Revenge of the Max Hardcore girl

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May 232010
 

Susannah Breslin’s column has a fascinating article on This ain’t Max Hardcore: a XXX parody. It’s a turn-the-tables scenario in which a baby-doll-style woman beats up and anally foot-fucks an actor playing the famed gonzo porn maker.

Paul “Max Hardcore” Little, currently serving a prison sentence in Florida, is known for his particular style of videos, which Breslin describes thusly:

In his movies, women are urinated upon, forcibly fellated until they vomit, their orifices cranked open with speculums. They are pile-driven, skull-fucked, and fish-hooked. Mostly, they are dressed and behave as if they are underage girls — somewhere in the neighborhood of, say, six or seven. These women-as-girls are accosted on playgrounds, where they suck provocatively on lollipops and respond to Hardcore’s come-ons with baby talk. In their sex scenes — if they can be called that, as they seem more like systematic attempts to break the human spirit recorded on videotape for posterity and profit — Hardcore, who wears a cowboy hat and whose prop of choice is a hideous canary yellow sofa, violates their holes while spewing forth a stream of degrading language.

Assuredly, Hardcore’s movies are not for the faint of heart. They are targeted at a demographic one would perhaps rather not dwell upon the existence of for any length of time. They are less “movies” and more political demonstrations: of power, of violence, of one man’s seeming frustration with the opposite sex: porn’s very own final girl, who, no matter how hard he tries, will not lay down and (pardon my language) fucking die, leaving poor Max with no choice but to return to the scene of the crime and do it all over again.

Breslin cites the “final girl” from Carol J Clover’s book Men, Women and Chainsaws. Clover argues that final girl, with the androgynous name and the ambiguous gender identity, is the one girl who ultimately survives and defeats the killer, who is also riddled with flawed sexuality and gender identity. This is part of the viewer working through his adolescent male sexual anxieties. Hardcore’s oeuvre bears a certain resemblance to the slasher film, an extremely prolific genre in the early and mid 80s, full of endless variation on the same basic formula. The story reminds me a little of Joss Whedon’s Buffy the Vampire Slayer, which was about the standard horror victim into the hero(ine).

So, if Hardcore’s films are working through (however unsuccessfully) male issues with women, what is This is not Max Hardcore working through? Who is going to watch This is not… and who is going to cheer the female protagonist on? If we assume the default viewer of video porn is a young heterosexual white male, then he might make the identification shift (as Clover describes it) from the “monster” to the “final girl”, rooting for the girl to defeat the “dirty old man” archetype represented by Paul Little. Maybe This is not… is the other half of the dialectic, with the first half by the usual Hardcore video.

Arguably, Hardcore’s videos can be seen as an extreme form of “virtue in distress”, a distant descendant of Richardson’s Clarissa, but misread so that the power dynamic is only one way. This video could be seen as a “strong misreading” (as Harold Bloom would put it) of the Hardcore videos that unwittingly returns to the form’s ancestor.

Here’s a question: does the violence of a Max Hardcore video have the same impact when it is a young woman doing it to an older man? Or does femdom-malesub violence not have the same impact because it is not “real”, that we do not take women seriously as agents of violence? When Red Riding Hood fights back against the Big Bad Wolf, is it heroism or a joke?

Breslin’s piece also provides a great look into the porn culture of 2010, with biographical sketches of Debi Diamond, the producer and former porn performer, Rod Fontana (former US Army officer, porn performer and would-be preacher), and Kristina, the vengeful ersatz Max Hardcore girl who described Paul Little as a “sweet, little old man.”

(Note to Ms. Breslin: When are we going to see a non-fiction book from you?)

The Markham project on female discipline

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Mar 292010
 

The Voice in the Corner spanking blog had a post on “the Markham Project.” “Miss Markham” seems to have been a retroactive creation, a shared name used in various femsub spanking writings by various hands over a considerable period of time. Some go as far back as the Englishwoman’s Domestic Magazine of the 1870s.

