2010s – The History of BDSM

High Maintenance S03E05 “Payday”: The Celluloid Dungeon

Feb 162026

High Maintenance is a comedy-drama series about a marijuana dealer, known only as “The Guy”, who encounters various people in the New York City area in the course of his business.

This episode, “Payday” (aired February 17, 2019), opens with a mock-kidnapping of a woman, Doc Lee (Margaret Cho), by a group of lesbians who drag her into a van and group-dominate her while a woman drives the van around town, all to celebrate her 50th birthday. Doc’s partner, Ayasha (Hye Yun Park), joins in. (I wonder if this was inspired by Patrick Califia’s short story “The Birthday Party”.) Later, Doc and her partner join the women at a bar for drinks. It’s all very fun and normalized for these people.

CSI S11E14 “Sqweegel”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Jan 052026

CSI usually follows a certain format: e.g. we rarely see action that isn’t from the perspective of an investigator or a detective. Episode S11E04 “Sqweegel” (aired October 14, 2010) radically departed from this rule, so much so that some scenes look more like a slasher or giallo film.

Someone is slashing famous people around Las Vegas with a straight razor. Through the usual forensics business, the CSIs find that the assailant was wearing a latex suit. One of them even comments, “Time to get kinky!”

Body of Proof S02E01 “Love Thy Neighbor”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Dec 212025

Body of Proof is another post-CSI investigative procedural, this time focused on the life and work of medical examiner Dr. Megan Hunt (Dana Delaney). The season 2 debut “Love Thy Neighbor” (aired September 20, 2011) bears a strong resemblance to the CSI episode “Swap Meet“.

An apparently accidental death in a suburban cul-de-sac turns out to be not-so accidental; the deceased has ligature marks on his wrists. “I used to live on a cul-de-sac like this. Nothing is ever what it seems,” says Megan (a metatextual joke as Dana Delaney also starred on Desperate Housewives). The clues suggest infidelity and one of the detectives searches a house and finds a locked cabinet. It opens with the mysterious key found on the victim, to reveal padded handcuffs, floggers and leather hoods. “Guess we know who tied him up now,” says the other detective. The couple who own the house look embarrassed.

CSI series finale “Immortality”: The Celluloid Dungeon

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Dec 032025

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation series finale “Immortality”

A suicide bombing in a casino brings the gang back together for one last case. Never mind that Willows is now an FBI agent and has a conflict of interest because she owns the casino, and Grissom left law enforcement to become a maritime vigilante.

One of the pieces of debris from the bomb vest is a square of metal marked “LHK”, which Grissom recognizes as the monogram of “Lady Heather Kessler”. (She used her real last name as a pro-domme?)

After Fall, Winter (2011): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Feb 172025

After Fall, Winter is a 2011 drama film, written by, directed by, and starring Eric Schaeffer, along with Lizzie Brocheré.

Michael (Schaeffer) is an American writer who is borderline suicidal because he is $600,000 in debt and struggling to sell his next book. On impulse, he takes a friend’s invitation to travel to Paris for the winter holidays. He also sees a pro-domme for humiliation.

“People Who Like Kinky Sex Are Just Bad In Bed”: Evie Magazine and the Raw Milkmaid Dress

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Jan 012025

The sexual dynamics of the American conservative resurgence have been fascinating over the last few years.

Evie Magazine is a conservative women’s magazine first published in 2019. Its aesthetics and content reflect the “trad life/trad wife” movement, creating a pastoral fantasy of rural, agrarian labour combined with an idealized hetero-nuclear family. At the fringier end of things, Evie’s content splices into ideologies like pronatalism, anti-vaccination, the benefits of “raw milk” and other health quackery, transphobia, anti-feminism, COVID denial, QAnon, etc.

It’s epitomized by the “tradwife” image, a (white) long-haired woman in a white or print dress, hair kerchief, and cowboy boots who has had borne and raised several children while running a country farm and baking her own bread daily, and yet somehow still looks like a fashion model. She does no paid labour outside the home, instead leaving that to her commuting (white) husband.

Remedy (2013): The Celluloid Dungeon

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May 182024

Remedy is a 2013 drama directed by Cheyenne Picardo and written by Picardo et al.

A young woman known only by her nomme de domme, Remedy (Kira Davies), explores the world of professional domination and submission. She has some experience with BDSM at a night club, where she met a woman named Astrid, who hooked her up with a dungeon in NYC. Her motivation isn’t clear, whether it’s money or something else. (She has an unseen boyfriend and works as a children’s tutor.)

Peter and TammyJo review S&M Sally (2015)

Celluloid Dungeon 3 Responses »

Feb 282024

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AS-ccDTp1NE

TammyJo Eckhart and I review the lesbian romantic comedy S&M Sally (2015).

R100 (2013): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Sep 262023

R100 is a 2013 Japanese absurdist comedy. A depressed man enters a contract to be assaulted by dominatrixes in random places at random times.

It starts off relatively realistically. Katayama is a depressed furniture salesman dealing with raising his young son while his wife has been in a coma for years. He visits a company known only as “Bondage”. The host has him sit on a merry-go-round and view dominatrixes. The offer is a one-year contract during which different dominatrixes will assault him unpredictably. Katayama agrees.

Nymphomaniac Vol.2 (2013): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Aug 082023

Nymphomaniac Volume 2 is the second part of notorious director Lars von Trier’s 2013 film about a woman with sexual compulsion.

The framing story is that Seligman, an elderly academic, finds a beaten women in an alley near his apartment, and takes her home. She says her name is Joe, and when Seligman asks her how she ended up in his alley, she says she would have to tell him her entire life story. Over one night, Joe tells Seligman her biography in search of sexual pleasure, with frequent asides from both of them on topics ranging from techniques of fly fishing to the history of religious art. This dialog also acts as a kind of trial, with Joe prosecuting herself as a bad person who deserved her mistreatment, and Seligman defending her decisions and her worth as a person.

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