There was a lot more to the artist than just drawings of bulging biceps.
The trailer for the biopic of gay erotic artist Touko Laaksonen, better known as Tom of Finland, is finally here.
Starring Pekka Strang as the activist, artist obsessed with the hypermasculine and sexualization of uniforms and masculinity had a fascinating life apart from the drawings of bulging biceps.
The son of Finnish schoolteachers in 1920, he was drafted during World War 2 and was made to serve alongside Nazi officers. And that was what first inspired his erotic art.
‘The whole Nazi philosophy, the racism and all that, is hateful to me,’ Laaksonen once said. ‘But, of course, I drew them anyway. They had the sexiest uniforms!’
In the 1950s, he worked in advertising and was a part of the gay underground. Setting up one of the first leather groups, his work became widely followed as one of the only sexual outlets for hundreds of thousands of closeted men.
‘It’s impossible to overstate the impact Tom’s work has had on the image and self-image of gay men all over the world,’ Tom screenwriter Aleksi Bardy told Variety. ‘He created the archetypes that now form an integral part of the iconography of popular culture, both gay and straight.’
Tom of Finland is out 24 February 2017.
Watch the trailer for Tom of Finland below:
