Rocco Siffredi, the Italian stud and future icon of the porn industry, is kind of a fool. Have you noticed this? Straight hair with bleached blonde tips. The goofy smile he has when he’s amused, with his eyes half-lidded and his teeth bared next to his retracted upper lip. The constant feeling that he doesn’t quite know what’s going on, what to do next, or who to do it with. He’s like a big kid who’s finally found his own candy store.
supersex In episode 4, “The Dream,” Rocco takes the final steps necessary to make his own dream come true. It culminates in a kind of baptism by orgy, when he enters naked, with his penis exposed to the viewer for the first time, into a pool full of revelers who welcome him into their arms. He’s already yelled at Riccardo, his dismayed (former?) producer, that he won’t obey any of the company’s rules about not screwing talent off camera. He will fuck whoever he wants and how he wants, where and when he wants.
That is This is Rocco Siffredi, not the humble Rocco Tano. “I made a rule,” Rocco says in his voiceover. “Rocco Tano no longer existed. “I was, at all times and forever, Rocco Siffredi.”
The black magician Aleister Crowley lived by the principle Do what you want will be the entirety of the law., but it is a phrase that is easily misinterpreted. For Crowley, this did not mean “Do what you will,” it meant “Do what you must do,” in keeping with his concept of “will” as one’s destiny. Every man and woman is a star.He explained, which means that if we all do what we want, what we really should do, we will all shine in the sky and never hurt each other. Love is the law, love under will: Even though Crowley was a strange idiot, he saw being yourself as a route to a better world. Rocco too.
Will it turn out like this? Hard to say. Sylvie’s brief adventure back to Paris goes well. Encouraged by Rocco, she auditions and enters a prestigious music academy. She also starts going to porn theaters to watch her movies and eventually goes to the sex club and participates. “I don’t know if I like what’s happening to me,” she tells him. “You can choose,” she replies. He’s supposed to be reassuring, and he is, but I can’t help but hear an addendum of “…in a way I couldn’t.” Rocco has no choice but to be Rocco. He has no choice but to live a life defined by sex. (The fact that John Holmes, the world’s most famous male porn star, just died of AIDS leaves him and others around him wondering how safe such a life would be, of course.)
For his family, Rocco’s new life is heterogeneous. One of his brothers insists that he has brought shame and pain to their mother, but his mother seems happy to hear from him on the phone and uses him as a conduit for information about Tommaso and her baby, unaware that the two brothers are in disagreement. . Her cousin Gabriele is so desperate to follow in her footsteps that she exposes herself to prove that she has a big cock after grabbing Rocco’s to confirm her bona fides in that department. Her dad attends one of her movies! There is so much strange, incestuous energy flowing through the veins of the Tano family that it is a wonder that any of them No become monomaniacal about sex. It’s the air these guys breathe.
I haven’t written much about Tommaso and Lucia’s relationship, but it is, quietly, one of the highlights of the show. I say “quietly” mainly because they’re not fucking on screen, but it’s a relationship full of fireworks and true tenderness. I keep thinking about this shot from the previous episode where the two of them are lounging in bed together, staged with genuine intimacy and care; I think about it even when Tommaso rants, raves, rages, insults, and attacks everyone close to him, including Lucia. However, Lucía endures, because hers is the only love she has ever known and, however flawed, it is real. It’s a hard thing to give up.
And Tommaso himself? He’s a nasty drunk, that’s for sure; think about the way he welcomes Rocco back into the fold only to reject him minutes later over an old, false claim of infidelity that it’s hard to believe he’s still clinging to after all this time, but I think it’s more deeper than that. The rapid pace at which Tommaso alternately idealizes and denigrates the people who care about him would indicate some form of borderline personality disorder to armchair psychologists in the audience. Again, think about how he praises Rocco’s dick and then attacks him for showing it off minutes later. Whatever it is, he makes for a volatile and unpleasant man most of the time. This It makes your moments of perseverance and kindness even more precious to the people who love you.
“Life is porn,” Rocco says to conclude the episode. This raises what may be the great mystery of the series. In the current footage, Rocco has announced his retirement from porn, although he can’t help but fuck a stranger a few minutes later. Let’s say he manages to free himself from all of his payment commitments. You can take the man out of porn, but can you take porn out of the man?
Sean T. Collins (@theseantcollins) writes about television forRolling Stone,Vulture,The New York TimesandAnywhere that has it, In fact. He and his family live on Long Island.
