Paul Mescal: Does he appear in anything good? Is ok to post cock pics?

 

Paul Mescal was born in Maynooth, Ireland, about 30 minutes west of Dublin.  He graduated from Trinity College in 2017, and went to work in the theater, getting roles in The Great Gatsby, The Plough and the Stars, A Midsummer Night's Dream, A Streetcar Named Desire and A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man. 

 In 2020 he broke into television with a starring role in Normal People, about two Trinity College undergrads in love.

Wait -- why are they "normal people"?  Do they have some marginalized trait, like being autistic? Reading the description, it doesn't sound like it. Marianne is rich and outspoken, Paul an A-list athlete. Sounds like "Love Story." The only conflict I can see is that they both have friends who would oppose the match, so they have to keep it a secret.  I guess "normal" just means being heterosexual, as opposed to gay.

Apparently the two have a lot of sex, with long scenes of them being languid in each other's arms afterwards, so if you can find some way to crop the girl out, you can get a lot of dick pics. 

But wait -- Buzzfeed News tells us that "Paul Mescal just called out a woman who made him "really angry" by telling him she'd seen him naked and saved a nude screenshot." 

The woman approached him in a bar and said: "I didn’t think the show was any good, but I saw your willy and I have a photo!”

His response: “Truly gross. What is a person supposed to reply to something like that?  That's fucking rude!"

I can understand his reaction: you haven't seen the actor naked, you've seen the character he is portraying.  Besides, even if you did see someone's dick without an invitation, like in the urinals or the locker room, why would you brag to them about it?  It would be like saying "I'm stalking you."

But he brings up a question: is seeing an actor's penis on screen substantially different from seeing his face, or his bare chest?  The aesthetic appeal of the actor's face and physique adds to our enjoyment of the movie, in some cases quite a lot.  But does the penis move the scene away from the aesthetic into the erotic?  And is that inappropriate?

I don't think so.  An actor's work can be enjoyed on many levels.  Faces and physiques can be quite erotic, and a penis has aesthetic appeal.  Viewers can enjoy an image in many ways, for what it reveals about the character, for its placement in the narrative, for its symbolic value, because it is beautiful, or because it is hot. Especially with the girl cropped out.

Next question: Does Paul star in anything good? That is, with gay characters, gay subtexts, or an intriguing premise, and minimal red flags like terminal illness.

Normal People is out.  I'm turned off by the implication that being heterosexual is "normal," so being gay is "abnormal."  Besides, it's just a collegiate romance.  We've seen hundreds of them.  

According to the IMDB, Paul next appeared in four episodes of The Deceived, 2020: A university student falls in love with her prof, who may have killed his wife.  Paul's character is in love with her. Looking for gay content, I found a reference to a subplot on a discussion board, but nothing about it appears in reviews. Nope.

The Lost Daughter, 2021: A university professor on holiday in Greece remembers being a "selfish and unnatural" mother who had an affair and abandoned her family.  Yuck.

God's Creatures, 2022. "In a windswept fishing village, a mother is torn between protecting her beloved son and her own sense of right and wrong"  I'm looking for something interesting, innit?

More Paul after the break

Aaron Taylor-Johnson: Varying levels of hotness and homophobia, but his cock stays the same.

 

I seem to be collecting Aarons. This is Aaron Taylor-Johnson, born in 1990 in the quaintly named High Wycombe, 29 miles west of Charing Cross.  You can't get more English than that. He began acting at the age of six, did local theater and broke into film with a string of gay-subtext relationships: 

Tom and Thomas (2002), about two brothers (both played by Aaron) who find each other after many years apart and embark on an adventure in order to stay together.

The Thief Lord (2006), an adaption of the German novel about two outcasts who find each other on the mean streets of Venice.

The Magic Door (2007), a heroic fantasy with a rather buffed elf helping a human boy defeat a troll.

Then things get very heterosexist very fast.

Nowhere Boy, 2009, a biopic of the teen years of future Beatle John Lennon.  I suppose they couldn't help making the young John hetero-horny, but having a girl give him a blow job to seal the deal?

Kick-Ass (2010) is about a teen nerd who becomes a superhero. Funny, we never see high school A-list jocks getting superpowers.  When his bulgeworthy spandex costume is discovered, he's assumed to be a gay hustler, to the constant teasing of his classmates.  However, the assumption of gayness allows him to win The Girl of His Dreams.

Chatroom (2010) is a rather homophobic drama about a sociopathic teen using social media to encourage bad behavior.   He convinces his friend Jim to commit suicide, and kisses him to "seal the deal."

