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Whereas the late 1990's featured only two major names, Brandon Lee and Jordan Young, the number of gay male porn stars in the Asian and Pacific Islander American community have grown exponentially by 2006. If we go retro and remember who these two main faces were, they were like night and day. First off, Brandon Lee was cast as the non-stereotypical Asian guy...a top, well-endowed, and sexually very aggressive; Jordan Young, someone whose face and ass was well-known through the web, conformed more to what most porn viewers (and white people) perceived to be the ideal Asian bottom. When I look at the juxtaposition, I have only recently realized that Jordan Young has been given the short end of the stick when it comes to porn history. Even though he was a bottom, you'll notice that Jordan Young's appearances in porn is never as the "Asian" performer...a sharp contrast to Brandon Lee, whose claim to fame is not the fact that he's a good top, but simply as an Asian top. In this day and age, I think it can get tiresome, because we assume that there was never a question that gay Asian and Pacific Islander men can top...it was only a nuance to us since there was a lack of Asian performers being cast as tops.
With the new millenium, we did see a few new faces getting big titling. On this very Xanga, you saw Van Darkholme getting the star treatment, mainly due to his openness to outreach and develop a reputation within the Asian community (i.e. Fridae). One of his contemporaries, Ken Mifune, has always been part of this trend during the beginning of this millenium's run of tough Asians. A decade later, we see Asian twinks become an overdone cliche and we've now transformed our Asians and Pacific Islanders into uber-masculine and kinky hunks. There's no longer an emphasis on the smooth bubble butts or cute boy faces. Instead, we now have big muscles, chiseled faces, and leather. Like their 90's counterparts, you'll find Van Darkholme and Ken Mifune are opposites. Of course, Ken Mifune's persona is vastly different from Van Darkholme not as bottoms versus tops, but the fact he is extremely versatile, while Van Darkholme is strictly a top onscreen.
Between 2004-2006, there has been a new breed of Asian porn stars making the scene. We wouldn't look just at those in the United States, but also abroad, the growing trend of Asian and Pacific Islander performers appearing in bareback porn. The porn industry competes with itself on a level that is greater than non-adult film industries...you need to capture an incredibly small audience of consumers who are willing to shell out a limited amount of money for porn. Taking a clue from gay porn in general, Asian and Pacific Islander performers are introduced into the Asian fetish porn market that synergizes viewers' fantasies about unprotected anal sex and cum eating/swallowing.
Not so coincidentally, Brandon Lee comes out of retirement and returns to Chi Chi LaRue to produce a new series of videos starring the "Asian top". If you read my previous posts about his return, you'll remember that I described him as being a bit "rounder". He also sports new tattoos and is no longer relegated to being the "Asian top". They even made a video to provide an explanation to why he's now versatile (onscreen)...as if he was Wolverine and we need to know how he got his powers.
So, who are the new faces? You may be surprised, but Asian and Pacific Islander porn stars are no longer porn stars. Wha?? Without the glitzy drama and mystique of the professional porn star, the new "cocks and slobbers" of the porn world are suppose to be real gay men. Now, that's totally subjective on how you view them as being "real", but the key factor is that nowday's porn stars are not necessarily unknown in the gay world. On the contrary, these are the guys that you may have seen in the gay chatrooms, the profile sites, and Craigslist ads. Somehow recruitment has gone local...scouting for new performers is equivocal to finding the guys with the right pictures online.
The clincher comes in the fact that more than handful of the new Asian American porn stars from the last two years have come from one main studio. You can normally count with one hand (if not the digit of your crotch appendage), but SX Video has now become the largest recruiter of Asian and Pacific Islander porn stars. If you have never heard of the studio, you may have conflicting feelings to discover that it is the newest and increasingly more popular studios to produce bareback porn utilizing non-bear performers. Jeff Palmer, who had gone rogue to work for Hot Desert Knights, became one of the big names to help bolster the reputation and credibility of the fledgling porn company. Easily, you can spot three stars appearing in several different videos, two of whom have received top billing as successful lures for viewers.
What does this all mean? I shudder to think that Asian and Pacific Islander men are becoming so desperate that they are putting their own health at risk to appear in porn that is at this moment the hot trend. On the other hand, I think it's naive and rather condescending to think that they are simply doing this for stardom. More importantly, these new stars have shown something quite different from porn stars of the past...it's all unscripted, there's no lines to say, it's just plain ol' scenes where you put men together and see what happens. I think the real deal is that Asian and Pacific Islander porn stars are seen more as people having sex...not as performing or follow the instructions of a director. That's one of the new trends...people want to see real Asians and Pacific Islanders having sex and enjoying it...no faking the orgasms (moan much?) or playing a role in a script. If it's any indication, they might finally show to public health agencies, community-based organizations, and our own community that we're not the angels that we profess to be...we can breed and seed as well as any white, black, or Latino men, even if we already know about the consequences. |