The Markham Project was apparently instigated by a professional governess and educationalist, Miss Elisabeth Markham between the 1880s and the early part of the 20th century.

Her aims were to encourage best practice in the training of governesses and the education of young women. She apparently advocated corporal punishment of young women over the age of 16 and unmarried ladies “up to a late age.” Her philosophy was to show that women were not frail creatures and that spanking, caning, birching and other “robust forms of punishment” were essential for discipline and the well-being of “females of all social conditions wishing to better themselves.”

I think a lot of spanking/flagellation erotica of the period imitated the debates over corporal punishment in school and domestic settings, both as protective imitation and as tongue-in-cheek parody. I very much doubt their ever were these flagellation-obsessed schools you read about.

Sexual fantasies vs. Apocalyptic fantasies

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Nov 062009
 

Fetish Pop Culture turned up an interesting French book called La Papesse du Diable (The Devil’s female Pope) by Jehan Silvius and Pierre de Ruynes, 1931.

From a Google-translated summary:

Excellent example of the surreal eroticism of prewar, The High Priestess of the Devil (1931) appears to be due to the collaboration of Ernest Gengenbach and Robert Desnos. (Alexandrian.)

It attends to the entry into Paris of the Mistress of Asia, now Archimagesse Queen of the World, at the head of his hordes coming to conquer Europe. Theme dear to the surrealists, the high priestess of Satan is actually Isis, the wife, the mysterious, the archetypal.

Paris is upset, the streets be renamed; victory of evil forces absolute beneficial: the Great Androgyne throne at Notre Dame, the Pope prisoner is crucified on the Eiffel Tower. Everything ends with the end of the world and in a final orgy sacred General: A desire lascivious half opened the knees of women, men’s eyes gleamed. Everywhere tears, gasps, collapses paintings and cultural objects, cramp-like bristles. Dogs came from who knows where, covered the women gasped. An adolescent, arms outstretched, moaning slowly, half-stifled by four women. Three men in a corner hugged by meowing like girls entwined writhing on a couch …

So, is this an apocalyptic fantasy, the end of the world with a female Antichrist presiding over an orgy? Or is it a sexual fantasy with apocalyptic window-dressing? Is the sex sugar-coating the political/racial content, or vice versa? Books like this are a site for many discourses, and the surrealists had the eye for the end of the world, a key theme of the Gothic.

This is actually a little reminiscent of Bram Stoker’s Dracula, the modern, rationalist West invaded by the sexually deviant yet seductive East/Orient. The possibility of invasion/corruption is also the possibility of revolution and transformation.

Right now, our bookshelves and movie theatres and TV screens are crawling with the sexy undead, though often of a rather neutered strain. The dewey-eyed, sparkling-in-sunlight, heteronormative vampires of the Twilight franchise are a far cry from the polymorphously perverse, disturbing bloodsuckers of older literary incarnations. (By drawing explicit parallels between vampirism and homosexuality, True Blood at least injects a little queerness into the proceedings.)

Can a monster get worn out? Through excessive familiarity, does a monster loose its ability to frighten or inspire? Can you extract the sublimity from something? I’d like to raise Bram Stoker from the dead and sit him down in front of Twilight or The Vampire Diaries and ask him what he would think of the idea as vampires being heroes or romantic partners.

I think that on some weird, subconscious level, the threat of impurity, as represented by Dracula or The Devil’s Papess, also represents the possibility of change. Just as the classic “rape/ravishment” fantasy resolves the paradox of female desire vs. purity, the fantasy of the apocalypse resolves the need for revolution.

Doing (right by) Wonder Woman (right)

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Jul 122009
 

One of my two favorite comics writers, Grant Morrison on the idea of making DC Comics’ Wonder Woman as big a deal as she ought to be. From io9.com:

So, Wonder Woman is a character where you imagine this very strange mélange of girl power, bondage, and a slightly disturbed sexuality. There is this bondage element; these extremely weird dark elements of Wonder Woman haven’t been adequately dealt with. Wonder Woman remains a really bizarre, untouchable character. She should represent women in the same way Superman represents men.

