What is porn and what is art? Camp Chaos "Kauai" and Matthew Camp add reality TV to the dilemma

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

30 Jun 2019

"It's kind of like porn, kind of like a documentary, kind of reality TV," explains Matthew Camp as he ventures online, on camera, in search of men to join him in a "documentary recreating formative sexual experiences with explicit sex." An episode of the three part series Camp Chaos had its world premiere at the Inside Out film festival and had its American premiere at the Frameline International LBGT Film Festival in San Francisco on the same day a different episode was released on VOD by gay porn behemoth Men.com.

What is fascinating about Camp Chaos - the episode I saw was entitled "Kauai" - is that it functions very well as all three of Camp's stated antecedents. While not a seamless fusion of the three genres, it does succeed in commenting on the genres differences and similarities, seducing the viewer to question why the three are evaluated so differently. It is a direct confrontation of the question "What is porn and what is art? And does it matter?" And it is, after watching "Kauai," still bothering me that I insisted on evaluating the film in a compartmentalized fashion.

I suspect we have been so indoctrinated that it is part of our intellectual DNA to treat explicit sex, especially explicit gay sex, as porn. Or maybe, after all the homophobic censorship by Facebook and Google, I am just overly conscious of that split in my critical thinking and wariness. Exploring gay men's' relationship to their sexuality in any fashion is something that I wholeheartedly endorse. And why should a documentary, or even a reality TV show, that does so, be elevated above porn which is a consistent, unabashed exploration of gay men's sexuality?

Would I have reacted differently to Camp Chaos if I had attended a film festival screening? How will someone react to Camp Chaos if they access it on Men.com for the specific purpose of arousal? As a film Camp Chaos is visually lush with subtle special effects, great cinematography and editing of both sound and visuals. It begins with Camp entering a second hand store and searching through the items to find, and purchase, a tiny exotic green plant encased in lucite. It is a blunt metaphor.

From there he begins narrating his formative sexual experience which involves the beach, a more experienced man whose "dick was so thick and massive but he knew how to use it without putting anyone in the hospital. Which was good," and the erotic potential of toe sucking. "Kauai" cross cuts between images of the beach, Camp being interviewed, and Camp jerking off in the cab of a truck. The latter takes precedence and the first money shot occurs just past the five minute mark.

Camp is a physically stunning man and has managed to maintain some mystique by working outside the mainstream porn system, he is a "social media star.". He worked with director Cory Krueckeberg on the films Getting Go, the Go Doc Project and Hurricane Bianca: From Russia with Hate while making a living with his OnlyFans site, modelling and go-go dancing. A very good living if the apartment depicted, with its exotic plants, is actually his. So anyone eager to see Camp in action, and from his enthusiastic and well-followed social media accounts that is a solid majority of gay men, had to pay him directly.

OnlyFans is a business model designed. as explained by porn stars Michael Roman, Teddy Bear and Dante Drackis, to give financial and artistic control to the performers. Porn studios, in this era of rampant piracy, are struggling. Men.com is a conglomerate that produces product on a daily basis and has released parodies, epics, fetish, and narratives both dramatic and bizarre in an attempt to capture viewers. When they hit the zeitgeist - as with the "Right in front of my salad?" scene which was much memed and has been streamed over a million times - they eclipse most OnlyFans productions in slickness, skill and marketing muscle.

So it makes sense for them to back an art film which also doubles as Matthew Camp's mainstream porn debut. A perfect menage a trois of stunt casting, commerce and promotion. After all, here I am writing about it. The press release quotes Camp as saying, “I feel like it’s important as gay men that we exercise our right to want to have sex, to make content with it, and profit off it. It’s sort of a revolutionary act.” That is adding politics and financial gain to a threesome to make it a successful orgy. Very canny.

To let the viewer know that this is art, Camp puts on a vinyl record, both trendy and vintage, of Hayden's oratorio The Creation, and begins to paint on a large canvas. Of course he slowly strips to a jockstrap while painting, teasing that this will become a gender-crossed, updated version of Farrah Fawcett's pay per view bid for fusing art and porn, All of Me. It is a masterful allusion: two people known for their sexual appeal expressing their artistic abilities without denying that aspect of their personas, exploiting that cachet.

Then Camp begins his search for partners for the Camp Chaos project. He puts out an internet call and then interviews those who respond. It is fascinating, explicit and raunchy, and an absorbing examination of the way gay men talk and express their desires. It also makes all reality TV auditions instantly redundant. Camp settles on Wolfie Essef (and presumably others for the other episodes) and "Kauai" settles into what is superficially a standard porn narrative. 

Standard except for Essef's recounting of his formative sexual experience which ends with the thought that it had "an emotional connection so that's why it sticks in my mind." The two meet, flirt, tour Camp's house, have tea, strip to their tighty whities and trim each others' facial hair. The heat between them is palpable with Camp pressing his bulge against Essef and lots of lingering looks. Is it an emotional connection or are they effective actors? The two move into a kiss and the door closes in our face. 

We next see Camp dressing on the far left side of a bed. Projections of the beach, the cosmos, etc, frame the scene. Essef enters naked and also dresses. This is a formal performance, contradicting and emphasizing the intimacy we have just witnessed. The pair make love, or have sex, or suck and fuck, and that ambiguity between performance and an emotional sexual connection is toyed with and used to magnify the experience of porn as mere material to help one rub one off. Intellectually as well as physically stimulating.

Camp is a charmer in his interactions with the men he auditions. After he masturbates in the truck he breaks the fourth wall to smile with satisfaction, returning the male gaze but in a way that is an invitation instead of an indictment. Occasionally during the sex he slips into porn mode and goes expressionless, but Essef, who is erotically enthusiastic, seems to inspire an openness. But at the very end, Camp looks at the camera over Essef's cum-splattered chest, and announces jovially that it is a wrap. Is he trapped in the frame? By his persona?

What is real and what is performance? What is porn and what is art?