Joyful Liaisons of Form and Content (Wakefield Poole’s “Boys in the Sand”)

Grzegorz Piotrowski

peter_kilbourn@op.pl
University of Gdańsk (Poland)
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6488-2661

Abstract

The opposition between content and form is one of the foundations (and illusions) of classical aesthetics. These concepts not only function as opposites and correlates, but sometimes they are “erased” – as in pornographic films of a mechanically replicated form, with no content or with schematic and pretext content. However, Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand (1971) occupies a special place in the history of porn. This film negates the formal patterns of pornography, which the director replaces with an authorial form, referring to the traditions of modernism and gay art, and dialoguing with various trends in cinema. Due to the specific organization of time, lyrical tonality and visual uniformity, Boys… are therefore a film of form, but à rebours, and this form generates content, both emancipatory and transgressive. Its artistic value lies in the fact that corporeality and sexuality are rewritten into the original film language, metaphorized and contextualized in the field of cultural associations.


Keywords:

Wakefield Poole, pornography, gay cinema

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Published
2021-11-16


Piotrowski, G. (2021) “Joyful Liaisons of Form and Content (Wakefield Poole’s ‘Boys in the Sand’)”, Kwartalnik Filmowy, (115), pp. 151–162. doi: 10.36744/kf.851.

Authors

Grzegorz Piotrowski 
peter_kilbourn@op.pl
University of Gdańsk Poland
https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6488-2661

Associate Professor at the University of Gdańsk, head of the Institute for Cultural Research. He is also a lecturer at Academy of Music in Gdańsk and Collegium Civitas in Warsaw. He specializes in music, opera, gender studies and film acting.

 



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