…

To make it work, to give [Wonder Woman] a sexuality that isn’t exploitive, because that’s too easy; but also to give her a [narrative] power.

William Moulton Marston, the character’s creator, was an odd combination of utopian feminist idealism and fetishistic sexuality. It’s important to remember that the character was never purely anything. From the beginning Wonder Woman was (always, already) schizoid, multi-valent: one part patriotic symbol, one part feminist ideal, one part lesbian icon, one part dominatrix, one part sex toy, and probably a few other parts beyond that. It’s hard to make a character with so many diverse elements work, though when it does it can be very satisfying. (Xena: Warrior Princess had a similar mosaic of progressive messages, comedy, kung fu, sword and sorcery, cheesecake/beefcake and lesbian subtext.)

From a writer’s perspective, there’s an additional problem in introducing the character to a larger audience. The other well-known superheroes start out as people in a world that resembles our own. Superman was a mid-western farm kid, Batman was a East Coast old money scion, Spider-man was a working-class nerd. When writing the character, you can start with a person who has grown up in an environment the viewer can relate to, and then add the fantastic elements. Wonder Woman, however, comes from a fantastic island of Amazon women, and in some versions of her origin she was made out of clay and given life. She doesn’t come to our world until she is an adult.

I think it could be done. “Hellboy” for example, features a hero who can’t pass for human, and his challenge is to retain his loyalty to humanity. The story introduces him to the view through the eyes of a more relatable human character.

Dr. Johnson’s “mad thoughts about fetters and manacles”

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Mar 232009
 

The UK newspaper The Daily Mail provides a window into the private life of 18th century English writer Dr Samuel Johnson, specifically his masochistic relationship with another man’s wife, named Hester:

A sunny weekday afternoon in a well-appointed house in Streatham, South London. A generous lunch has been served, and the dining room has echoed with laughter and conversation.

A distinguished male house guest is left alone with his younger and much more attractive hostess. He murmurs something. She flushes and assents. They retire to a private room and lock the door behind them.

She sits on a chair and slips off her shoes. He kneels before her and takes her foot on his lap. He fondles it in his big hands, then stoops to kiss it.

Soon, at his urging, she has bound him hand and foot with padlock and chains, and he – suffused with shame and delight – is submitting to be whipped.

…

In one 1773 letter – written in elaborately formal French so that, if intercepted by servants, it could not be understood – he begged her [Hester]: ‘I wish, my protector, that your authority will always be clear to me, and that you will keep me in that form of slavery which you know so well how to make blissful.’

But there are signs that Hester – initially compliant – was an increasingly reluctant dominatrix. ‘I will detain you no longer,’ she wrote in reply, ‘so farewell and be good; and do not quarrel with your Governess for not using the rod enough.’

Even so, power play was an integral part of their relationship. In 1779 Johnson told Hester: ‘A woman has such power between the ages of 25 and 45 that she may tye a man to a post and whip him if she will.’

Hester later wrote: ‘This he knew of himself was literally and strictly true I am sure.’

And in a diary entry about her relationship with Johnson – whom she called ‘my slave’ – Hester wrote: ‘The fetters and padlocks will tell posterity the truth.’

This is an instance of the use of Master-slave terminology in an erotic sense, decades before the Munby-Cullwick relationship, which may not have been quite as unique as I thought.

The book is Samuel Johnson: The Struggle by Jeffrey Meyers Link

Erotic Dreams of Sarah Palin

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Sep 132008
 

While this is hardly a scientific survey, Slate magazine’s compilation of alleged dreams about Alaska governor and Republic vice-presidential nominee Sarah Palin reveals some interesting themes.

