W I D E R SCREENINGS TM presents...
WORLD EROTICA INDEX
BOUND FOR PLEASURE (2003)
DAVID BLYTH DVD (region 0)
d. David Blyth; pr. David Blyth; Michael Heath; ph. Steve Latty; ed. Tim Woodhouse; m. Jed Town; cast. various (74 mins)
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PRE-PUBLICITY ARTWORK
Moral Repugnance and the Anthropology of Bondage & Discipline
Bound for Pleasure is a documentary concerning bondage and discipline mistresses and the peculiar interests of the clients they serve. The anthropological nature of the film – director David Blyth has a B.A in art history and anthropology from Auckland University – is inherent in this study of subject matter that many find morally repellent.
Still, as a document of New Zealand’s offbeat sex culture, the film is fascinating. Interspersed with interviews with Auckland’s premier dominatrixes are visual renderings of the practices of sado-masochism which may seem extreme to the novice but are clearly about role-playing and fantasy more than actual pain or the indulgence of any disturbing Sadean scenarios or impulses (the only sight of blood here is quickly bandaged by the attentive dominatrix). The playacting of scenarios of dominance, submission and pain are clearly therapeutic means of pleasure for the customers of these expert, professional women and as a look at the psyche of the dominatrix, Bound for Pleasure is unmatched in adult cinema.
Blyth’s intent is demystification although the format he chooses recalls decades of exploitative documentaries, something that the New York Times seized upon in their review of the film as essentially a titillating pseudo-documentary. Thus, he juxtaposes visuals of caning – the actual recording of BDSM fantasies – with interview footage in which the respective dominatrixes discuss the actual business side of it. In this, Blyth contrasts the sexual fantasy of the dominatrix with the actual mechanics of the profession – the business of painful playacting sexual titillation: or as one dominatrix puts it as a lead in to the credits sequence “sex is cheap, domination isn’t.” Although the recording of the practice of domination has its inherent voyeuristic appeal, what interests Blyth is the psychological insight into human sexuality offered by the dominatrix’ voice over – the speculation that men consider women more mysterious and secretly long (within a Patriarchal structure) what happens if women have total control, and the revelation that many of the men seeking such fantasy services are well-off, established professionals.
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THE "SLAVE"
Submissive Men / Male Masochism within Patriarchal Socialization
Interesting psychologically as addressed by one Mistress is the public perception that submissive men are weak, with male masochism and associated fetish being a trait in human nature that Patriarchal codes of sexuality are loathe to accept, admit or accommodate except on the fringes of legality.
Here, the insight of the male clients (masked) is equally interesting – the preference for a safe environment in which to totally let them-selves go and surrender to the Mistress’ demands from them. Thankfully, Blyth is always tender with his interview subjects, respectful and attentive to their point of view so that the documentary is never exploitative, described even by the New York Times as rather “sweet” more so than explicitly pornographic in its depiction of unusual sexual fantasy. Indeed, although the sexual practices here are unusual within a Patriarchal frame of reference, Blyth as anthropologist never slips into the psychologist’s attention to pathology. Thus, although unusual, the sexual interests here are careful not to be made to seem abnormal psychologically in any way: this is behavioural observation and socio-sexual commentary without moralistic judgment.
The subdivision of the dominatrix figure into symbolic dualities – the “bitch goddess” and the “mummy figure” respectively – suggests again the Patriarchal distinction between mothers and sexual objects imposed upon women by Patriarchy. The crucial distinction here is that the dominatrix is not objectified but subjectified: in control of sexuality through the ability to give and withhold pain and pleasure, the dominatrix is a role / icon outside Patriarchal construction: hence the trouble that Patriarchally-imposed censorship systems have in dealing with explicit BDSM role-playing imagery around issues of “consent”. Taking people to their personal limit is the intent of the experience supplied by the dominatrix. Finding that personal limit requires both absolute trust and experimentation – dripping candle wax, applying a mouse trap to a man’s penis and gently snapping it. Here there is a necessary distinction between BD (bondage and discipline) and SM (sado-masochism) based around blood and faeces – the former not involving such but the latter accepting it as par for the course of fantasy.
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BDSM as Role-Play Fantasy
What interests Blyth is BDSM as play – the dungeon, candles, accoutrements as the theatre of sexual fantasy in a sense timeless and unaccountable to traditional (Patriarchal Christian) morality in its simultaneous embrace and gender reversal of humanity’s Sadean impulses.
Thus, one Mistress describes it as “a play for one moment in time”, with many clients arriving with a pre-written script they want enacted out as part of the BDSM session, the submissive party stepping out of their normal comfort zone for a transcendental experience. The BDSM theatre is thus for Blyth a sexually creative experience and the aesthetics involved in depicting the various BDSM scenes is increasingly stylized and evocative. Thus what began with an objective camera distance and flat lighting is increasingly closer, with more camera movement, coloured lighting and music – to subjectively capture the transcendental nature of the taboo BDSM experience. In these scenes the film segues from anthropological observation to an almost aesthetic sense of near-religious ecstasy.
Beyond theatre in Blyth’s examination is the therapeutic aspects of the BDSM session and Blyth asks questions of a particular male slave in the midst of his session, the answers suggesting that the humiliation and degradation has made the man feel relaxed and pleasurable, the surrender of control for the temporary duration of the session being cathartic. Indeed, there is a Matriarchal dimension to BDSM: evidenced best in the sequences in which Blyth documents a mother and son team, the son learning the proper process of whipping a slave through the mother’s instruction and finding immense personal satisfaction and enjoyment in the role. The inversion of Patriarchal tradition through the BDSM experience is, again, the theme underlying Blyth’s behavioural anthropology. Significantly, both the dominatrix’s son learning the trade and the mal clients enact or re-enact experiences that are rooted in childhood experience: hence, it is again – as is typical of Blyth even in his early surrealistic work in Angel Mine for instance – Freudian psychology which captivates Blyth, in this case the origins and expression of the fetishistic mindset exemplified in Blyth’s examination of cross-dressing impulses in otherwise rough, masculine men.
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Cross-Dressing & Gender Delineation
It is cross-dressing within a BDSM fantasy which allows many men to let their “male guard” down and relinquish for the duration of the session their obligation to Patriarchy’s clear gender delineations.
Hence, anal eroticism in men is perhaps the final taboo which men face when confronting the reality of the transcendent BDSM – thus, being “fucked up the arse” is for men within the BDSM experience as much a form of humiliation as it is the indulgence of a homosexual or bisexual urge, the dynamics of which are played out in the theatre of BDSM which some can date as far back as the Kama Sutra. However it is such literature as The Story of O (a submissive female slave) – filmed in the 1970s to the consternation of hypocritical male moralistic censors everywhere – which has given rise to the populist mythology surrounding BDSM.
The journey from light fantasy to absolute surrender and loving devotion to the mistress emerges through Bound for Pleasure, easily the finest and most accessible documentary to emerge on the BDSM movement to date.
Bound for Pleasure was followed up by the documentary Transfigured Nights.
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