whole lot of hot” and as looking like a sexy street hustler. The proceeding comments continue to objectify Jesse and outline a wide variety of sex acts the commentators would like to engage in with him. Jesse is a romanticized figure that stands ready to fulfill the fantasies of same-sex desire for those admiring him. And while Jesse stands pretty in a frozen image, he provides no historical context to how he has come to be there nor does he supply any insight to the many incarnations of homosexual identity he may represent. He is simply a “hot,” “gorgeous,” or “sexy” member of a gay sub-culture. The image of the hustler that Jesse is said to resemble, however, has a long history in the literary and cinematic gay imaginary and an even longer history in the conceptualization and taxonomy of male prostitution by social researchers. It is through the evolution of this conceptualization that studies of male prostitution have resulted in quantitative studies on homosexuality. In his essay on the rise of the male prostitute in nineteenth century England, Jeffery Weeks highlights the simultaneous appearance of writings on male prostitution and those on homosexuality. He notes that early sexologists were regularly concerned with the prevalence of same-sex prostitution for men and the degree to which practice in prostitution could lead to actualized self-identities (Weeks 113-4). As the research continued into the twentieth and 1 twenty-first centuries, what concerned many of the commentators were not the social conditions that contributed to the prostitute’s daily existence, but rather how they might ideologically characterize his sexual orientation. Frequently capitulating to Judeo-Christian doctrines of morality and prevailing cultural attitudes toward homosexuality, these same commentators were concerned with how the hustler’s sexual practices might harm dominant heteronormative structures. To the same degree, the hustler in gay literature and cinema charted the same simultaneous ideological evolution of homosexual identity. Yet instead of making speculative associations between male prostitution and homosexuality identity, the hustler came to represent the homosexual himself. The challenges he faces are those created by the very studies that seek to explain his nature: studies that moralize and relegate the prostitute (homosexual) to the outer boundaries of mental health and social tolerance. The hustler does not so much oppose these representations as he does embody them. He is the “fallen angel” who not only found himself ostracized and demonized by society but also struggled to negotiate his space within it. He is the deviant, the pedophile, “vector of disease,” or promiscuous sinner. Building upon this premise, this study constructs an epochal analysis that explores the confluence of the social understanding of homosexuality with the cinematic image of the male prostitute within different historical periods. It utilizes the loaded concept of “fallen angel” to demonstrate that while term “prostitute” frequently reflects a decidedly Judeo-Christian ideological signification of sin and corruption, its cinematic representations are in a constant state of transformation that parallel historicized ideological definitions and transformations of “homosexuality.” In being so, the two images are intricately tied to the material