Now that 2019 is ending and Gwyneth Paltrow’s GOOP is selling bondage gear and floggers, it’s important to remember that, not that long ago, BDSM was seen as a sign of mental illness. Case in point: The Sensuous Woman by “J”, published in 1969.
The Thing That Turns Him on You Think Is Sick
If he wants to resort to whips and chains or have you urinate on him or something of that nature, I agree with you, I think he’s sick — and he should let you alone and go find a simpatico sickie or, better yet, get professional help.
[Pg. 131]
Note that the author assumes that the reader will be turned off by such activities.
Secret Diary of a Call Girl (IMDB) is a British dramedy TV series focusing on Belle, also known as Hannah (played by Billie Piper), a young woman experiences in different kinds of sex work.
Belle (Billie Piper) in session with her accountant (Simon Kunz(
Episode 4 of series 1 (untitled, premiered 18 October 2007), directed by series creator Lucy Prebble, starts off with Belle having a session with her tax accountant, as he’s also a client. He says, “I don’t want you to be nice to me.” She doesn’t know anything about this, commenting later, “All that pain and paraphernalia, I don’t really get it.”
This request sends Belle to her manager.
Manager: “I was a domme for a while. I tell you, there’s no fucking money in it.”
Belle: “I’m not changing career. I just want to give it a go.”
Manager: “Good. I understand. You do this job long enough, you’ll want to kick the shit out of a man, eventually.”
The manager puts her in touch with “Mistress Sirona” (Sally Dexter).
Belle (Piper) gets advice from Sirona (Dexter)
While it is good that Belle seeks out advice from someone experienced in the field before her session with her accountant, this is where the episode goes over the top. First, “Mistress Sirona” drops by Belle’s flat in full dominatrix outfit. Second, she’s accompanied by her male slave, who strips naked as soon as he enters Belle’s place. Apparently, she’s combining her social call to Belle with a client session.
Sirona: “So why not send your client my way?
Belle: “I’m curious.
Sirona: “Curiosity is a first step to enlightenment.”
Belle: “I thought it killed the cat.”
Sirona: “Belle, I like you. I like anyone with an open mind and clean shoes. Just to be clear, though, I take this job seriously.
Belle: “Of course.
Sirona: “Some people meditate, some people pray.
Belle: “Sure.
Sirona: “And fetish is not something for working girls to retire to once their tits have started to sag.
Belle: “My tits are fine.”
Mistress Sirona (Sally Dexter) demonstrates on her slave (Darren Clarke) for Belle
Sirona gives Belle her brief introduction to the practice and theory of kink, including impact play and bondage on her slave.
Belle: “What about the sex?”
Sarona: “There is no sex.”
Belle: “None at all? How do you know when you’re finished?”
Sarona: “My watch beeps. I’m a goddess to my slaves. That’s what they want. I wouldn’t stoop to sex with them. Plus I’m a married woman.”
Belle: “He knows?”
Sarona: “Of course. Our sitting room’s a dungeon.”
In her book Dominatrix, Danielle J Lindemann explores the particular role of professional dominatrixes and their relationships to other types of sex workers. She says that pro dommes, their clients, and the mainstream media have jointly cultivated a professional mystique around the female dominant sex worker. The idea is that they are an elite with specialized expertise, who are authentically interested in dominance; not that they’re women, performing a job with varying degrees of skill, dedication and enthusiasm, for clients with money.
Secret Diary buys into this mystique, and doesn’t critique any of it. It even copies the “healing” rationale of pro domme work, as Sirona tells Belle that what she provides is “a huge relief.”
In a montage in the middle of the episode, Belle shops for the clothing, the implements and the furnishings for this new role. She even redecorates her flat with a pair of giant Gothic candelabras. There are obligatory shots of the arrays of bondage and impact gear, and a full-body shot of Belle in her new latex dress, corset and heels. Presumably her accountant is paying for all of this, even though Belle might not keep any of it. This fits with the consumerist ethos of Secret Diary, which links upscale escort work with a luxurious lifestyle. As Barbara Ehrenreich et al. observed in Re-Making Love, sadomasochism is the perfect form of sexuality for a consumerist society.
Belle (Piper) gets into costume, if not character.
One of the problems of this episode is that Belle treats the role of dominatrix as something she can acquire in a package, rather than something she has grown into. When she’s in the full outfit, she’s not completely comfortable, which is emphasized by the squeaking of the rubber dress as she moves and her awkwardness on the high heels. This fits one of the series’ themes: Belle trying on different identities at the behest of her clients.
When the accountant shows up, Belle says in an aside to the camera:
“Everything’s worked out in advance. The script, the scenario, even the insults I’m going to use have been agreed with over email.”
While it’s good that this is made clear, wouldn’t showing the negotiation between Belle and the accountant have been interesting? Perhaps, but it would have detracted from the glamorous fantasy.
Belle and her client
As the scene progresses, Belle stumbles a few times. First, she doesn’t know how to read her sub’s responses. She has to ask for “Red, amber or green?” “Green,” he says.
Belle (to camera): “How do you know if you’re doing it right? In my job, if you make a man come, that’s success. With this I can’t even tell if he’s enjoying it.”
Her second problem is that she runs out of things to do to him. After a quick call to Sirona for advice, she puts him to work scrubbing her toilet. While this keeps him busy, she makes a few calls.
