Celluloid Dungeon – The History of BDSM

CSI:NY S01E16 “Hush”: The Celluloid Dungeon

Jul 272020

CSI:NY S01E16 “Hush”, aired February 23, 2005 IMDB

Yet another dead naked woman in bondage. CSIs Aiden and Danny investigate.

It turns out that the deceased was strapped to a device on the front of a speeding pickup truck, House of Gord-style. The truck collided with a tree, killing her.

An abandoned truck found nearby has a strange device mounted on the front, which includes a label saying, “Place Shoulders Here”. This includes a device with a red button. The truck contains a bag with a latex bodysuit, a ball gag with teeth impressions, and straps.

Aiden: “Pulp Fiction. Nice.”

Danny and Aiden find a toybag in the abandoned truck

Nip/Tuck S05E01: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jul 202020

Episode S05E01 “Carly Summers”, aired November 1, 2007 IMDB

Nip/Tuck is a drama series focused on a pair of cosmetic surgeons. In the season 5 opener, Doctor Sean McNamara and Doctor Christian Troy have just relocated from Miami to Los Angeles and opened a new practice.

One of their first clients is Bob Easton, a high-powered studio exec. He wants them to cover up the bite marks on his chest.

Scandal S04E16: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jul 152020

Scandal episode S04E16 “It’s Good to be Kink”, aired March 19, 2015 IMDB

Sue Thomas (Lena Dunham) is about to publish a memoir of her sexual exploits in Washington, DC. One of the men mentioned is a fixer named Leo, who is the boyfriend of White House press secretary Abby. Abby, fearing for her career, turns to her friend, Olivia Pope.

Olivia delivers a lecture at Sue, telling her to stop publication. Sue flips the script on Olivia, hitting the third-wave sex-positive feminist, and says she’ll stop publication if somebody pays her $3 million.

Sue meets Olivia, with Quinn in the background.

The General’s Daughter (1999): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jul 142020

The General’s Daughter (IMDB) is a 1999 mystery/thriller.

US Army Captain Elizabeth Campbell, a psychological warfare expert and the daughter of a famous general, is found staked out nude and dead on a training ground. Two warrant officers from the Criminal Investigation Division investigate and discover a web of sexual abuse and coverups.

Body of Evidence (1992): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jul 012020

Body of Evidence (IMDB) is a 1992 erotic thriller/neo-noir film starring Madonna and Willem Dafoe. It was part of the genre epitomized by Fatal Attraction (1987) and Basic Instinct (1992), but didn’t inspire their level of critical attention.

To quote Sean McGovern at The Film Experience:

Body of Evidence arrived at a particular nexus of Madonna’s career. Riding on the wave of Like A Prayer, pushing boundaries with the Blonde Ambition Tour and the exuberant Truth or Dare, Madonna’s imperial phase began to dip with her boundary-pushing take on sex and erotica; namely, SEX and Erotica. While Madonna would remain unapologetic, Body of Evidence, and the accompanying explicit period in career concluded with one of the most consistent criticisms of Madonna: rigid-perfectionism and managed-spontaneity…
[…]
The most grating problem with Body of Evidence is how ~~reductive~~ derivative it is. Released a mere 8 months after Basic Instinct, it’s shocking to see how much of it feels directly lifted from it and other films of its genre.

Elementary S02E04: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jun 242020

“Poison Pen”, aired October 17, 2013

Elementary is a detective TV series of a modern-day retelling of the classic Sherlock Holmes stories and novels by Arthur Conan Doyle.

The case begins with a pro domme (“Mistress Felicity”, played by Keesha Sharp) on an outcall who came across a dead client already in a latex suit, and called Holmes before she called the police.

Law & Order Special Victims Unit S13E22: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jun 122020

Episode S13E22 “Strange Beauty”, aired May 16, 2012 IMDB

A kidnapped young woman turns up dead with an amputated leg, which leads the detectives into the body modification subculture.

Body modification is not the same thing as BDSM, though obviously there is considerable overlap of the two subcultures. The episode of SVU that focuses on body modification deploys a lot of the same tropes as episodes of procedural dramas that focus on BDSM.

Detective Rollins happens to see a woman, Nina, being abducted into a taxi cab. Nina’s mother talks about her distress at seeing her daughter’s extensive tattoos and piercings, which she said started with an octopus tattoo on her ankle.

That’s when a woman’s severed leg with an octopus tattoo turns up in a canal, which leads to another reported severed leg from years ago. The former owner of that leg is a drug-addicted street sex worker who was paid $25,000 to an unidentified john to amputate her leg.

The L Word S02E11 “Loud and Proud”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jun 072020

“Loud and Proud”, aired 1 May 2005 IMDB

The L Word was a night-time soap about a group of lesbian and bisexual women in West Hollywood, with multiple continuing storylines.

“Loud and Proud” is centered on Pride Weekend in LA. In the previous season, Jenny arrived in West Hollywood and began exploring her sexuality, which caused some complications with her boyfriend. Jenny broke up with him and joined the other characters.

The cold-open shows two women having a BDSM session, in the red-on-black color scheme we will see repeatedly in this episode. The bottom is cuffed to a St. Andrew’s cross. There’s no nudity, and only a couple of light impacts with a flogger.

The top says, “I’m going to give you a minute to think about how badly you want me to fuck you.”

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit S01E22: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jun 052020

“Slaves” aired May 19, 2000 IMDB

“Slaves” treads some of the same ground as “Stocks & Bondage”, earlier in the first season, as the primary antagonist is a man who psychologically controls multiple women. In this case, there is no financial element to the crimes.

A street vendor turns in a note asking for help from an unknown woman. The detectives track down the woman named in the note, the aunt of a Romanian immigrant woman, Elena. It would have ended there, but the aunt turns up murdered.

Detectives Munch and Stabler grill Morrow

Law & Order Special Victims Unit S01E09: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jun 012020

“Stocks & Bondage” First aired November 29, 1999 IMDB

“Stocks & Bondage” opens with a familiar scene: a woman found dead in bondage gear. However, as the detectives investigate, the case turns out to be more about shady financial dealings on Wall Street than sexual deviance.

“Stocks & Bondage” includes some of the same tropes as the earlier Law & Order episode “Prisoner of Love”, particularly the discussion over whether the death that started the story is an accident, a suicide, or a murder. Unlike the dual focus on detectives and prosecutors of its parent series, Special Victims Unit is mostly about the investigation, not the legal complexities.

Detective Benson views the body. Notice the handcuff visible in the background.

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A Lover's Pinch: A Cultural History of Sadomasochism