Next Aaron starred in Savages (2012) as pot grower Ben, who is in a triadic relationship with Chon (Taylor Kitsch) and their shared girlfriend.  It's all subtext, but sometimes subtext is good enough.

At least we get a more explicit butt shot -- while he is sexing the girl.

More homophobia and dicks after the break

"American Gigolo," 1980 and 2022: Frontal nudity and homophobia, or underwear shots and gay erasure. Which do you prefer?

 

In 1980, American Gigolo became famous for Richard Gere's biceps, chest, abs, and penis -- the first  full frontal shot in any mainstream movie!   

Every gay magazine had an article on The Nude Scene, with a screen shot.  This was before you could buy a DVD or stream the movie, so every gay guy in the country, probably in the world, marched down to the Cineplexto see it.  Gere plays Julian, a hustler who specializes in women, and in fact rejects any assignment involving "fag tricks."  The plot involves Julian falling in love with one of his clients (of course), and being framed for murder.  (He was with a client that night, but she refuses to come forward.)

Gay men of the era didn't mind that the hustlers have 100% female clients, while in real life 97% of their clients are closeted gay/bi men.  They were used to being erased.

They didn't consider homophobic slurs a problem. You weren't allowed to mention gay people, even in slurs, before the 1960s, so in the 1970s and 1980s, most movie characters threw in a few "fags" and "fruits" to demonstrate that they were cool.

Nor did they get upset when the villain turned out to be gay: Julian's pimp (Bill Duke), whom he pushes out a window to his death. Straight people hated us; it was a given, a simple fact of life.  You couldn't escape it,  unless you managed to live and work in a gay neighborhood and avoid mainstream media altogether.  The rest of us would hear homophobic jibes, slurs, scandals and jokes from family and friends, from coworkers, from random strangers on the bus, so what difference did a movie make?  You got to see a dick on screen!

Writer/director Paul Schrader has been involved with a number of other homophobic projects, such as Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters, about the gay writer who developed a fixation with bodybuilders.  Again, being gay is all about darkness, destruction, death. Being gay is evil.

But not Richard Gere.  A year before American Gigolo,he  starred in the gay-themed (and not homophobic) Bent on Broadway, about gay men who are sent to a concentration camp in Nazi Germany.  In 1993 he appeared in And the Band Played On, about the first years of the AIDS crisis.

How did he manage all three?  Does he hate gay people, or not?  

In an interview in Entertainment Weekly.  Gere reveals that he took the part because Julian was so different from himself, into fashion and languages (which Gere was not), and with "a gay thing flirting through it," and he knew nothing about "that community."  Good enough explanation, I guess.

In 2022, an American Gigolo tv series appeared.  15 years after the events in the movie, the middle-aged Julian (Jon Bernthal) tries to find out who framed him (I thought Leon confessed?) and to reconnect with The Girl of His Dreams.  

Paul Schrader was not involved, so no homophobic slurs and no gay villain. But gay men are still erased; 100% of the hustlers' clients are women.  There's a lesbian cop, which is not nearly adequate representation.

And no frontal nudity, just a butt shot.

Is that progress?

Richard Gere's dick after the break

The Twelve Bare Butts of "Animal Kingdom." With some faces

 

Someone recommended Animal Kingdom, not to be confused with the Animal Kingdom at Disney World, the Animal Planet network, or a tv show entitled Animal Control.  This one is a drama featuring the struggle for succession in a crime family led by...Smurf? Really?   "Ok, boys, I want you to go smurf out those rival smurfs and smurf their bodies."

 There are a lot of sons, grandsons, and boy toys, even a gay one.  Most are sleazy, scruffy, and tattooed, not my cup of tea.  But most get bare butt scenes, so you don't have to look at their face.

Link to the G-rated version, with the faces

1. Scott Speedman as Baz, adopted Smurf, who wants to try new crime techniques instead of Mama Smurf's old fashioned smurfing. 

2. In flashbacks to 1992 and 1996, Baz is smurfed by Darren Mann.

3. Shawn Hatosy as Pope, eldest Smurf, who suffers from mental illness and does a lot of risky smurf. Plus he's smurfed in prison.

4.  Kevin Csolak smurfs as Pope in the flashbacks.

5. Ben Robson as Craig, middle Smurf, who parties and does drug instead of paying attention to the smurfing. 

6. Jake Weary as Deran, youngest Smurf, the moral one who is trying to distance himself from the family, running a surfing shop instead of smurfing crime. He is closeted for a long time, but when he finally comes out they are fine with it. 

More butts after the break