I will be presented on the history of eroticized slavery at the 2013 Master/slave Conference this Sunday at 11am. I greatly enjoyed the conference last year and I look forward to seeing familiar faces and meeting new people too. If you see me there, don’t be shy, say hello!
Watch for updates as I go.
I had hoped to finish the first draft of Chapter 7 by the end of July, but that wasn’t to be. Once part of a completely overlong chapter, I mainly just knocked it down to 8,000 words and restructured a bit. I removed some redundant quotes, particularly the bits from My Secret Life.
This is mainly about the upper class kinksters of the Victorian era, and how they interacted with the psychological establishment of the era. There was an interesting dialectic between art and science in this period, with artists looking to science for inspiration about the extremes of human nature, and scientists borrowing names and concepts from artists.
Next chapter is “Every Woman Adores a Fascist”, formerly “Age of War”. I’ve decided I can’t follow a linear chronology, at least in this chapter, which covers the Nazisploitation aesthetic and the tenuous links between fascism and sadomasochism, running from at least the rise of fascism in the 1930s to the Italian Nazisploitation film boom of the late 1970s. This is one of the trickiest subjects to tackle, which can be loosely grouped under the heading of “cultural trauma play”, along with raceplay.
This is the master list of all posts in The Curious Kinky Person’s Guide to the Fifty Shades Trilogy.
Also check out the Ebook edition.
Magillow, Daniel H., Bridges, Elizabeth, and Vander Lugt, Kristen T. Nazisploitation! the Nazi image in low-brow cinema and culture. Continuum Books, 2012 Amazon
Nazisploitation, or sadiconazista, is one of the most scorned film genres, and also one of the most complex. The films grouped under that heading may share a common aesthetic but have very different productions and meanings, which this anthology tries to map.
…the standard tropes, settings and narrative conceits of Nazisploitation cinema [include]: sexually perverted, calculating and sadistic Nazi officers, prisoner-of-war and concentration camps, medical experimentation and prisoner rebellions. [Pg.2]
McInnis, Maurie D. Slaves Waiting for Sale: Abolitionist Art and the American Slave Trade. University of Chicago Press, 2011
Slaves Waiting for Sale, by Eyre Crowe
This is an excellent work as a reference from the Virigina slave trade in the 1850s. The author includes all kinds of “you are there” details, including clothing and architecture.
Built around work of British artist and journalist Eyre Crowe, who travelled in America in the 1850s as secretary to author William Thackery on a lecture tour.
Crowe read Uncle Tom’s Cabin before he saw any actual slavery, but was moved by it. (Pg.4) Purchased from street book merchant, also selling Thackery’s books. Crowe was “properly harrowed” by the book. (Pg. 19)
It’s still a bit rough around the edges, but the first draft of chapter 6 is done (6,800 words). This was parts of another, very long chapter split into two, and covers things from the Victorian era like flagellation erotica, fetish letter columns and the flagellation culture of Eton. The remainder will go into chapter 7, with more Victoriana like Krafft-Ebing, Sacher-Masoch and the network of kinksters that coalesced around Richard Moncton-Milnes, later Lord Houghton. This probably won’t take long to get to first draft stage, just some reogan
I’m still not completely happy with the organization of these two chapters, and may reorganize them in a second draft. There’s a lot of information to cover, and it all interconnects in loose ways. Alan Moore, in the preface to From Hell, quoted somebody else as saying, “One measures a circle, starting anywhere.”
I’ve decided to press on instead of editing (or writing more blog posts), as I think it is more valuable to get a presentable complete draft finished than to refine. There are still areas I haven’t really begun to research.
I should also mention that my fiction short story “The Thing in the Printer” has been accepted by Ghostwoods Books for their Cthulhu Lives Lovecraftian horror anthology.
The first draft of Chapter 5, “The Peculiar Institution”, is now complete and backed up, all 11,000 words of it. It’s about Atlantic slavery and its erotics, and spends a lot of time talking about the master-slave relationship of Hannah Cullwick and Arthur Munby.
Next is Chapter 6, “Class and Classification,” covering the late Victorian flagellant subculture, plus Krafft-Ebing. This is actually in a first draft state already, from years ago, but it is 17,000 words, and I’m trying to keep chapters under 10,000 words or so. I could cut it in two, renaming the first half “The Extraordinary Gentlemen”. However, there’s some redundant material in the chapter as well, and I intend to cut that out, though probably not 7,000 words of it. I will probably cut out the fat and then subdivide into two shorter chapters.
After that comes the early 20th century. This is kind of a lacuna in my research, because I’m not really sure what was going on in the 1900-1950 period. I’d probably mostly talk about film, particularly pre-Hays Code, particularly how American racial anxieties figured in films like Freaks, The Sheik, Frankenstein, the 1931 version of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, etc. If there was any kind of formal BDSM subculture at this time, I have yet to find any evidence of it.
Photo courtesy of Behind the Chintz Curtain
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9 Reasons You SHOULD Have Sex on a First Date
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Threesomes: Being a Good Little Unicorn
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Sexentric News and Public Cam-Sex Report
The Play’s the Thing
Sadistic Bitch
It was a good night
Kink Chronicles – Panties
Quickie Afternoon Delight
“No, you don’t!”
“Objectification” by Blacksilk
Best.Sex.Ever
So I Asked SilverHubby About Our Orgasms
For Pity’s Sake, No
Like a Virgin
Three Ashes
His Princess and His Slut
I hope my neighbors got a show.
Watching
I want to know You
Once Upon an ‘O’
Testosterone! Don’t Leave Home Without it!
Why Modeling Is Poison
Should
On the swingset
Achievement Unlocked
How To Make A Woman Orgasm
Mutual Masturbation is Mother****ing Awesome!
The Wonder of Weddings
Introvert recovery
May is International Masturbation Month
Make love to yourself
Fighting Spirit
Dinner is Served
Lolita Twenty-Thirteen, Part Five
Belle and Sandy
Babygirl Gets Caught
Return of the Vulcan Penis Problem
Masturbation Mishaps, Introduction
“For Novelty Use Only”
BDSM Lexicon Entry #24: Aftercare
Mad Men: the dominance of Don Draper
Wicked Wednesday – Knowing When to Say No
Why Do I Like Being Owned?
The difference between BDSM & Abuse
Erosblog has the story on the billboard advertisement for the Rolling Stones’ Black and Blue album (1976), featuring model Anita Russell in bondage (allegedly tied by Mick Jagger himself).
If I’ve been posting less, it’s that I want to devote more energy to finally getting at least a first draft of this book finished.
It’s a week later than I hoped, but I finished a draft of Chapter 4, on Orientalism, weighing in at a little over 7,000 words. It covers the centuries-long influence of Europeans being held prisoner in North Africa and the Ottoman Empire, and the lasting influence on pornography and sexual fantasy. I also touch on American captivity narratives, which are largely about white settlers abducted by Native Americans.
There are a few points I would like to cover, like Burton’s quasi-translation of the Kama Sutra and the vogue for exotic sexuality among certain Orientalist elites, but that may have to go in a later chapter. One of the things I’ve realized in this process is that I can’t include everything I’ve researched. I have to pick and choose, both for length and to keep the narrative pacing going. Just accumulating information and references will bore the reader.
Next is Chapter 5, “The Peculiar Institution.” This should be relatively easy, as I already wrote an earlier draft that covered Atlantic slavery but proved to be too long. I particularly went overboard describing the Munby-Cullwick relationship. Chop that down to 6-8,000 words and that should be good, at least for a first draft. The goal is to get it done by the end of June.
