TOM CRUISY
TOUKO LAAKSONEN, BETTER KNOW N TO THE W ORLD AS TOM OF FINLAND, IS THE SUBJECT OF AN EMOTIONAL NEW FILM
WORDS: JAMES KLEINMANN
Tom of Finland is celebrated for his distinctive, erotically charged drawings of hyper-masculine, impossibly muscular and well-endowed men — often wearing leather boots or suggestive uniforms. Born in 1920, he lived out his sexual fantasies on paper, creating much of his work in an age when gay sex was still illegal.
Well before the internet made porn readily available, these “Masc 4 Masc” images. published in physique magazines from the 1950s onwards, both aroused and influenced gay men’s self-image, fanning the flames of the gay liberation movement.
In his native country, Tom’s work now hangs in art galleries, has been featured on Finnish postage stamps, as well as on bed linen, towels, vodka and a coffee brand. There’s even a musical.
But this wholesale embracing of the country’s most famous artist is relatively recent. The film’s director, Dome Karukoski, recalls that when he started his research back in 2011: “There were some people who were proud of him, but you also had a lot of people who were ashamed that this guy was Finnish and worried ‘do people in America or Australia think that we’re all just big dick, leather gays?