Radosne związki formy i treści (Chłopcy na piaskuWakefielda Poole’a)

The opposition between content and form is one of the foundations (and illusions) of classical aesthetics. These concepts not only function as opposites and correlates, but sometimes they are ‘erased’ – as in pornographic films of a mechanically replicated form, with no content or with schematic and pretext content. However, Wakefield Poole’s Boys in the Sand (1971) occupies a special place in the history of porn. This film negates the formal patterns of pornography, which the director replaces with an authorial form, referring to the traditions of modernism and gay art, and dialoguing with various trends in cinema. Due to the specific organization of time, lyrical tonality and visual uniformity, Boys… are therefore a film of form, but à rebours, and this form generates content, both emancipatory and transgressive. Its artistic value lies in the fact that corporeality and sexuality are rewritten into the original film language, metaphorized and contextualized in the field of cultural associations.