Take a Guided Tour of Masculine Male Art by Madeira Desouza
Madeira Desouza images were selected and commented on by the artist and blogger known as Mitchell. Visit his blog to see more of his commentaries.
Desouza envisages the prisoners arranging a reception party for the newcomer. In fact the predatory homosexuals in this prison are so well organised that they have the keys to open the cells. Despite the title (“First Night in Prison”), it looks as if it’s a glorious, sunny day outside – but nevertheless a gloomy prospect inside for our novice.
This space age factory concept features a unique milking arrangement. It’s impossible to tell what extraction technology or mechanism it uses, but by the look of the ‘donors’ faces it syphons with a vengeance! Being restrained astride this chunky piece of kit must add to the sense that this is an extraction, rather than a coaxed release. This position also facilitates anal stimulation which is a big feature of this design.
This design is economical in it’s space requirements, truly of a factory farming standard. Madeira only shows two milking stations but it’s clearly scaleable to larger numbers. The closely positioned stalls allow the men in adjacent positions to be linked with ankle restraints. The flesh on flesh contact will add an extra dimension to their stimulatory experience. It’s intimate enough for them to be fully aware of their neighbours orgasmic convulsions, an incentive to keep up perhaps. It should encourage them if they know each other or are attracted to each other but could be quite disturbing for them if they are neither of these things. I wonder if lovers holding hands produce better quality or more milk than straights forced into an unwanted contact. Is the taste different? That’s one for the Development Lab to investigate.
This image has a similar underlying subject, the punishment of a helpless captive. A sense of style has been brought to his restraint apparatus too. It’s less grand than the one above but more modern and technological. The clinical setting here also bestows a degree of specialness on the captive but he’s subjected to a most un-clinical torment at the hands of a ‘bruiser’ (One with a very impressive backside, I must say! It would make a sought-after target in it’s own right in some quarters).
The arched posture imposed on the captive here occurs in another image later on and this viewpoint from directly behind the tormentor brings out it’s inherent vulnerability. The helpless figure is coupled with a particularly well-posed attacker, who looks braced to put his all into his blows. The forward slant of his body gives a sense of momentum and attack. It matches the slope of the rack and the captive’s body, so there’s a suggestion of coming together and shared intimacy that you wouldn’t expect.
Madeira often features fearsome looking toughs in his images and this one has made a captive of an most attractively muscled man, singling out his balls for attention. It’s not clear if his motivation is benign or malign.
His captive is no wimp, he might have just come out of a gym training session, and his toned, shaved body suggests he has great awareness of himself as a man. Despite that he’s being totally dominated, forced into naked display and bondage – including a ball-tie that arouses him and attracts attention. His captor seems to be pointing that out, casually twisting his head to one side in rebuke. The humiliation is underlined by the semi-public setting – just open enough to feel exposing and allow others to watch, but just private enough to avoid unwanted interruption. It’s clear his ordeal is only just beginning and lengthening shadows signal approaching darkness.
This portrayal of a handsome captive seduced and submitting is one of my favourite images by this artist. It’s story-telling progression is another facet of his art although this is the only example I know of where it’s condensed into one image. It’s an imaginative use of the ability to produce image variants.
The subject in the first frame looks like a model posing on a bar stool for an arty photographer. He seems to be something of a jock – muscled, good looking but apparently capable of introspection and sensitivity. Although his hands are placed behind his back there’s no evidence that he’s restrained.
Then a bulky muscular man moves in on him, grabbing his balls. The model’s face registers alarm and he recoils, but suddenly his feet are trapped in the foot rest of the stool and it’s clear now that his arms are tied behind him.
The third frame is perhaps the best of all, he is reluctantly drawn into an embrace and faces his seducer with a priceless and rather boyish “must I?” expression on his face. This encapsulates the moment of capitulation better than any other image I can think of. The predator’s bulk seems be overwhelming him here and the model’s fear is evident, it scarcely needs the elaboration of an involuntary, watery spurt. At the same time you sense he’s not really trying to escape!