The most common representations of Palin have her associated with death, destruction and deprivation, as when she orders the dreamer to stop nursing her baby and go to jail. Not surprisingly, she appears as a “bad mother,” punishing and killing and violating family bonds and bodily integrity, to both men and women. She appears in a classic castration fantasy, with the male dreamer reduced to a helpless, submissive animal by a huntress/dominatrix:

“Sarah Palin’s standing over me (I’m naked, she’s not) and shouting, podium style, through a pair of great, floating glasses, ‘And you know what? I’m going to cut it off. I’m gonna CUT IT OFF.’ I hear cheers. Are we onstage? I don’t see it, but I feel the presence of TV camera everywhere. She continues, ‘And you know why? Because, well why shouldn’t I? If you’re good, I know God will put it back.’ I look down and realize I have the biggest pot plant ever growing up between my legs. I mean, the thing is beautiful. I think something happens next, but I can’t remember what. All I know is we are in a field, and Sarah Palin is kneeling over me decked out in hunter gear. She cradles her rifle pragmatically and smiles pathetically as if to say, ‘You silly bear,’ and ruffles my stomach. The plant is gone, but I am now covered in fur. And blood. And bits of grass. And as much as I want to bite her face off, I can’t be angry at her. Or rather, I can’t argue it. I’ve got nothing. And she knows it too. Her triumphalism is effortless.”—Joshua Mensch

Yet, there are also dreams of reconciliation and compromise. One dreamer uses the animals killed by Palin to feed the homeless. Another dreams of marrying Palin:

“I dreamt her hubby was killed in an strange accident, and we somehow met in Germany. My wife was also gone, not sure how. McCain became ill, and Sarah and I were married. My son and I moved into the White House, and I gave a speech about Americans not using common sense, etc. Of course there are some romantic portions of the dream I will not go into detail about. She is very attractive—as you know. My speech was powerful, as Sarah and I both scolded the media for not holding the right folks accountable for certain accounting scandals, etc. I also tried very hard to give America a wakeup call on issues like common sense parenting, buying more house and car than we need, being very wasteful, etc. The dream was a bit foggy, but in the end, I wrote several books, and Mrs. Palin-Kaiser ran the country for a year, doing a very good job. I also see her shaking her finger at the media over and over in the dream. But she always gave me a kiss afterward, so I only got on her case a little about the finger-wagging. Much of the dream is foggy, as I did not even know she existed until six weeks ago. Now I think about her a lot.”—Michael A. Kaiser

Marriage (after her husband conveniently dies) makes Palin into at a centrist instead of a religious conservative.

This immediately reminded me of a passage in Laura Frost’s Sex Drives about the relationship of fascism and sexual fantasy. A woman fantasizes about being Adolf Hitler’s lover and gently talking him out of the Holocaust, as if they were having a lover’s quarrel. It’s a strange relationship between sex and politics, the idea that love really could affect the state.

Sacher-Masoch’s The Black Czarina: “Blood spurted over the ermine.”

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Feb 282008
 

At long last, I finally found another translated work by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. “The Black Czarina” was a short story printed in the back of the 1965 Senate edition of Venus in Furs, translated by H.J. Henning. What Fernanda Savage translated as “Confessions of a Supersensual Man”, Henning calls “Confessions of an Ulta-Sentimentalist”, both of which suggest a connection to 18th century ideas of sensibility.

Unfortunately, the book says nothing about where or when “The Black Czarina” was published.

Unsurprisingly, the story reflects Sacher-Masoch’s preoccupation with cruel women (and fur), but it ties in his many other interests in a somewhat ungainly package. It starts off with a picturesque sketch of decaying Galician castles, but that doesn’t last long until: “The great Czar Vladimir is couched at the feet of his slave…. Bearskins are strewn profusely on the ground.”

Vladimir is obsessed with Narda, his slave, who was widowed after the war against Kiev, and delighted in seeing boyards fight to the death over her. The czar, passing by, claims her. However, he grows to love (?) her precisely because of her indomitableness. She says, “Kill me if you like, but you cannot force me. I mock you. You are as impotent as a child.”

To prove his love, Vladimir swaps places with Narda, sovereign and slave, then gives her absolute power for one day, sunrise to sunset.

