Joseph Dain. If this name doesn’t sound familiar, it should. Let me jog your memory with one memorable scene:
Picture it: two arrogant college-rich kids arrive in the bad part of town to score some drugs. But when they’re forced up to the roof of an apartment building, they’re not taught about the evils of drug use via a resurgence of the D.A.R.E. program. Instead, they’re made to hand over their clothes before their threads star in the latest remake of Tom Petty’s “Free Fallin’,” as envisioned by the thugs throwing their garments over the roof. What follows is the two naked and embarrassed guys wandering around the building looking for some help. However, they seem to have forgotten that this is a town on the wrong side of the tracks, and people are more suspicious than helpful. So their attempts are in vain, much like D.A.R.E. attempted to try and convince their target audience that “drugs aren’t cool.”
While this part of the film may be a staple in the community of those of us who follow such scenes, and while, yes, even I have gotten off to it a few times, there is one important thing missing. While you do see the two guys’ butts for a while, their fronts are covered by their hands. Not to mention that the camera doesn’t dare go south of the equator unless it’s shielded and covered tighter than the chastity device on Amy Yasbeck’s character in Mel Brook’s “Robin Hood: Men In Tights.”
The aggressor was played by Micky Rourke. A former heartthrob from the ’80s who starred in films like “Diner”, “9 ½ Weeks” and “Angel Heart”. The dark-haired guy was played by Joseph Dain.
From about 2003 to 2004, Joseph Dain would parlay this exposure into a very short-lived portion of his career, where he starred in a few softcore movies involving minimal plots and men wearing minimal to no clothing. Imagine something like 2000’s Voodoo Academy. Except instead of featuring beautiful guys in their jockey shorts, they featured hunks sans jockey shorts.
However, the same can’t be said of Mr. Dain. He decided to carry on his modest status, even in films like this. And, for the longest time, I never understood it. Here, you have this good-looking guy surrounded by a bunch of other hunky, built dudes just letting their ding-dongs flop in the wind, while Dain only goes as far as to show this much:
Let’s take his debut into this foray, shall we?
In the film, Dain plays a character named Clayton. Clayton is secretly obsessed with his best friend, Brian, played by Chris Michaels. Clayton is living with not only Brian but a bunch of other dudes in this bachelor pad scenario. Of course, all the guys look like centerfolds. While pining for Brian, Clayton gets lost in these fantasies where he’s picturing the various men fashioning the suits they were born in.
Here is a breakdown of some of those guys:
We have Julian Cocoa as Raymond. A rent guy Clayton hires to put on a private performance for him while his roommates are away. Raymond then puts on a strip show and bares all.
Then, we have Steven. A neighbor played by Adam Blinn, whom Clayton spies on while he’s washing his car before proceeding to fantasize about said neighbor in the buff.
And then we have Chris Michaels, playing his best friend. Near the end, Clayton can’t take it anymore and wants to make his fantasy a reality. So, he does the reasonable thing and confesses to Brian, and they have a deep, meaningful conversation. Actually, no, no, that’s not what happens. Clayton goes a little psycho, ties him to a chair, and then proceeds to rip his clothes off.
Again, all this male nudity, all this dick flyin’ everywhere, and how much does Dain show of himself? Let’s review:
That’s pretty much it. So, you’re tellin’ me that this actor is starring in a movie where all these other guys are running around the set and revealing everything they’ve got to the camera and, even in one scene, where Dain, himself, is actually tearing the clothes off of one of the actors and we still see his penis, but all we get to see of you, Mr. Dain, is your butt? Oh, bravo, man. How brave you are to wiggle your ass for a few seconds while your co-workers are showing far more.
This wasn’t just a one-time thing, either. Dain continued this imbalance of exposure in two more films: 2004’s Group Therapy and 2004’s sequel to Daydream Obsession, Daydream Obsession 2: Infidelities.
After these films, he left gay softcore erotica and moved on to low-budget horror and TV, according to his list of credits on IMDB. However, his main page on IMDB lists him as “Joe” Dain instead of “Joseph” Dain. And even though his softcore films are included, you’d have to scroll down and expand the “actor” category to see them. They’re nowhere to be found on his main list of films he’s starred in. It’s almost as if he just wants you to forget about them.
But let’s investigate why Joseph, I’m sorry, “Joe” Dain would want to put these movies far, far behind him. Is it because he’s a fuckin’ hypocritical prude who refuses to show much of anything, despite that being the main point of the films he was the main character in? HELL, YES!! But, hey, I’m not bitter.
