film – Page 11 – The History of BDSM

Kinjite Forbidden Subjects (1989): The Celluloid Dungeon

Feb 182019

Not all of the works I plan on exploring in The Celluloid Dungeon will have BDSM as a primary or even secondary theme. Some will have BDSM in a single scene or even a single moment.

Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects, a 1989 crime thriller starring Charles Bronson, is not a good film, by most standards. It’s mainly about an older racist cop, Lt. Crowe (Bronson), harassing and brutalizing non-white people in Los Angeles in pursuit of an exploitative pimp, Duke. That story is awkwardly spliced with another story about a Japanese salaryman, Hada, who moves with his wife and two daughters to Los Angeles. Hada’s elder daughter, Fumiko, somewhere in her early teens, is kidnapped, raped multiple times (offscreen, thankfully) and pimped out, before Crowe rescues her.

Payback (1999): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Feb 072019

Payback (IMDB) is a 1999 neo-noir crime thriller, starring Mel Gibson.

In The Celluloid Closet, Vito Russo talked about the phase of American movies in which queer film characters existed mainly as dramatic or comedic foils to the straight characters. Whether they were swishy nellies or twisted sadists, they were a simple object lesson in proper and improper gender roles. That extends to the present day, though perhaps a little less overt: heroes are associated with heterosexuality, monogamy, vanilla sex, and other normative sexualities, while villains tend towards bisexuality, non-monogamy, and fetishes and kinks.

Pearl (Lucy Liu) stomps on Val, while Porter (Mel Gibson) watches

Tightrope (1984): The Celluloid Dungeon

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Feb 062019

Tightrope (IMDB) is a 1984 thriller starring Clint Eastwood and Genevieve Bujold. It’s very much of the “woman in peril” genre: New Orleans detective Wes Block (Eastwood) tracks a killer of sex workers.

Wes Block (Eastwood) looks at the first victim.

Link Roundup, December 2018

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Dec 162018

The big issue is the spread of Internet censorship, starting with Tumblr’s ban on adult content starting December 17th, 2018. The Verge says this will probably be the end of a unique, diverse and vibrant sex positive culture, such as a woman’s self-published nudes. Even before then, Tumblr was flagging completely innocuous posts as adult content. Wired has more details. While this may not be targeted at women’s sexuality, it will probably come down hardest on that.
Engadget covers Facebook’s own crackdown on sexual speech.
Perhaps paradoxically, Marcus K Dowling writes that kink is poised to explode into the mainstream in much the same way as porn exploded in the 1970s.
As I’ve dug deeper into the silent film era in search of the proto-dominatrix and the roots of fetish fashion, I found that a certain image I and many other people thought was of Musidora in her famous Irma Vep black catsuit was actually someone else entirely, from a Musidora-inspired photo shoot. The perils of uncredited images.
The Conversation documents the moral panic about sadism in 1930s Australia, and how this ended up doing a disservice to victims of violence.
Margaret Cho is producing a web series about a queer, Asian-American, professional and lifestyle dominatrix, called Mercy Mistress. First episode on Youtube.

Announcing the Celluloid Dungeon

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Oct 232018

Bettie Page with camera and photographer

Now that A Lover’s Pinch is out, I want to continue working. It’s not the only book on BDSM I want to write. While I don’t have any response from a publisher yet, I want to get to work on my next product, The Celluloid Dungeon. Students of queer film and history will doubtless notice the resemblance to the title of the classic book, Vito Russo’s The Celluloid Closet. I hope this will do the same for BDSM in film (primarily American).

There are a few problems to consider. First, I would like to have a lot of images in this book, but I run into two problems. First, getting the rights to film images via Getty or other services can be very expensive. Whether I self-publish or go through a publisher, I’ll have to pay for that myself.

Second, a lot of very old images, such as from the silent era, may or may not be in public domain, and good luck finding who owns the rights to them. For instance, I’d like to use stills from the old Irving Klaw bondage stags, featuring Bettie Page, but I’m not sure if they’re public domain or who owns the rights if they’re not.

Images are not essential to a work like this, but I think they would increase the customer appeal.

I also need to work on a clear thesis that will help organize the material.

The Woman in Black: in search of the proto-dominatrix

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Jun 182018

What are the sartorial origins of the black-clad dominatrix? I will skip the more familiar examples from recent years and try to find the earlier examples.

Certainly everyone will remember Diana Rigg as Mrs. Emma Peel (“Miss SM Appeal”) in the UK spy TV series The Avengers. Her most overtly kinky costumes were features in the episodes “A Touch of Brimstone” and “Death at Bargain Prices.”

Woman in black leather suit with zippers

Diana Rigg as Emma Peel in The Avengers, wearing the leather jumpsuit costume from “Death at Bargain Prices”

Tom of Finland (2017)

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Dec 152017

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Tom of Finland (2017). Directed by Dome Karukoski, written by Aleksi Bardy and Dome Karukoski. IMDB

I only know the broad outlines of the life of Touko Laaksonen, AKA Tom of Finland, so I can’t attest to the historical accuracy of this film. It is definitely a biopic, not a documentary. The film spans a considerable span of time, from Laaksonen’s furtive outdoor experiences during WWII to his celebrity in HIV-era America.

Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017)

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Nov 142017

Professor Marston and the Wonder Woman (2017). Director and writer Angela Robinson. IMDB

Who was Professor William Moulton Marston? A fantasist in the tradition of Frank Baum or Lewis Carrol? A guy who ruled a secret menage a trois with his wife and his younger student? A failed academic turned huckster and pornographer with a line in psychobabble? A loving father and husband with an unorthodox, closeted family?

Guest Post: Did William Moulton Marston and Charles Guyette actually meet?

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Oct 242017

Still from the film. Central is Bella Heathcote as Olive Byrne. In the background is JJ Field as Charles Guyette.

[The film Professor Marston and the Wonder Women (2017, dir. Angela Robinson) is a “based on true events” story of William Moulton Marston, the two women he lived with, his interest in bondage, and how all of that influenced his superheroine creation, Wonder Woman. The film includes scenes in the 1930s in which Marston meets Charles Guyette, an early pioneer of fetish/BDSM media in the USA. While Marston definitely had an interest in bondage and fetishes, I was skeptical that meeting had actually occurred. I asked Richard Pérez Seves, a fellow kinky historian, and author of a biography and photo collection of Guyette, if this had happened.]