Men of Turkey: The fetishization of ethnicity in gay pornography between Germany and Turkey

Lecture, 90 min., engl.

Pornography is a highly appropriate cultural practice for considering the phenomenon of postnational identities in contemporary Europe. Nowhere is this more evident than in what goes under the heading of “gay ethnic pornography”. Within this phenomenon, French, German, Czech, and Swedish porn film production companies have contributed to the genre with numerous films.The pioneering examples of French gay ethnic pornography inspired other Western European and U.S. filmmakers and porn film companies to focus on the subgenre of gay ethnic pornography. After France, two German-based porn film production companies produced the examples of gay-ethnic pornography between Turkey and Germany. To date, there has been no systematic study of gay-ethnic pornography produced in Turkey. My presentation will argue that this cross-cultural exchange in Germany has been a central element in shaping the representation of the gay “other” over the past 30 years. To this end, this presentation will engage in both an archival and critical analysis of these productions.

Emre Busse is an art historian and filmmaker specializing in contemporary sexuality and transcultural pornography research. He recently completed his PhD at the Department of Art History at Freie Universität Berlin, and in 2017 he co-curated the exhibition “Soft g – queer forms migrate” at the Gay Museum* Berlin. Busse’s most recent film work, the Godasses trilogy, has screened at international film festivals and institutions, including the Institute of Contemporary Arts London, the Porn Film Festival San Francisco, and the Brussels Independent Short Film Festival. He is a member of the Masculinity, Sex, and Popular Culture Network, funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC) in the United Kingdom. His monograph, Ethnicity as Desire: Gay Pornographic Film between Europe and the S.W.A.N.A. Regions, will be published in early 2024.