The other reason is because of Hollywood itself. Only recently has full-frontal male nudity become less taboo, both in film and TV. Film, however, is slower on that front. This is mainly because all the people on the ratings board are hypocritical prudes and are more ready to condemn anything more sexual than they are to anything violent. I highly recommend you watch the 2006 documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated” to get more information on that. Not only is it a fun film to see, but it is highly informative and reveals how antiquated and unnecessary the MPAA is in today’s world.
There has been more of a stigma against men showing what they’ve got between their legs than against women. And if “Joe” Dain were to actually go full frontal in these movies, then he may not have been able to proceed into the career he wanted for himself. All because the studios would have likely taken one look at his previous work and said, Oh, it looks like you were involved in gay porn. I’m sorry, but we are cleaner than that here. Okay, let’s get ready for that graphic, bloody death scene. As for you, get out of our sight! You make us SICK!
Maybe it wouldn’t have been that extreme, but, I’m sure, there would have been some bias and prejudice, at least causing some resistance in him moving forward simply by showing his willy.
Even though frontal male nudity is becoming more common, when it has come to ENM scenes in the past, especially ones involving disrobing or being disrobed by force, the penis was still only doing one show a year:
The Heist – 1989 skip to 23:30
Pierce Brosnan plays a man who’s recently been released from prison after serving a four-year sentence for a crime he didn’t commit. In this scene, he lures two goons down on the beach and shows he’s packin’. An actual gun, that is. He makes the two henchmen undress. And when one of them asks, “Keep our shorts on?” Pierce’s character slyly smiles and says, “Please.” We see this time and time again. A guy is running around with not much on, and the other men in the scene are not only trying to shield themselves from seeing anything, but they’re also acting like they need a bucket to vomit in. Because another man’s anatomy is just so offensive and so horrid to look at that it traumatizes them to such a degree that they end up in a mental institution: Poor George over there. Can’t talk, can’t speak. Because he was playing a game of strip Monopoly, and he happened to see a male player’s beef bus swing from the corner of his eye.
At least in this scene, Pierce isn’t that blatant about it. And even when one of the guys says he “can’t swim,” he makes it a point to look directly at the guy’s bikini briefs and respond by saying, “Of course not. You’re a hunter, aren’t you?” I’m not necessarily sure what that means, but I’m certain it’s something snarky and British.
Pierce plays the part with less repulsion and, let’s face it, homophobia as some other actors of the time in scenes similar to this nature. There’s still an underlying shadow of rigidity. Honestly, I think he does the best he can with the material he’s given, and his charm and charisma kind of make it work. And I’m not sure if looking at the dude’s package was improvised or not, but I’d like to think so. If only for the fact that he wanted to play it with a certain level of comfort and shy away from a heteronormative train of thought that was the reality for many films existing in that era. And while there were plenty of homoerotic scenes made in the oblivious attempt to display machismo (I’m looking at you, valley ball scene from 1986’s “Top Gun”) it was still understood that they were only supposed to be shown up to a certain point. Perhaps the two guys showing rear ends after taking off everything may not have been what the director envisioned. But if this were to show frontal nudity of these two muscle-bound bouncers, it probably would have been slapped with an X rating, and there would be no chance of this getting a wide release. The film probably would have been even more obscure had the men bared all, and it wouldn’t have been so easily found on YouTube.
Peaky Blinders was a British series brought to the States and streamed on Amazon. (currently not a part of Prime, though). In this scene, Cillian Murphy makes two men undress for the visual pleasure of a couple of women. While we do get a nice look at their butts, we don’t see any frontal nudity… at all. The camera even stops at the waist.
Okay, first off, this show is British. We’re talking about a country that has a reality show about naked people competing to hook up. So, they have a show like that, but they can’t even show a couple of guys’ dicks in what, from what I understand, is a pretty violent and graphic show? The UK is usually more liberal than that. America may have a history of minimal frontal male nudity on the screen, but I am not sure why Britain would be following suit.
Thomas Jane plays an officer who pulls over a guy to get more information from him. While doing so, he has the man perform a strip search in the street. And he doesn’t even let him have his clothes back. It’s a hot scenario, and one that I’ve certainly gone to the self-service station with.
However, as hot as this scene is, I still would have liked to have seen some dong from the guy being made to take his clothes off on a heavily populated city street. However, I have to wonder: if that were the case, would this scene have been made public on ThisVid? As many of you know, while ThisVid is a great resource for ENM and even has quite a few scenes with frontal nudity, it’s also notorious for the majority of those scenes being under lock and key, and whether you see them depends on whether the person that has that scene in their collection allows you access. I’ve found that that’s kind of a 50/50 shot.
