Another Gay Blog Flame War on Race
March 14th, 2009
A few years ago, a controversy like the one that erupted this week on the lack of African American stars in gay porn would have me posting up a storm.
For those who don’t follow the gay porn blogosphere, the controversy started when director and studio head Michael Lucas claimed
“… all of my movies so far this year have had black men. I would love to use more, but unfortunately, Black models are not that open to appearing in adult gay films.It of course has a lot to do with the rampant homophobia in the African-American community, and models are just scared of being in productions.”
Lucas’ comments (backed up by the this photo from his latest release Cockstalker) sparked a reply from blogger Rod 2.0 who pointed out the obvious
“In New York City alone, there are dozens of black models working in gay porn at uptown studios such as Pitbull or Enrique Cruz. Many more on the web and there are many times more in Atlanta, Miami and Los Angeles.”
I’ve posted somewhat passionately in the past about the need for major studios to use more ethnically diverse casts (my most recent rant was against HereTV’s documentary on gay porn stars featuring only white guys.) However, I’m slowly starting to see change coming not from studio executives, but from the fans (and their money!)
Looking at the Adult Video News listing of Top 100 Gay Sales and Rentals, I see loads of latinos, some blacks, some who I assume are black (what exactly is Tony Mecelli’s racial background?) and lots of movies that have a majority of whites with a few blacks and latinos thrown into the mix.
The Eastern European boys of Bel Ami still hold the number one ranking, but they are closely followed by Titan and Falcon, whose latest videos have black guys on the cover (Falcon Str8Men Vol 5 and Playbook.)
Anyway, this is just my blog post about other people’s blog posts with a bit of perspective on how society (and gay porn) has changed, and continues to change, for the better.