Jack Radcliffe | |
|---|---|
 Radcliffe at the Bear Bust '99 event | |
| Born | Frank Martini July 5, 1960 |
| Occupation | Pornographic film actor |
| Years active | 1989–2008 |
| Height | 6 ft 2 in (1.88 m) [1] |
Jack Radcliffe (born Frank Martini; July 5, 1960) is an American former pornographic film actor. Radcliffe is considered a pornographic icon, and in particular, an icon of gay bear subculture and its physical aesthetics. [2] [3]
Radcliffe was born in Staten Island, New York in 1960. [2] He grew up with his two parents, and two siblings, a sister and a younger brother. [2] Radcliffe attended school in Staten Island until leaving to attend college at Buffalo State University in Buffalo, New York, earning two Bachelor's degrees in mathematics and physics. [2] He came out in 1983 and later moved to Denver, Colorado that summer. [2]
Radcliffe was "discovered" in 1989 by photographer Chris Nelson. [4] Nelson featured Radcliffe (as "Jack Radcliff") in his coffee table book The Bear Cult, which helped establish the iconic imagery associated with the nascent gay "bear" subculture. [5] He debuted in issue #9 of Nelson and Nelson's partner Richard Bulger's foundational publication Bear Magazine and continued to appear in the publication as a model for the magazine's company, Brush Creek Media, after moving to San Francisco in 1989. [2] Nelson worked as the magazine's photographer, while Bulger served as the magazine's publisher. [2]
During the same photoshoot, Radcliffe also shot his first solo adult video. Continuing to work as a regular model for Brush Creek Media, Radcliffe quickly became popular in the bear community. [2] Several years later, Nelson and Bulger contacted Radcliffe concerning interest in shooting non-solo films for Brush Creek Media. [2] Radcliffe appeared in seven adult films with Brush Creek Media and later appeared in additional films with Butch Bear and Massive Studio. He retired from adult acting after performing in Massive Muscle Bears with Massive Studio.
Radcliffe worked as the chief financial officer of a software consulting company during the late 1990s and early 2000s. [1] [2] He currently works as a realtor. [6] [ better source needed ]
Radcliffe is often cited as an enduring iconic representation (if not the most iconic representative [2] [7] ) of the bear aesthetic in pornography, gay culture, and at large. [1] [3] [8] [9] [10] He has been described as "the Marilyn Monroe of bear culture," [11] a "poster boy of bear culture," and a "reigning bear icon." [1] In a 2009 list of bear icons, LGBTQ pop culture website Queerty stated, "In the bear porn industry, Radcliffe is God. It’s easy to see why– if Plato were a bear, this would be his ideal." [8]
Despite this, Radcliffe has downplayed his iconography within bear culture. [1] [2] [11]
Radcliffe was the most featured cover model in the history of Bear Magazine. [12] In his 2001 forward for author and academic scholar Les K. Wright's The Bear Book II: Further Readings in the History and Evolution of a Gay Male Subculture, former editor-in-chief of Drummer Jack Fritscher noted that Radcliffe remained Brush Creek Media's top box office earner and described him as an icon for the company. [4] Wright also described Radcliffe as the first to embody the "bear beauty" aesthetic with his specifically marketed films. [13] Conversely, Radcliffe has also been specifically identified as an example of the "muscle-bear" body type that later emerged in bear culture, contributing to a more muscular standard of beauty, seemingly in conflict with the "normal," "average," or fat ("chub") aesthetic origins of the bear community. [11] [14]
| Year | Title | Production company |
|---|---|---|
| 1989 | Original Bear 3 - Uncut Footage | Brush Creek Media |
| 1996 | Bear Classic | Brush Creek Media |
| 1996 | Bear Sex Party | Brush Creek Media |
| 1997 | Leather Bears at Play | Brush Creek Media |
| 1998 | Bear: Palm Springs Vacation | Brush Creek Media |
| 1999 | Big Bear Trucking Co. | Brush Creek Media |
| 2000 | Big Bear Trucking Co. 2 | Brush Creek Media |
| 2003 | Hard Mechanics | Massive Studio |
| 2006 | Erotic Spotlight Series 1 | Butch Bear |
| 2006 | Erotic Spotlight Series 3 | Butch Bear |
| 2008 | Massive Muscle Bears | Massive Studio |
In gay culture, a bear is a man who is fat, hairy, or both.
Leather subculture denotes practices and styles of dress organized around sexual activities that involve leather garments, such as leather jackets, vests, boots, chaps, harnesses, or other items. Wearing leather garments is one way that participants in this culture self-consciously distinguish themselves from mainstream sexual cultures. Many participants associate leather culture with BDSM practices and its many subcultures. For some, black leather clothing is an erotic fashion that expresses heightened masculinity or the appropriation of sexual power; love of motorcycles, motorcycle clubs and independence; and/or engagement in sexual kink or leather fetishism.