The actor that is being made to strip is played by Devon Werkheiser, who got his big break on the Nickelodeon show Ned’s Declassified School Survival Guide. Maybe it was his choice not to go full frontal because this was how he got started. And, again, what does that say about our culture? That a man being seen fully from the front could do damage to his career? Why should it be? Wouldn’t it show dedication to the scene? Be more authentic?
However, today, directors are actually taking more chances. In addition to queer storylines being put to the forefront, when it comes to ENM, the penis has been upgraded to a guest-starring role in more works. There’s a liberation starting to happen:
Thandiwe Newton plays one of the robots that’s been gaining more sentience in a futuristic park. In this scene, amidst a rebellion of the robots, she makes one of the developers, played by Simon Quarterman, strip completely naked, and you see Simon’s uncircumcised penis flop around for a few seconds.
The Righteous Gemstones – Season 1, Episode 3
A group of thugs are hired to come in and start tearin’ shit up to send a message to Eli Gemstone, played by John Goodman. However, Eli puts a stop to it with his handy gun and decides to send the person who hired these goons a message of his own. So he forces all of them to strip everything off.
While this scene does show some dick, I have to admit, I really would have liked to see some dick from the hot, beefy redhead.
From how John Goodman is playing it, I can totally picture him saying something like, Got something to hide? You weren’t too shy about tearin’ through this place. C’mon, let’s see how much of a man you all are. You’re all big and tough? Why don’t you take those hands away and show us how proud and brave you are?
But, alas, he doesn’t. I, personally, think it would fit the scene more, especially a scene like this brimming with bravado that is nearly devoid of any kind of homophobic or heteronormative subtext. If these men are made to take everything off, then we should be seeing them made to show everything off. Perhaps the ginger-haired actor in this scene didn’t want to go full frontal, but how often do you think women were given the same choice in the past? Times may be changing, but there have been decades and decades of imbalance between male and female nudity to make up for.
And while we have made progress, we still get scenes like this:
The very hot and very hairy Will Forte is forced to strip completely naked by a group of mysterious kidnappers hiding behind the booming speakers from inside a tank. The scene is pretty nice, and it’s another one I’ve certainly enjoyed in the past. However, when it comes to seeing Mr. Forte from the front, this is the best we get:
That is so far away that I don’t even think Tumblr would consider this nudity. And why is the scene like this? Well, perhaps the answer lies in a comment made by Will Forte’s character: “C’mon, guys, it’s really cold out here!” Sure enough, everyone looks at Will’s willy as if investigating the deep, philosophical answer to life’s big questions.
Now, I don’t know about you, but I’m getting a little tired of this. The ol’ his-dick-is-so-small-it’s-not-even-considered-fun-size joke as a reason to not show a dick in full display and close enough to appreciate it. I know that there are people out there who get off on the humiliation of small penises, or SPH, but I don’t consider myself one of them. With that said, I’m sure even an SPH fan would have wanted to see what Will Forte had to show off, and not from FIFTEEN THOUSAND GOD-DAMN LIGHT YEARS AWAY! This may be a fetish, but I don’t think that’s why this scene was made. I think that this is a layover from the more restrictive days of TV. Using a guy’s size to demean him and make him feel less than, and I, for one, would rather that be a relic kept in the past (aside from when it is a fetish and made for the sole purpose of satisfying that, I don’t kink shame). In addition to the fact that there’s this misogynistic intensity fused deep into the fabric of the thought process behind scenes like this. How often is there that joke made where a guy gets a magnum-sized condom to overcompensate? God forbid anyone to doubt your manliness and masculinity. Because you’re a BIG MAN! Others shall cower at the sheer veracity, power, and strength of your throbbing piece of man meat. We should all be bowing to you and admiring such virility in the epitomes of masculinity. And while this probably wasn’t what the director had in mind, it most likely is a joke that has its roots in such troubling groundwork.
