Ed’s Notes: Spoilers for Tickled; Lead Picture is from Tickled, but features Richard Ivey of MyFriendsFeet and not a video from Jane O’Brien Media
Following the Great Recession, America is struggling with the perpetration of new gender roles in the oldest profession. HBO had the fictional show Hung, where Thomas Jane was a teacher who fell into prostitution when he can’t make ends meet with his job as a high school teacher and coach. Showtime’s Gigalos is a glossy “reality” television show about male prostitutes in Las Vegas. James Franco produced Kink, a glossy profile of kink.com, a pornographic website with men and women in gay and straight roles. Magic Mike focused on fiscal survival in the new economy through stripping. Netflix’s Hot Girls Wanted is a strictly hetero-oriented exploration of girls who find themselves enticed into doing amateur pornography as a way to get a free Rumspringa in Florida.
This week, the new documentary Tickled goes deep undercover on a mysterious website which seems to coerce heterosexual young men into making male-on-male tickling videos. With the free preview of HereTV, I caught a bunch of episodes of the glossy profile of Broke Straight Boys, in which impoverished “hetero-” or bi-sexual men are paid to do Gay For Pay pornography. Not so surprisingly, these two properties have much to say about the new economy (or lack thereof).
Maybe I’m trying to justify my lack of taste at 3 o’clock in the morning.
“Don’t do porn, if you’re thinking about it. Find something else to do. You don’t need money that bad. At some point, you will regret it. Be broke; it’s better. Because it follows you.” – “Denver Grand,” Broke Straight Boys
Broke Straight Boys follows the format of so many other “reality” television shows. A group of people convene on an isolated multi-million dollar mansion somewhere in the Los Angeles vicinity. The group has a wrangler and a house mom who periodically take the men to their activities for the day (STD testing, sex scenes, lavish parties. etc). A dominant God-like figure interjects on the purpose of the show (in this case, it’s the CEO of the porn site). Inevitably, the residents reveal their back stories (most are ostensibly straight men from more rural or rust-belty parts of America). They manufacture drama with frigid performers, unclean tests, family revelations, lie detector tests, and visiting girlfriends (they’re straight! We Swear!). There’s even a mid-season villain! It’s a VH1 “Reality” show with periodic gay porn.
Occasional commentary on the state of the American economy is interjected in between the scripted/edited “reality” ; after all “broke” is part of the title. At the beginning of the series, all of the men are given backstories that emphasized both their heterosexuality and their economic dire straits. Teen fathers, former drug addicts, perpetually underemployed, amateur MMA fighters, abandoned teens; they’re the horror stories of poverty the media bombards you with when they’re dismantling the food stamps programs. But, these men are trying to lift themselves by their bootstraps so they can feed themselves and/or their families. Because they don’t enjoy doing gay porn, this line of employment is seen as being as good as any other All-American job, albeit one whose history and stigma can follow you for years after.
While investigating Jane O’Brien Media in Tickled, David Farrier stumbles on the controversy of TerriTickle, a male tickling fetishist that popped on in the early days of the internet (read: Usenet and AOL). Similar to Jane O’Brien Media, TerriTickle liked recruiting straight college-aged men to do tickling fetish videos with other men. The men would find themselves on the receiving end of money and gifts with the promise that the videos would be kept private. The problems came when the men wanted out. When they tried turning away from “Terri,” then “Terri” would set off on a vendetta by creating websites featuring the young men with their real names, and send links to everybody in authority involved with the men’s lives. These men would find themselves unable to get jobs, in trouble with their school and parents, or dropped from their sports teams.
These elements have counterparts in the national news. It has only been 8 years since Paul Donahoe, a national champion collegiate wrestler, was kicked off of University of Nebraska’s wrestling team for modeling nude at fratmen.tv. Back in 2012, upcoming MMA fighter Dakota Cochrane was announced for the first episode of The Ultimate Fighter 15, when UFC went public with his gay porn past. Cochrane and his manager said that his past caused some fighters to opt out of fights, and some promoters to disinvite the fighter. Both claimed heterosexuality in the midst of these scandals, and Cochrane claimed he made some $80,000 doing the scenes for Sean Cody.
“If you notice, we ever talk about how much money we make. You could be making more than the other guy, and if he finds out then he’ll want more money than he’s worth.” – Denver Grand, Broke Straight Boys
Porn is a business, and I shouldn’t have been surprised that Broke Straight Boys would have such a libertarian edge to it. But, so much of Broke Straight Boys is about the coldness of doing business even as the CEO is crying to the camera about firing a model because the model had sex with a woman on a BSB promotional trip in Las Vegas. Even though BluMedia, who owns the website Broke Straight Boys, claims to love the models like family, they’re all business and trying to make money. If a model is set up for a scene with another guy, and the other guy gets cold feet at the idea of kissing or having sex with another man, then nobody gets paid for the scene. The model with cold feet loses money, the willing and ready model doesn’t get paid, and neither does whatever crew is utilized in the creation of the scene. No scene, no money, regardless of your time scheduled and who was at fault.