The B-plot is that Belle has just learned that Ben, the guy friend she has a crush on, is getting married. This puts a rift in their friendship, and Belle responds by pushing him away. Later, when she finally takes one of his calls during her session with the accountant, he points out that she’s always secretive and controlling, and she’s punishing him by avoiding her calls. In other words, sadomasochistic dynamics of control, punishment and suffering can occur in any relationship.
Belle gets angry and starts to take it out on her accountant, vigorously using all of the implements. He red-safewords but she keeps going for a few more strokes until he calls her “Belle.” “I don’t want scars.” (Note, however, that the accountant says he can’t have marks, not that Belle has gone over his physical limits.)
Belle is stunned, sits down, asks Accountant to help her undo her dress. They apologize to each other. Belle recommends Sirona to him.
The episode ends with Belle telling her friend Ben about her sex work.
Belle (voice over): “Sirona was right. Hurting people is a very special talent. S&M has taught me one thing. Maybe absolute control isn’t always best. Maybe sometimes, you’ve got to give a bit away.”
While Secret Diary is fairly positive in its portrayal of BDSM, it’s also pretty shallow; there’s only so much one can cover in 22 minutes. Much like Personal Services, it’s focused on the emotional-commercial transaction between hetero male clients and female providers, and doesn’t explore adjacent areas like non-commercial BDSM or maledom/femsub interactions. Certainly no indication of why a woman would want to be a top/dominant for any reason other than money.
Belle/Hannah was played by Billie Piper, best known as companion Rose Tyler in the revival of Doctor Who. Mistress Sirona was played by Sally Dexter, who also played a dominatrix character in Adult Babies (2017).
After Hours (IMDB) is a 1985 comedy directed by Martin Scorsese. This is one of the single-scene works covered in this project.
Paul, a lonely word processor in mid-80s, midtown Manhattan, meets Marcy in a late night cafe. She invites him to visit her downtown in Soho, which leads to a bizarre series of late night encounters.
One of them is with Kiki (Linda Fiorentino), Marcy’s roommate. We’re introduced to Kiki in just a bra and a skirt, spattered with paper mache. She’s a sultry contrast to Marcy, who is blonde and innocent-looking.
The only place where the smartest and hottest sex bloggers are
featured under one roof every month. Whether you’re looking for sex
journalism, erotic writing, relationship advice or kinky discussions
it’ll be here at Elust. Want to be included in Elust #125? Start with
the rules, come back December1st to submit something and subscribe to the RSS feed for updates!
All blogs that have a submission in this edition must re-post this digest from tip-to-toe on their blogs within 7 days. Re-posting the photo is optional and the use of the “read more…” tag is allowable after this point. Thank you, and enjoy!
Dezeen talks about fetish culture as it relates to design. “Browse the fetish section of specialist outlets and you’ll find a world of strange anachronisms. It’s a world of faux-medievalness, of studded leather and dungeons, of stocks and pillories, of old fashioned schoolroom discipline embodied by the cane, the obscure world of equestrianism represented in harnesses and riding crops, early 20th century warfare in gas masks and uniforms, anachronistic healthcare in medical play.”
One Night at McCool’s (IMDB) is a 2001 sex comedy film. Three men become obsessed with one beautiful woman, resulting in a tangle of sex, greed, and murder. (Though it’s rated R, there’s no actual nudity.)
In my discussion of Pets, I neglected to mention that it was based on an off-Broadway play. The Temple of Schlock has a post on the history of the original work and its adaptation into film.
Pets was originally three one-act plays, first produced in May 1969, all based on the idea of women being kept as pets.
It’s not surprising that few critics gave PETS a clean bill of health. Newsday‘s George Oppenheimer summed it up by writing, “Mr. Reich has given us three playlets which, to put it kindly, stagger the imagination,” while Daphne Kraft of the Newark Evening News commented, “PETS, the three one-act satchels of emotion which got hurled on the stage of the Provincetown Playhouse last night, suffers from bad dialogue. The plays sizzle like wet firecrackers and make all of life look like exercises in hysteria.” In the Manhattan Tribune, Clayton Riley wrote, “Nothing to recommend but a superb air-conditioning unit at the Provincetown. Doubtless it will outlive, by a good while, Richard Reich’s slender trio.” Worst of all were the opinions of a critic in Cue: “Richard Reich is a playwright who has discovered a fascinating new toy — sadomasochism. So enthralled is he by the S&M mystique of discipline, power, sexual mastery and submission, torture and self-flagellation, that he has written no less than three one-acters in which people cage, whip, stab, and rape each other with gay abandon, all the while pontificating in language duller than an Abnormal Psych textbook.”
The film combined the three young women characters into one character, Bonnie, combined two older women into Geraldine, and added a few other scenes.
Hardcore (IMDB) is a 1979 crime drama film written and directed by Paul Schrader.
The plot is that Jake (George C. Scott), a mid-Western family man and devout Calvinist, searches through the sex work underground for his daughter after she disappears in Los Angeles, then turns up in a porn film.
Hardcore bears a strong resemblance to 8MM. Both are Orpheus narratives: a man descends into the underworld to find a lost loved one. It also taps into the American captivity narrative. It provides an interesting glimpse into the sex work underworld of Los Angeles in the late 1970s. Again, like 8MM, there’s no particular investigation of the people who work in the sex industry. (Somebody did do enough research to drop names like the Mitchell brothers.)
Pets (IMDB) is a 1973 exploitation drama. It’s a picaresque story set in Southern California of a young homeless girl, Bonnie, who falls from one situation to another, not unlike Sade’s Juliette or Voltaire’s Candide.
