Black Inches: Masculinity, Visuality, and Performance in the 'Blatino Porn' Era

Abstract

My dissertation, Black Inches: Masculinity, Visuality, and Performance in the ‘Blatino Porn’ Era, explores the history, sexual representations, and material production of Black and Latino men in gay pornography’s blatino porn genre. This era emerged in the mid-to-late-1990s, marking a moment where blatino pornographers created adult content for themselves, by themselves, and established a niche that centered their sexual lives, fantasies, and desires on screen. Marginalized by and exploited within the mainstream porn industry, these cultural producers redefined how blatino men were represented and produced a unique genre that affirmed their sexualities and rich sexual cultures. The term “blatino” signifies the cultural and social intimacies of Black and Latino communities, specifically in New York City, where the genre was first formed. The city’s unique cultural and sexual landscape provided fertile ground for blatino porn’s emergence. My dissertation argues that blatino pornographers drew on hip-hop’s aesthetics, language, and hardcore masculinity to craft a unique visual language that fused its urban ethos with erotic performances. Central to this fusion was the homo-thug archetype, which became the genre’s most iconic figure, embodying the tensions between hypermasculinity and queerness. My dissertation shows how blatino pornographers strategically conformed to and subverted certain tropes through what I term “black inches,” and, at the same time, it reveals the complex ways they navigated the racial, sexual, and economic terrains of the gay porn marketplace. This project positions the blatino porn era as a critical intervention in porn studies, black queer studies, race and visual culture, and performance studies. Through performing close readings and archival research, I argue that blatino pornographers created a unique genre as a strategy to reclaim agency and visibility over their representations and sexual identities. Their work exposes the fluid and contradictory nature of race, masculinity, and sexuality in the porn industry as they gained control over the means of production. As a vital site of knowledge production, the blatino porn era enriches our understanding of pornography while showcasing the allure and complexity of blatino sexual culture.