The n*ked guys of "Spartacus: House of Ashur"

 

Link to the n*de photos

Spartacus (103-71 BCE) was a Thracian slave who escaped from a gladiator school with 70 of his followers and started the Third Servile War: 120,000 enslaved persons rebelling against the oppressive Roman Republic. 

In 1951, Howard Fast self-published Spartacus, a novel about the slave revolt, as a protest against his incarceration during the McCarthy Era witch hunts.  

The 1960 movie version starred Kirk Douglas as Spartacus.  It famously includes a scene, cut from the theatrical release but restored in 1991, where the power-hungry  senator Crassus and his slave Antonius (Sir Laurence Olivier, Tony Curtis) discuss being gay, in severely closeted terms, as the eating of oysters vs. the eating of snails: "It is all a matter of taste, is it not?" 

The 2004 movie (aired during two nights on the USA network) starred Goran Višnjić as Spartacus, and upped the participation of his wife, transforming the story into a heterosexual romance.

A Spartacus tv series, with seasons given different names (Blood and Sand, Gods of the Arena, and War of the Damned), aired on Starz between 2010 and 2013.  It starred Andy Whitfield (left), and after his death Liam McIntyre.  A lot of n*de guys, such as James Wells as Totus and Manu Bennett as Crixus (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

Plus there were several gay characters, including Spartacus' best friend Agron.

Assyrian slave Ashur (Nick E. Tarabay) becomes one of the series' primary antagonists when he collaborates with the Romans in their attempt to bring down the slave rebellion.  Eventually beheaded.  Shouldn't that be Asher, one of the Twelve Tribes of Israel?

He has returned in Spartacus: House of Asher (2025), a sort of sequel which posits that he killed Spartacus, returned to life, and now runs a gladiator school.

From a civil war to a school?  Trying to minimize political references that could get you in trouble in the fascist state?

I'm out of space, so let's just look at the n*de guys (on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).

15 gay facts about "White Christmas": gay actors, beefcake dancers, drag, Spartacus, and the source of your holiday depression

I'm not a big fan of the Holiday Season -- too big, bright, and noisy, with forced exuberance, and way too much melancholy.  I try to stay away from Christmas songs, movies, trees, holly, mistletoe, parties, and depression.  But I'll make an exception for White Christmas (1954).

1. It's not a Christmas movie.  It's a backstage musical that just happens to end at Christmastime.  Backstage movies were well-known for gay subtexts.

2. The song "White Christmas," by Irving Berlin (who was Jewish), first appeared in the backstage musical Holiday Inn, with Big Crosby and Fred Astaire. 

3. It's been covered by everyone, including gay favorites Bett Midler and Lady Gaga.

4. White Christmas is about two showbiz partners, Bob and Phil (Bing Crosby, Danny Kaye), who find their relationship threatened by women.

5. A musical based on the movie, Irving Berlin's White Christmas, opened in St. Louis in 2000. Lara Teeter (a guy with a girl's name) played Bob, and gay actor Lee Roy Reams played Phil Davis.

6. Phil has also been performed by Tony Yazbeck (top photo) and David Elder, who Google Images thinks is cowboy star Clint Walker (left).

7. The women in the movie, Judy and Betty (Vera-Ellen, Rosemary Clooney), are sisters.  At least, they perform as sisters, although their numbers would work well in a drag act.

God help the mister who comes between me and my sister
And God help the sister who comes between me and my man!

More after the break

Lucas Blas: Spanish teen idol with at least three gay/trans roles and a lot of boyfriends. Bonus n*de Spanish dudes

Link to the n*de photos.

Spanish actor Luca de Blas or Lucas Blas appeared on the teen idol website with the usual teenage beefcake and bicep photos.

Quite a lot of beefcake and bicep photos.

But when I started looking at his works, I found something else.

I found a boy wearing a crown of flowers.

Everyone else in the village wears sacks over their heads, but Lucas is not afraid to show his true face to the world.  Even when he is in prison, he weaves himself a crown of flowers.

The villagers grab him and take him to a church to be sacrificed.  He begins to bleed.  The singer, gay musician Dulzano, jumps in, but it is too late; Luca dies in his arms.

It is the music video Jota de la Luna (2025), with lyrics that recall gay poet Garcia Lorca, giving us a poignant view of homophobia and the need to be who you are. 

