Consent is, undeniably, an important part of BDSM, but it’s actually a far more complicated issue. The New Inquiry has an in-depth discussion of sexual consent, and how it can be a difficult thing when structural inequality is so pervasive in our society. (Check out the Consent Mixtape while you’re at it.)
Since the fate of Twitter is uncertain under the new management, I’ve been looking for a fall-back. Mastodon seemed promising, but for some reason there are no BDSM-themed servers. The fall of Switter, a sex worker-themed Mastodon server, may provide some insight.
Lash of the Penitentes(1936) is a post-Hays Code exploitation film. Producer Henry Revier put together actual documentary footage of religious practices in rural Mexico, sensationalized recreations of certain acts, and a mystery story based on the actual murder of a travel writer living in New Mexico. There are at least two versions, one of which showed a young woman being stripped naked and whipped. This is a classic example of anti-Catholicism being “the pornography of the Puritan”, to quote Richard Hofstadter.
Historia flagellantium (1700) by the Abbe Boileau is one of the classic texts about flagellation, concerning the improper relations between the Franciscan priest Cornelius Adriaensen and his secret, flagellant order of young women. It was preceded by another, anonymous book, The Historie of B. CORNELIS ADRIAENSEN, which also probed into the secret flagellant order of young women.
Everyone with a post included here in Elust 154 now has a chance to win the top spot in Elust 155 and a gift voucher of your choice to buy something sexy.
The voucher will be for £50 GBP or whatever that converts to in your currency.
Choose any voucher from a reputable site that has gift vouchers I can buy and send by email.
The winner will be the first person to score 5 out of 5.
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Publicity still of Lillian D’Arc and Corbin Bernsen. Note that we do not see the actress in this outfit in the episode.
L.A. Law S07E10 “Spanky and the Art Gang”, aired January 14, 1993
L.A. Law was an ensemble dramedy about a Los Angeles law firm. LIke detective procedurals, legal procedurals bring the characters into a variety of situations, and one popular topic is BDSM, usually in the form of pro dominatrixes.
In this case, the law firm takes as a client Claudia Von Rault, aka Mistress Zenia (played by Lillian D’Arc). She’s charged with involuntary manslaughter of Eric Schuller, who died during a session. The lawyers are initially reluctant to take the sensational case, but the deceased had business entanglements with the firm’s partners and they want it handled in-house.
Preaching to the Perverted (IMDB) is a 1997 romantic comedy written and directed by Stuart Urban, starring Guinevere Turner and Christian Anholt.
Preaching has a lot of similarities to Exit to Eden. Both are romantic comedies that try to present BDSM to the mainstream. Both feature dominant women who are rulers of kinky realms (with female aides de camp) who have difficulty opening up to intimacy until a special man comes along.
Preaching is a superior film in many ways. There’s no extraneous MacGuffin plot grafted on. Exit tried too hard to soft-pedal kink for a mainstream audience, and barely showed anything. This film has lots of different kink activities and more queer content. It at least considers the political realm, as the police and government act against Tanya’s parties.
Tanya Cheex (Guinevere Turner) is a notorious American performance artist who does elaborate stage shows at UK fetish clubs. A tabloid newspaper gets photos of this and editorializes about who will control this American filth. (Like the British need any foreign influence to be kinky.) Conservative Member of Parliament Henry Harding decides to make her a target of a moralistic crusade, and recruits a young Christian computer tech, Peter Emery (Christian Anholt) to infiltrate the fetish underworld with a hidden camera.
Exit to Eden (IMDB) is a 1994 romance/comedy/thriller movie, based on the sadomasochistic novel by Anne Rice.
Exit was the first feature film released based on an Anne Rice novel, mainly because Interview with the Vampire was tied up in development hell for a long time. I suspect this was a case of the author selling the film rights on the assumption that it would never actually get made into a film. Rice wrote and published Exit to Eden between the second and third books in her original Sleeping Beauty trilogy, and it’s full of hardcore sex, hetero and otherwise.
Even more bizarre, the film was directed by Garry Marshall, a guy with a long background in American sitcoms. Why would the guy who created Happy Days direct a movie about BDSM? The Bad Gay Movies podcast suggest it was because of the commercial success of Marshall’s film Pretty Woman (1990), which managed to be a sweet rom-com about LA street prostitution.
Marshall had his work cut out for him. Exit is about Elliot, a war photographer, who travels to the Club, an elite BDSM club on a tropical island, on a quest for self-knowledge. There he meets and falls for Lisa, the head trainer.
Research into Devil Girl from Mars (1954) and the dominatrix-ish costume of the title character lead me to an in-depth exploration on Scifist.net. The costume was designed by Ronald Cobb. He had only one film credit, but had a long career designing sexy, fetishistic costumes for cabaret shows at Murray’s Club in London in the 1950s.
The Projectionist Booth podcast has an in-depth exploration of The Duke of Burgundy (2014), including an interview with the director, Peter Strickland.
On the 20th anniversary of the landmark BDSM film Secretary, the BBC discusses what made this oddball film a surprise hit, and how it walked so Fifty Shades could run.
