Who is Pat Rocco?

Pat Rocco is a figure that doesn’t fit easily into pornography’s history. Pat started making films featuring nude male characters in soft core situations just before 1971’s Boys in the Sand, and he continued to purposefully occupy a unique middle ground where his work showcasing tame, but explicit, gay nudity coexisted alongside other films documenting the emerging gay rights movement, wholesome gay romance, and queer sexual politics. Pat used his camera as a form of activism highlighting gay men's varied sexual interests as well as their passions surrounding society’s changing attitudes about homosexuality. In this episode, we explore the legacy of Pat Rocco and try to figure out where he belongs within pornography’s history. This show features Matthew Hipps, who’s a PhD student in Film Studies at the University of Iowa, and Bryan Wuest, who is a graduate of UCLA’s PhD program in Cinema and Media Studies. Each of them presented papers about Rocco's films at the Society for Cinema and Media Studies Conference in 2018, so I thought it would be great to have them on to talk about the different ways in which they approach his work. This episode has special resonance considering that Rocco would die just seven months after this recording. Matt considers Rocco's travelogue films where he travels to Brazil and Western Europe with a group of gay men to find out what gay life is like outside of the U.S. And Bryan considers how Rocco’s work should be thought of within the history of gay film production. This episode is intended to both spark interest in a figure that isn’t too well known because of the limited exposure his work as received, and to help us expand our ideas about what pornographic culture can be, and how it can help us delve into modes of political activism that we didn’t know were possible.

More info about Bryan.

Bryan’s article: “Defining Homosexual Love Stories: Pat Rocco, Categorization, and the Legitimation of Gay Narrative Film.”

UCLA’s articles about:

“Processing the Pat Rocco Collection”

“Pat Rocco Oral History—1983”

“Hey Look Me Over: The Films of Pat Rocco” by Whitney Strub

Pat Rocco’s films:

Pat Rocco Dared trailer

1969 Gay March in Hollywood

Sign of Protest (1970) (a short documentary about the protests surrounding Barney’s Beanery and their “FAGOTS—STAY OUT” sign hanging in their bar.)

Changes (1970)

We Were There (1976)

Harvey Milk’s “Hope” Speech (1978)

Mondo Rocco

Obituary from ONE Archives

pornocultures.podomatic.com

facebook.com/AcademicSex

@PornoCultures

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More info about Brandon Arroyo