For an example of a piece of media that’s a little more brave, we have to go all the way to France:
Satya Dusaugey is certainly no stranger to frontal nudity, as he previously displayed in 2016’s Tapette. Nu is a series about a police officer who wakes up from a coma and finds that societal standards about the body have changed. The law has made it so that, now, if you are clothed and covering up your private parts, it is considered indecent. Because of the culture shock, Satya’s character endures due to this sudden pride in nudism and exhibitionism now being an integral part of society, he inevitably ends up in quite a few ENM scenarios. And unlike other works of media that involve a scene where a man’s nudity is brought up in humiliating ways, they made this pretty much the entire premise of the show. Not only that, but they managed to work in some pretty complex emotions and even make it go deeper than just, well, skin deep. And Dusaugey, it seems, is not shy when it comes to his work. He plays the part to perfection. Because of his unabashed nature, we get many, many, maaaaany scenes where Satya’s completely on display and has no qualms about acting in such exposing conditions. This kind of show probably wouldn’t fly here in the States, even on streaming platforms like Netflix or Amazon, where actors like Nick Clifford have gone full frontal. While male nudity is getting there, I don’t think the American streaming services may be ready for a show so matter-of-fact about the male genitalia.
As I said before, with platforms like ThisVid, the availability of ENM scenes involving frontal nudity being limited to private videos and a community that’s split on the level of access to such media far outweighs the easily available videos you can find where a man is in a situation where his clothes are taken away and you see everything.
This video, for example, which I only know by the title:
Bearded Hunk Can’t Keep His Clothes On
In this comedic short, a rather attractive man lives in a house that’s haunted. But it’s not haunted by any ghost. It’s a ghost that randomly undresses him. The film work is inventive in how the guy’s shirt opens up and his fly is unzipped, seen from accurate angles to give the appearance that his clothing is being removed by an invisible force.
This is an online video that I never really got into. I’m sure others will find it hot, but, as for me, it just pisses me off. Apologies to the actor here; he put a lot of effort and work into this short, and it shows. But for a video with such an inventive and sexy premise and this kind of talent behind the camera, there should be more of a pay-off, I think. You see, this ghost doesn’t necessarily understand the concept of “naked.” It always stops at his undershirt and underwear. We don’t even get to see his undershirt being removed. So, basically, he’s dressed down to the point that he might as well be sporting a shirt and form-fitting shorts. Why aren’t we seeing everything? Why isn’t this unique and creative camera work being used to go further??
However, let’s say it did go further. Let’s say it not only stripped this nice-looking guy to nothing but forced his hands in place, and we actually see his dick swingin’. Would this actually be a public video? Would it be so easily found?
Let me answer that with a previous search I’ve done in the past. When I’m online and I go to just Google or Bing and look up “men forced to strip,” I do find scenes, but they’re often scenarios and snippets either made for commercial networks where it’s played safe or where it’s just shy of seeing everything. But, in this same search, results of ENF, or embarrassed nude females, are mixed in. I didn’t click on them because, well, quite frankly, I didn’t want to, but I can tell from the titles and from the look of the images that it’s fetish porn. And I can guarantee you that you see everything of these women.
So, in this same search where I’m looking for men, the results of frontal nudity are a rare gem to find. Yet, when it comes to women, there are actually more examples of forced exposure of frontal nudity, despite the fact that I just told the search engine that that wasn’t what I was looking for.
A change is indeed happening. I’m seeing all around us that, as a society, we are getting tired of such an imbalance in the display of the female body compared to the male body. HBO, Amazon, Netflix, Hulu, and Shudder are all services with original works that include full-frontal male nudity. But when it comes to the fetish of ENM, that’s still proving slightly more difficult to find. For the most part, a good number of them are still hiding behind the velvet rope of privacy functions and subscription-based platforms. And, ya know what? I get it. If you’re a filmmaker, a creator who’s spent money on resources to make and create such works, then, yeah, I believe you should have a profit. If you put in the work, you should have a financial benefit. But I also believe that if our ENM community had more creators who started making film projects with full plots and stories and resources to make a professional film that has fewer boundaries when it comes to male exposure, then who knows? It may have a snowball effect, and we can find ourselves in a place where these search results of fetish erotica actually have what we’re looking for instead of the equivalent of having someone dig through the bargain basement bin and say, “Sorry, this is all we’ve got.” It’s been the norm for women to be used as visual mediums of sexual expression pretty much ever since the first film near the beginning of the 20th century. That’s still a standard and a basis of thought that has been sewn into the fabric of our cultural cornerstones, and it may be a while before we can move even further past that.
In fact, I have an idea for a future article where I’d like to list the stories I’ve written in the past that I would love to make into films. So, I’m getting the message out there. It’s like that expression goes: Be the change you want to see.
Advances towards this movement may have started, but let’s keep this train goin’. C’mon, filmmakers and show-runners, if you’re going to have embarrassing nude scenes of men in your work, especially ones where they’re forced to remove clothing or have clothing forcibly removed from them, let’s see it all. Dick Tracy may be private in his investigations, but dick, itself shouldn’t be concealed in evidence.
Selvie Blue 