Ode to the Homoerotic

Steve Walker: Breakfast in America

One evening while watching television, I observed Chris Brown as a participant in one of the most homoerotic videos I had ever seen, sending me on a mission to define homoerotic. In his video for 'Take You Down', a song that explains in great detail how he wants to sleep with a girl, Chris Brown grinds, humps, and sweats (shirtless), with two other men mirroring his dance moves (also shirtless). They are on a spinning Plexiglas platform pumping as if their life depended on it. The females in the audience are going crazy. Everything in the video is intended to excite a female audience, and all the while, I was amazed by the level of homoeroticism in the video that was unintended.

This is the link for "Take You Down", embedding is disabled.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NLRE8z94VbU

Homoeroticism is generally defined as sexual attraction between persons of the same sex, also relating to homosexuality. Based on this definition, homoeroticism represented in visual or literary form would show some sort of direct contact, lust, or want between the participants. However, Chris Browns video, where there is no direct contact, lust, or want between the participants in the performance but towards the audience, is clearly homoerotic. The definition of homoeroticism must be expanded to not only include direct contact between participants, but also homosexual feelings that could be derived from the observer, or even a scene that has the potential for something homosexual to occur. Homoeroticism in the arts most often includes hyper masculinity, and sometimes, but not always, sensual or sexual actions.

Rocky Training Montage


The training scene from Rocky III is often considered as homoerotic.

In the visual arts, pieces are often described as homoerotic although there is no sexual action between the men in the piece. Greek art is often referred to as homoerotic although many of the pieces described as such only feature muscular men in close proximity to one another. In Steve Walkers painting 'Breakfast in America', which is considered a homoerotic piece, the men aren't touching or doing anything necessarily homosexual, just eating breakfast and talking. There are also paintings, which include one male, who is often hyper masculine, that is not doing anything sexual, but the work is still considered to be homoerotic. Greek art and Walkers piece are examples that reveal the flaw in the general definition of homoerotic. Homoeroticism does not exclusively show homosexuality in the arts, but rather alludes to homosexuality and the potential for sexual contact between males to occur, and can arouse homosexual desires within the viewer, which brings me back to Chris Brown.

The fact that Chris Brown is grinding in close proximity with two other males while singing about sex is more than enough for me to classify this video as homoerotic. It is overtly sexual, and to me, is more homoerotic than Walker's Breakfast in America piece. I’ve posted some pieces of art classified as homoerotic for your viewing pleasure.