In the final frame his body is reduced to a sweaty, shiny hunkiness as he succumbs to his own animal instincts. His muscularity blooms in the final frames, ironically it gives him no protection, but it does makes his submission rather compelling.
This image goes further, embracing futurism and alien capture in an unusually detailed (for Madeira) and atmospheric render. The spread arms and piercing(?) probes are not a million miles away from crucifixion but this predicament has more in common with the helpless captive in the last few pictures. However, this time there’s hardly any sense of public display being part of his ordeal.
Instead the enormity of his lonely plight is skillfully conveyed by the brooding atmosphere, the distant aerial viewpoint (conjuring up the sense of him being held in a deep pit or a vast chamber) and the complete absence of any other human or alien life, friendly or otherwise. There’s little sense of the clinical in this dark piece although the equipment is highly sophisticated. It is suggestive of great power behind the experimentation even if we cannot fathom it’s nature or motivation.
We are not invited to study the captive’s feelings close-up, but the scene nevertheless conveys total despair.
Another understated image (“Savage Eyes”) featuring an unusual restraint device I don’t recall having seen before. It has a devastating simplicity, forcing the captive into a bent posture that creates erotic vulnerabilities at both ends of his body. Possibilities that don’t seem to be lost on his captor.
More compelling for me though is the submissive nature of the pose imposed on him, forcing him to look upwards at his ‘master’. Naturally, his credentials as a ‘Savage’ are not enhanced by this indignity and in this picture his anger at the humiliation is quite apparent although his exaggerated dick is putting an interesting slant on his anger that could scarcely pass unnoticed.
Once acquainted with Madeira’s dark mindset you soon realise that the threat of penetration may not be the worst of this man’s problems, not with the captor prodding him with a naked sword in a most intimate and threatening manner (well-disguised for the faint-hearted and innocent). Nor is that the only threat to his integrity that the weapon represents. Personally I’m happy to take my leave at this point!
The threat to life is even more explicit here and interestingly the artist puts himself centre-stage as victim of a traditional, cowboy, lynch mob. That seems to correspond with his interest in the feelings and fear of victims which seems to stand out in other pictures. You can see in the quality of the detailing that the aggressors here are of secondary importance (indeed in some of the pictures above they are reduced to near-featureless manikins).
There’s clearly an element of self exploration in Madeira’s artwork and it includes sexuality, made plain here by the fondling hand of one of his tormentors. I’m not sure that this represents an interest in death itself, nor the thrill of flirting with it (which some seem to enjoy) but rather the exploration of fear and it’s curious connection with sexual excitement. (Perhaps not so curious if you think about the comfort men derive from sexual excitement and it’s biological purpose which becomes urgent when survival is threatened).
I’m no psychologist but my pet theory is that if fear figures prominently in your formative years, particularly adolescence, it’s quite likely that, being a man, you would seek comfort in sexual stimulation as an escape. After that, I suspect it wouldn’t take long for depictions of fear to become a source of stimulation in themselves and you wouldn’t be human if you didn’t then imagine the victim in the image to be a conceptual representative of your own tormentors. Which is why ‘blue eyed’ boys (see above) may seem inexplicably attractive in such predicaments. I suspect my final image below [in this collection of Desouza images] also embodies this pattern of thought.
As a piece of art this is a highly dramatic depiction of the moment when the nightmare of being hanged becomes real. The coup de grace. It’s contrasted with a commonplace, neglected fence just behind, complete with peeling paint, a backdrop suggesting that this is a private affair in a seedy area. The Cowboy’s struggle is graphically captured and disturbingly believable but thankfully it’s presented as just a fantasy, where the hero still has time to escape. Please don’t be tempted to try this or anything like it yourselves.
Madeira Desouza images were selected and commented on by the artist and blogger known as Mitchell. Visit his blog to see more of his commentaries.