Unlike Wanda von Dunajew, Narda requires no coaxing to take control on her special day. She wakes to have Vladimir kiss her foot, then dresses in ermine. Her first proclamation: “May my reign be a reign of peace an happiness. As long as it lasts, as far as my sceptre reacher, no man is to bear arms. In token of peace and gentleness, women will form my guard.” She orders treasury gold to be given to the people. She liberates the female slaves from the palace, who serve as her bodyguard.

Sacher-Masoch wasn’t exactly racially progressive, to wit:

“Where is the negress?” enquired Narda.

“In the dungeon.”

“Tigris? And why?”

“She killed her gaoler.”

Narda gave a sign and Tigris was brought to her. She was a superb woman who seemed carved out of ebony. A woman disquieting by the nocturnal splendour of her body of bacchante, by the cruel laugh of her feline face and the bloodthirsty sparkle of her voluptuous eyes.

“You killed a man?” said Narda in a severe tone.

The negress nodded.

“And why?”

“For the pleasure of it,” replied Tigris, grinding her teeth.

“For one day I have the power of life and death,” said the Czarina. “What shall I do with you?”

“Let me die. I cannot live here if I may not kill anybody. My heart thirsts for blood, as yours for kisses.”

“Good. Your thirst will be quenched,” said the Czarina with a shudder. “No man is allowed to bear arms in my domain. I pardon you Tigris. You will be my executioner.”

The negress let fly a savage yelp, the cry of a wild beast.

Narda is also described in animalistic terms.

The czarina and her female guards go on a morning bear hunt, and Narda calmly dispatches a bear. Then things take a turn for the odd. Narda comes across Iegor, the pragmatic and independent-minded peasant man, who is unimpressed by her.

“I hate all those who wear purple and fine linen, and harness men to their carts like beasts. We lived free…. We had no wars, and if anyone disturbed the peace of the commune, the people judged him.”

This is the kind of resourceful, independent peasant man Sacher-Masoch valorized in other writings, at least according to James Cleugh’s biography. Narda wins his loyalty until the end of the day.

When holding court, Narda hears the complaints of the people against the boyard nobles. In this case, loyalty to the czar is seen as a belief in justice and personal autonomy, compared to the corrupt and brutal boyards. Narda orders a boyard executed and quartered, with a portion given to each of four accusers. The others begged for mercy, but they are slaughtered by women archers. The dying men gaze adoringly at their executioners.

When Narda puts Iegor in charge of the army on the frontier, the czar says, “You have done what no sovereign dared to, broken the power of an arrogant nobility. For this, we thank you. But do not interfere with the rights of the Crown.” Narda pays no heed.

She holds an extravagant party at the end of the day. The boyards (presumably the ones who weren’t slaughtered) toast her. While there’s still an hour before sundown, she whips Vladimir.

Vladimir tries to cut this off, but Narda turns a temporary play into a coup. Vladimir and the boyards fall to their knees and surrender. Narda has Tigris execute Vladimir. “Blood spurted over the ermine.” It ends with a decapitation scene straight out of Salome and Judith and other stories of women destroying men, as described as Dijkstra’s Idols of Perversity. Narda becomes Galicia’s benevolent dictator.

While Wanda is an agent (unwitting?) of Severin’s personal transformation (however incomplete and tentative), Narda is an agent of Galicia’s social transformation. She liberates the peasantry from the corrupt and vicious nobility and puts women, slaves and peasants in positions of authority, a classic “world upside down” scenario. Initially, this social upheaval is a liminoid ritual, a temporary period bounded by sunrise and sunset, but Narda takes the opportunity to make the ritual liminal, and permanent. Slave becomes sovereign, and sovereign becomes a corpse. Perhaps this suggests that the play of power in sexual desire, in which women have advantage, according to Sacher-Masoch, could result in real social revolution. We know that Sacher-Masoch grew up in a region wracked with recent peasant uprisings and massacres. For him, that was a very real possibility for the future, and he had a very ambivalent view of it. Perhaps his fascination with personal and social violence was a response to his wish for revolution, combined with his realization that, as an aristocrat and an intellectual, he’d probably be one of the first up against the wall. (Lord Byron had a similar conflict.)