We must bring flower to flower/ when summer dries the blood of the Reaper

And open our hearts to sleepless birds
When winter knocks trembling at the door
When night falls I will say it
When the clear night arrives

I found an episode of Bosé, a biography of the famous gay (or "trisexual") singer Miguel Bosé (n*de on RG Beefcake and Boyfriends).  Lucas plays  the young gay singer Carlos Berlanga, whose "¿A quién le importa?", released in 1986, became a gay anthem during the AIDS pandemic.

Who cares what I do?

Who cares what I say?

I am this way, and this way I'll stay

Nothing can change me.

I found Lucas wearing makeup, approaching his mother, arguing with her, trying to hug her. Later he grows his hair long and puts on a dress, suggesting trans identity, or maybe a femme gay boy.  It was Ali (2021), a short film that won four prizes and seven nominations: "A desperate cry of child abandoned by his mother, who cannot give him love": 

More after the break

"Son of a Thousand Men": Magic realism from Brazil with fragmented time and space, but there are gay guys and d*cks

Son of a Thousand Men (2025) popped up on the n*de celebrity website with a hung trifecta, playing N*de Men #1, #2, and #3, with Antonino. 

Link to the n*de dudes

But what is it about?  

Different reviews give us completely different plots:

1. "A lonely fisherman longing for a son is drawn into an ethereal light," and the boy appears.

2. "A gay guy enters a marriage of convenience with a foundling woman" 

3. "An older couple hires an actor to impersonate their gay son."

4. "A elderly man tells his grandson to stay away from gay men and lesbians" (VOD)

Maybe they're all correct.  I suspect that we are looking at magic realism, like 100 Years of Solitude, The House of the Spirits, and Cortazar's Hopscotch, where people merge into other people, time and space are fragmented, and the subconscious manifests in everyday objects.   

Let's try the trailer:

Scene 1:  Sometime in the 19th century, an elderly fisherman (Rodrigo Santoro) is living by himself. That's the beginning of a lot of fairy tales.

He has been driven insane by the isolation, so he makes a creepy boy doll that he pretend is  real.   So is the doll going to come to life, like Pinocchio?  

Scene 2: He puts an ad in the village grapevine, "Elderly man seeks a son."  A teenage boy looks at it, but a preteen boy shows up. I think the teen boy turned into the preteen boy, and both are going to become the Fisherman.

Scene 3: The Boy wants the Fisherman to get a girlfriend, so he won't be lonely.  This might be a problem, since they live in the wilderness, a long, arduous journey from the nearest town. Who does he sell the fish to?   

Fortunately, at that moment the Woman of his Dreams appears, wearing a flowing white robe, sitting alone on the rocks. She must be a supernatural being, maybe an eidetic invocation of the Eternal Feminine.

The Boy doesn't think that the Woman of his Dreams is an appropriate partner for the day-to-day life of a fisherman, maye he can't see her at all, so he continues: "There are plenty of girls in the village."  This to a shot of someone who is definitely not a girl. I think he's Antonino from the n*de photos (Johnny Massaro), so maybe he was hanging out on the gay beach. 

Scene 4: Mom tells Antonino that she needs a grandchild, so get busy.

Scene 5: Antonino's wedding, to a woman trapped in a fishing net. Is this standard for Brazilian weddings, or does it signify that she's a sea creature?   This must be Plot #2: he's a gay guy forced to marry "a foundling woman." 

Scene 6: They settle in for their wedding night in separate beds.

Scene 7: In the morning, she leaves, wanders on to the beach, and says "Love ruins everything," just before the Fisherman sees her and is overcome by Girl of His Dreams fervor. So she's the Net Lady.  But I thought there were no other houses -- or hotels -- around for hundreds of miles. Maybe she walked through time and space.

Scene 8: Net Lady and Fisherman bond over screaming therapy, laugh, and swim in an ocean full of people, "all children of different mothers and fathers."  Obviously.

Meanwhile Antonino (I think) has a rather painful bout of self-gratification.

Scene 9: The Boy curls into a fetal position as hair drops on him.  So he's been to the barber?

People gaze at the ocean.

Net Lady (I assume) dies as the Fisherman holds her hand.

There's a giant glowing seashell.

Fisherman: "We're never really alone."

The end.

Still confused?  Me, too.  But I found a complete, detailed plot synopsis, untangled the magic realism fragmentation, and put the events in chronological order.

Unfragmented story after the break.