HYPER-MASCULINE BOXER PERFORMANCE
HYPER-MASCULINE BOXER PERFORMANCE sets the audience up in a luxury press box while Immanuel J. fights their opponent– a bag of corn– and makes love to the camera.
Within the press box plays an assemblage of archival golden age gay porn with racial tropes of rugged masculinity set to the soundtrack of remixed porn audio. (See video work Rise. Top. Dominate., 2023)
Buried deep within the aesthetics of hypermasculinity is homoeroticism.
Cowboys wear chaps that have a cutout for the front and back of their groin. Rappers intentionally sag their jeans to reveal their underwear. MMA fighters and wrestlers wear skin-tight clothing and grapple other men with the intent to dominate.
However, gayness is believed to be opposed to the hypermasc; this is an active opposition– the two are posited to have an ongoing antagonistic relationship with one another.
Rappers use homophobic slurs in their music; queer icons such as Lil Nas X adopting cowboy aesthetics are accused of "pushing an agenda" because of his queerness and Blackness; pro boxers/wrestlers/MMA fighters “gay-bait” during press conferences by kissing their opponents to get a violent reaction out of them.
Though regimes of hypermasculinity are homoerotic, the hypermasculine go to excessively violent lengths to assert their heterosexuality and oppose and degrade queerness.
Photos Courtesy of Alluvial Micro-festival