Not a good story, as the dialogue is stilted and the characters are stereotypes, but at least I can speak with a little more authority on the works of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.

The character assasination of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch

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Dec 272007
 

Finke, Michael C. and Carl Niekirk. One Hundred Years of Masochism: Literary Texts, Social and Cultural Contexts Rodopi, 2000

Noyes, John K. The Mastery of Submission: Inventions of Masochism Cornell University Press, 1997

Leopold von Sacher-Masoch needs better literary representation, even though he’s been dead for more than 100 years.

I still have yet to find any of his books that have been translated into English, other than Venus in Furs. There’s a whole shelf of books on Sade, both biographical and critical, but comparatively little on Sacher-Masoch. (Granted, Sade’s life was very well documented and also tied intimately to the history of the French revolution.) Here’s a guy who, in his life, was the next big thing in German literature, the successor to Goethe (who had his own penchant for self-orchestrated suffering, incidentally.)

And then Richard von Krafft-Ebing was rude enough to coin the term masochism, while Sacher-Masoch was still alive. Romanticism collided with science; science won. Whatever Sacher-Masoch’s literary accomplishments, all were forgotten, and he would be known to future generations as merely a lunatic and a sexual deviant. His ex-wife published her memoirs in 1907, further stamping him as a wife abuser.

Continue reading »

Thomas Otway’s Venice Preserved

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Aug 302006
 

First lesson in writing: the library is your friend.

I got a copy of Thomas Otway’s 1682 play Venice Preserved (incorrectly cited as “Venus Preserv’d” in Emily Apter’s Feminizing the Fetish) at the library today, and read it in the dull moments at my temping job.

Venice Preserved is a political allegory about England set in the republic of Venice. The kinky stuff comes in Act III, Scene i. Antonio, a lecherous and corrupt old senator, goes to the house of Aquilina, the Greek courtesan. Aquilina tries to turn him away, as she finds him repulsive, but he pushes his way in.

Antonio addresses Aquilina by childish nicknames (“Nacky, Nacky, Queen Nacky — come let’s to bed…”) and then as “Madonna.” He disregards her insults and brags about his “eloquence” which his actions equate with bribery. He overcomes her objects with money.

Aquil. No, sir, if you please I can know my distance and stand.

Anto. Stand: how? Nacky up and I down! Nay, then, let me exclaim with the poet,
Show me a case more pitiful who can,
A standing woman, and a falling man.
Hurry durry—not sit down—see this, ye gods—You won’t sit down?

Aquil. No, sir.

Anto. Then look you now, suppose me a bull, a basan-bull, the bull of bulls, or any bull. Thus up I get and with my brows thus bent—I broo, I say I broo, I broo, I broo. You won’t sit down, will you?—I broo—[Bellows like a bull, and drives her about.]

Aquil. Well, sir, I must endure this. Now your [she sits down] honour has been a bull, pray what beast will your worship please to be next?

Anto. Now I’ll be a Senator again, and thy lover, little Nicky Nacky! [He sits by her.] Ah toad, toad, toad, toad! spit in my face a little, Nacky—spit in my face prithee, spit in my face, never so little: spit but a little bit—spit, spit, spit, spit, when you are bid, I say; do prithee spit—now, now, now, spit: what, you won’t spit, will you? Then I’ll be a dog.

Aquil. A dog, my lord?

Anto. Ay, a dog—and I’ll give thee this t’other purse to let me be a dog—and to use me like a dog a little. Hurry durry— I will—here ’tis.

[Gives the purse.]

Aquil. Well, with all my heart. But let me beseech your dogship to play your tricks over as fast as you can, that you may come to stinking the sooner, and be turned out of doors as you deserve.

Anto. Ay, ay—no matter for that—that—[He gets under the table]—shan’t move me—Now, bow wow wow, bow wow …

[Barks like a dog.

Aquil. Hold, hold, hold, sir, I beseech you: what is’t you do? If curs bite, they must be kicked, sir. Do you see, kicked thus.