Touko Valio Laaksonen, known by the pseudonym Tom of Finland, was a Finnish artist who made stylized highly masculinized homoerotic art, and influenced late 20th-century gay culture. He has been called the "most influential creator of gay pornographic images" by cultural historian Joseph W. Slade. Over the course of four decades, he produced some 3,500 illustrations, mostly featuring men with exaggerated primary and secondary sex traits, wearing tight or partially removed clothing.
Alternative porn, a shortening of "alternative pornography," is a subgenre of pornography that is centered around alternative subcultures, such as goths, hipsters, emos, scenes, skaters or ravers, and is often produced by small and independent websites or filmmakers. It often features models with body modifications such as tattoos, piercings, or scarifications, or temporary modifications such as dyed hair or extreme makeup. The term indie porn is occasionally used, though this term is more generally used as a synonym for independent pornography, regardless of affinity with any kind of alternative subculture.
Fat fetishism or adipophilia is a sexual attraction directed towards overweight or obese people due primarily to their weight and size.
Men was an American gay pornographic magazine originally published as Advocate Men from 1984 until 1997, when it was retitled Men. It was published by Los Angeles-based Specialty Publications. The magazine contains explicit nude male photography, often featuring popular stars from the gay adult film industry, erotic fiction, erotic comics, video reviews and other features. Notable models have included Zeb Atlas and Mark Dalton. Notable artists include Gerard Donelan who contributed erotic comics to the magazine for eight years. In late 2009, it was announced that all of Specialty Publications' gay porn magazines would be merged into Unzipped.net. The website in question is no longer available and no issues of any of the magazines have been released since.
The GayVN Awards are film awards presented annually to honor work done in the gay pornographic industry. The awards were sponsored by AVN Magazine, the parent publication of GAYVN Magazine, and continue the recognition for gay pornography which was part of the AVN Awards from 1986–1998. The awards went on a hiatus after the 2011 ceremony and returned in 2018.
J. C. Adams is an American author, magazine editor, and reporter whose work focuses on the gay male pornographic industry, and a gay pornographic film director.
BEAR Magazine is a periodical geared toward gay and bisexual men who are or admire "bears", stocky or heavyset men with facial and/or body hair. It was initially published in San Francisco, California, in 1987 by Richard Bulger and his partner Chris Nelson and marketed to the bear community within the larger LGBT community.
Lucas Entertainment is an independent New York-based gay pornographic studio started by porn star Michael Lucas, funded by his ex-husband Richard Winger. It is one of the largest such studios in the world. The studio is known for lavish, big-budget films, and it contends that its 2006 film Michael Lucas' La Dolce Vita is the most expensive gay porn ever made. The film won 14 GayVN awards in 2007, the current record.
Gay pornography is the representation of sexual activity between males. Its primary goal is sexual arousal in its audience. Softcore gay pornography also exists; which at one time constituted the genre, and may be produced as beefcake pornography directed toward heterosexual female, homosexual male, and bisexual audiences of any gender.
Twink is gay slang for a man who is usually in his late teens to twenties whose traits may include a slim to average physique, a youthful appearance, little or no body hair, and flamboyancy. Twink is used both as a neutral descriptor, which can be compared with bear, and as a pejorative.
Bara is a colloquialism for a genre of Japanese art and media known within Japan as gay manga (ゲイ漫画) or gei komi. The genre focuses on male same-sex love, as created primarily by gay men for a gay male audience. Bara can vary in visual style and plot, but typically features masculine men with varying degrees of muscle, body fat, and body hair, akin to bear or bodybuilding culture. While bara is typically pornographic, the genre has also depicted romantic and autobiographical subject material, as it acknowledges the varied reactions to homosexuality in modern Japan.
John Joseph "Jack" Fritscher is an American author, university professor, historian, and social activist known internationally for his fiction, erotica, and nonfiction analyses of pop culture and gay male culture. An activist prior to the Stonewall riots, he was an out and founding member of the Journal of Popular Culture. Fritscher became highly influential as editor of Drummer magazine.
Flex-Deon Blake was an American gay pornographic actor who has appeared in gay pornographic films, gay pornographic magazines, and on websites. He starred in several bareback productions, including the controversial film Niggas' Revenge. In 2004, he was inducted into the Grabby Awards "Wall of Fame."
Queer pornography depicts performers with various gender identities and sexual orientations interacting and exploring genres of desire and pleasure in unique ways. These conveyed interactions distinctively seek to challenge the conventional modes of portraying and experiencing sexually explicit content. Scholar Ingrid Ryberg additionally includes two main objectives of queer pornography in her definition as "interrogating and troubling gender and sexual categories and aiming at sexual arousal."
Chad Jason Hull, better known as Josh Weston, was an American pornographic actor who appeared in gay pornographic films and magazines.
Transgender pornography is a genre of pornography featuring transsexual or transgender actors. The majority of the genre features trans women, but trans men are sometimes featured. Trans women are most often featured with male partners, but they are also featured with other women, both transgender and cisgender.
Joseph Brennan is an Australian author, best known for his academic writing on male sexuality in the media studies fields of fan and porn studies, his work on queerbaiting, slash fiction and manips, and gay pornography in particular. He serves on the editorial board of Psychology and Sexuality.
