Geographies of Carnality: Slippery Sexuality in Wiktor Grodecki’s Gay Hustler Trilogy

In the years following the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia, and the Velvet Divorce between the Czech Republic and Slovakia, Polish-born director Wiktor Grodecki explored the world of teenage males in Prague’s burgeoning sex trade in a trilogy comprised of two documentaries and one feature. While Not Angels but Angels (1994) documents the underworld of young hustlers, Body without Soul (1996) focuses on under-aged boys in the porn industry. The feature film, Mandragora, combines the two themes. Grodecki ties these sexual dynamics to both the socio-economic dynamics of post-communism and the unique geographical positioning of the Czech Republic on the divide between East and West. All the while lying further west than Vienna, Prague is viewed by the international sex-trade clients as an exotic realm where there are less restrictions on sexual pleasure than in Western Europe.