Anto. Ay, with all my heart: do kick. kick on, now I am under the table, kick again—kick harder—harder yet, bow wow wow, wow, bow—’od I’ll have a snap at thy shins—bow wow wow, wow, bow—’od she kicks bravely.—

Aquil. Nay, then I’ll go another way to work with you: and I think here’s an instrument fit for the purpose.

[Fetches a whip and bell.] What, bite your mistress, sirrah! out, out of doors, you dog, to kennel and be hanged—bite your mistress by the legs, you rogue—

[She whips him.]

Anto. Nay, prithee Nacky, now thou art too loving: Hurry durry, ’od I’ll be a dog no longer.

Aquil. Nay, none of your fawning and grinning: but be gone, or here’s the discipline: what, bite your mistress by the legs, you mongrel? out of doors—hout hout, to kennel, sirrah! go.

Anto. This is very barbarous usage, Nacky, very barbarous: look you, I will not go—I will not stir from the door, that I resolve—hurry durry, what, shut me out?

[She whips him out.]

Aquil. Ay, and if you come here any more to-night I’ll have my footmen lug you, you cur: what, bite your poor mistress Nacky, sirrah!

Enter Maid.

Maid. Heavens, madam! What’s the matter?

[He howls at the door like a dog.]

Aquil. Call my footmen hither presently.

Enter two Footmen.

Maid. They are here already, madam, the house is all alarmed with a strange noise, that nobody knows what to make of.

Aquil. Go all of you and turn that troublesome beast in the next room out of my house—If I ever see him within these walls again, without my leave for his admittance, you sneaking rogues, I’ll have you poisoned all, poisoned, like rats; every corner of the house shall stink of one of you; go, and learn hereafter to know my pleasure.

What’s interesting to me is the ambiguous relationship between client and dominatrix, in short, who exactly is on top here? Aquilina doesn’t like him or want him around, but he’s able to pay her to follow his script. She refuses part of the script, to spit on him, and then goes over his limit by whipping him and then kicking him out. There’s a constant push back and forth. It has a ring of truth to it, much as the flagellation scene in John Cleland’s Fanny Hill, published in the middle of the next century.

Later in the play (Act V, scene ii), Aquilina threatens Antonio with a dagger as promised vengeance for the state execution of her beloved Pierre.

Aquil. Thou! think’st thou, thou art fit to meet my joys;
To bear the eager clasps of my embraces?
Give me my Pierre, or—

Anto. Why, he’s to be hang’d, little Nacky,
Trussed up for treason, and so forth, child.

Aquil. Thou liest: stop down thy throat that hellish sentence,
Or’ ’tis thy last: swear that my love shall live,
Or thou art dead.

Anto. Ah-h-h-h.

Aquil. Swear to recall his doom
Swear at my feet, and tremble at my fury.

Anto. I do. Now if she would but kick a little bit, one kick now.
Ah-h-h-h.

Aquil. Swear, or—

Anto. I do, by these dear fragrant foots
And little toes, sweet as, e-e-e-e my Nacky Nacky Nacky.

Aquil. How!

Anto. Nothing but untie thy shoe-string a little, faith and troth,
That’s all, that’s all, as I hope to live, Nacky, that’s all.

Aquil. Ney, then—

Anto. Hold, hold, thy love, thy lord, thy hero Shall be preserv’d and safe.

Aquil. Or may this poniard
Rust in thy heart.

Anto. With all my soul.

Aquil. Farewell—

Even with Aquilina’s dagger at his throat, Antonio seems to be getting off on the situation, angling for more kicks or views of her feet. It’s unclear whether he’s enough of a drunk, a fool or a fetishist that he can’t see he’s in real danger. After her depature, Antonio lies down and pretends to be dead, and Aquilina is not heard from again.

According to Apter’s Feminizing the Fetish, the first scene was the basis for the animal roleplay scene in Emile Zola’s Nana, but I suspect both can be connected to the story of Phyllis coaxing Aristotle into playing the role of a horse for her, which IIRC goes back to the middle ages, though not classical times.

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