BSB even tackles some of the modern day economics that are plaguing our politicians. As the above quote insinuates, there is no salary transparency at Broke Straight Boys, with the producers preying on the egos of these straight porn stars. Even though Denver leaves it as a matter of ego, I’m left to wonder if there isn’t an element in their contracts stipulating that the models cannot share their wages with each other. It’s a reality show counterpoint to the various bills going through various governments (state and federal) that are making “pay secrecy” contracts illegal, and also making any retaliation on the matter illegal. People can get fired for discussing their wages.
Beyond that, there is even the firing of a contracted formerly top model. Somewhere late in the season, the CEO gets a note that the latest video of some model – one who isn’t even featured on the series – has low ratings and few downloads. The model’s ratings have been dropping because he doesn’t promote himself on social media, nor does he participate in promotional activities like bar nights and Pride festivals. Since the model has a contract, ostensibly of exclusivity, the CEO has to tell him that because of low ratings, the company is not renewing the contract. After the firing, the CEO makes a big show of how he’s getting emotional because he thinks of the models as his family or something.
Throughout the show, however, the models keep repeating the purpose that they’re there. One guy wants to make ends meet until he can go into law enforcement or the military. More than one have children back home they have to house and feed. Even though they’re constantly complaining about how much they hate having sex with other men, they keep stating they need the money. Such is, and always has been, our economy, where desperate people have a price on their dignity.
Late in Tickled, David Farrier exposes a “recruiting hub” for Jane O’Brien Media in Muskegon, MI. He scores an interview with Jordan Shillachi, a young married father trying to survive in a city with a depressed economy in a state with a depressed economy. Shillachi makes his money by recruiting other guys to do tickling videos for Jane O’Brien, getting a finder’s fee for each model. Although some of the details are a bit sensational – in Tickled, Shillachi claims to have received intimidation and death threats, whereas, in an interview with Kevin Clarke, he has recanted major portions of his section – the root themes of poverty and desperation still draw parallels with the stories of BSB. Though, because the videos are just tickling, Shillachi says that many men in the area are wanting in on the videos because the money is good without a heavy time commitment.
Who Funds It?
At the root of Tickled lies the mystery of who is behind Jane O’Brien Media. David Farrier, through a long, twisted, and convoluted path, creates a connection between Jane O’Brien Media and TerriTickle: both seem to be funded by multi-millionaire David D’Amato. Back in 1998, David D’Amato stalked and harassed a college student who had wanted to get out of the tickling video business. He managed to disable the computer networks of three universities, all making it seem like it stemmed from his victim. D’Amato spent a few months in a halfway house, and then studied law. According to David Farrier, D’Amato is a trust fund baby with millions in his account that he uses to fund Jane O’Brien Media. He also supposedly works at his late father’s law firm. Though Farrier never explicitly draws the connection, he heavily insinuates that D’Amato’s enterprises are primarily a sick form of bullying exacting revenge on the jocks who used to get him back in high school.
For one brief sequence in Tickled, Farrier makes a brief detour to visit the set of MyFriendsFeet (pictured above), a gay pornographic website that specializes in tickling and foot fetish videos. Richard Ivey is the owner of this small website, and features himself as the Dom in some of the videos. He runs it out of a modest second home he uses as a studio, and says he is honest with the models, some of whom come for repeat scenes. His website doesn’t seem to have nearly the presence BSB does, but it is also a specialized fetish site as opposed to G4P-themed generic gay sex.
According to Broke Straight Boys, Mark Erickson (CEO of BluMedia) is a self-made man who started his business in the early days of the internet. He wasn’t exactly rich, but found a way to make money from porn as the internet was developing, and build his own porn empire (so to speak). Though he started out impoverished, Erickson is now a multi-millionaire living in a mansion probably owned by the company. Because this is Erickson controlling the narrative, his story doesn’t include any of the bullying vengeance that so dominates D’Amato’s story. He doesn’t say he wanted to get back at straight boys of his past by making them do gay porn. His exact intent, other than to make money, is to ostensibly help out other impoverished men who need to make ends meet in a tough economy.
In these two, we see two different aspects of exploitation: one exploits for revenge, the other for money. But, both forms of exploitation stem from the economics of the world. Now, I’m not saying that gay for pay prostitution is any better or worse than prostitution or pornographic work that aligns with the worker’s sexuality. Just as there are former porn stars I’ve met who liked the work, there are those who find it distasteful and resent it. In the afore-mentioned Kink, there’s one scene with an older dominatrix who briefly drops a truth bomb by saying that she sees the industry chew up models with a fair regularity.
These two reflections of American society merely serve as a reminder of the haves and have nots, the moneyed interests and the impoverished worker. They also set themselves up as examples of financial structures one could reflect on with any number of criticisms featuring your preferred theorist. One just has to be aware of what the media is selling in order to figure out what to do with it.