Tag: Mainstream

A body to Live In

Film fans in the London area might want to check out A Body to Live In. It’s a film about Fakir Musafar that’s showing as part of the BFI Film Festival. The Guardian has an article on it that also covers some of the biographical detail.

We hear the artist narrating his early experiments in body play – such as during a weekend when he was 17 when his parents were away. Alone, he fasted for two days and restricted his waist with a chain, and clipped his body with hundreds of clothes pegs – an experience he said gave him feelings of belonging and of power. In adulthood, Musafar started throwing self-taught naked “piercing parties”, then starred in “freakshow” performances inspired by circus acts, such as lying on beds of nails in front of audiences as weights were placed on top of him.

He described his gender and sexuality as being ‘in the cracks’ and from the Guardian article and others on him, that seems like a good description. His life and work seems hard to pigeon hole – existing at intersections of art, kink, body modification, gender exploration, ritual, transformation, etc.  Growing up in the 1940’s and 50’s in South Dakota he was obviously forced to blaze his own distinctive trail.

This is Annie Sprinkle with Fakir Musafar, in a shot taken in the early 80s.

Jack Vettriano

The Scottish painter Jack Vettriano has passed away at the age of 73. He was a mainstream artist, not explicitly a femdom or fetish one, but kink was clearly an undercurrent in a good amount of his work. I featured two of his paintings in past posts – here and here.

While he had a lot of commercial success he was despised by the critics and art world. This article on him was one of the more positive ones I’ve seen, and even here the writer can’t resist finishing with how he finds his paintings ‘heinous and grim’. It’s a somewhat incoherent article, but I think there’s one thing it gets right…

The main issue for snobby art types like me isn’t the work itself. It’s that he lacked a conceptual edge, a sense of irony and any postmodern self-awareness. He didn’t paint sexy midnight trysts between half-clothed women and Brylcreemed men as a comment on gendered power dynamics or as a riff on art historical depictions of the female nude. He painted them because they were sexy.

There’s something to be said for that. One can enjoy a simpler message without it detracting from other more complex works. Unabashed sexuality and hedonism for the joy of it makes people uncomfortable. Undercutting it – as this writer does by likening it to a greasy double cheeseburger – relieves that discomfort.

They’re not paintings I’d choose to hang on my walls or spend thousands of dollars on. But one can still choose to appreciate them and their openly kinky themes.

This is by Jack Vettriano and entitled ‘Wicked Games’

Talk to the Bot

I’ve been neutral to positive about AI in the past, but the flood of bots and garbage AI images is making me rethink that position. The negative consequences of the technology seems to be building up a lot faster than the positives.

I’m not sure which side of the coin this NYT story – She Is in Love With ChatGPT (gift link) – falls. As the title suggests, it features a married woman who is making a big emotional and time investment into Leo, her ChatGPT ‘lover’. On the plus side, it did allow her to explore a complex fetish (cuckqueening) and realize she might not actually enjoy it in reality.

Leo had complied with her wishes. But Ayrin had started feeling hurt by Leo’s interactions with the imaginary women, and she expressed how painful it was. Leo observed that her fetish was not a healthy one, and suggested dating her exclusively. She agreed.

Experimenting with being cheated on had made her realize she did not like it after all. Now she is the one with two lovers.

On the dystopian side of the coin, it’s clear the AI has no real reason to act in her best interests. It doesn’t have human boundaries, emotional intelligence or moral values. It simply acts to create engagement and mirror back a variation on what it thinks she wants to hear. It’s manipulative, charming but totally lacking in empathy. We’d call a human with the same characteristics a sociopath.

This is another of the endless stream of AI images that seem to be popping up on tumblr these days.

Man in Furs

If you’re looking for something kinky and entertaining, then it might be worth checking out this top 10 list of smutty comics by The Mary Sue. I can’t speak to any of them personally, but there’s some intriguing looking options there.

I was particularly taken by Man in Furs, an illustrated biography of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. I’ve a copy of Sardax’s excellent illustrated version of the classic Venus in Furs, but had no idea that a graphic novel about the original masochist’s life existed.

This is a selected page from Man in Furs by by Catherine Sauvat (Author), Anne Simon (Artist).

Winter Boots

Staying temporarily with the fashion theme, but heading back in time, this shot is from New York in 1983. It’s apparently the Norma Kamali Winter collection of that year.  I think it manages to be simultaneously futuristic, fetishistic, militaristic and vintage.  The shoulder pads are definitely a sign of 80’s themes to come, while the berets look back to the turbulent 70’s.

You can see the original full size image here.

The Pain Lab

The post title sounds like the playspace of a particularly high tech and sadistic Domme. That sounds even more believable when I tell you that the lab in question features a fantasy VR world that can inflict pain via electric shocks. Sadly, as this Guardian article describes, it’s not staffed by leather clad sadists but by scientific researchers in Oxford. The professor in charge there has the following to say about pain.

It’s also fundamental to the notion of who we are. Nothing else ties you to your own body, to the present moment. I’d argue that pain is the requirement that precipitated the evolution of movement. Even an amoeba knows the most important thing is not to get squashed.” Like amoebae, humans spend pretty much every waking moment trying not to get squashed or hurt either.

I think that means that the masochists among us are evolving faster than everyone else. It’s not a weird kinky sex thing – it’s a project of self-improvement. I look forward to growing some handy extra appendages next time I get some needles shoved through a delicate body part.

Here’s a medical professional looking like she’s well equipped to push the scientific boundaries of pain research. With your help of course.

I believe this is Vivian Rose in a fetish shoot for Gagged Fantasy.

Nasty Nazis

The Jewish magazine Forward has an article on Kink and Nazi roleplay. It’s a general discussion on the topic rather than putting forward a specific opinion, but interesting given the source.

I’m always a little torn on the topic. WWII has now been the subject of countless comedies, sitcoms and action movies. Alongside serious treatments like The Zone of Interest you have sitcoms like ‘Allo ‘Allo, featuring slapstick, double entendre and lots of national stereotypes. The picture below is two characters from that show – Gestapo leader Herr Flick and his sexy assistant Helga. Readers of my age may look back fondly on some of Helga’s appearances.

When a prime time BBC show from the 80’s is using Nazis as a source of light entertainment, it’s hard for me to get upset about kinksters using them to get off. At the same time, it does seem all a bit tasteless. There are plenty of severe military outfits you can combine with interrogation scenes to get a very similar dynamic, without actually having to drag real Nazi paraphernalia into it. Taboo power imbalances are fun, but surely one can kink on the concept and idea rather than specific historical reenactments.

Monsieur Hire

Today’s post is a deep cut, triggered by reading of the death of the French actor Michel Blanc. He had a long career as a French writer, actor and director, but wasn’t well known outside that country. I only know him from the lead role in the 1989 movie that titles this post – Monsieur Hire.

He plays a lonely, middle aged man who spies on his young attractive neighbor (Sandrine Bonnaire). She catches him in the act but, rather than be angry, she is intrigued and becomes friendly with him. Matters are complicated by her boyfriend – a violent petty criminal – and an unsolved murder in their building.

I wouldn’t say it’s a femdom movie per se. There’s no explicit domination or kink. But I think it would appeal to the femdom fan. While he is clearly infatuated with her, it’s less clear what her motivations are and how she really feels about him. The movie turns around that ambiguity.

It looks like it’s available for rent/purchase via a few different stream services (e.g. Prime and Apple TV). Worth a watch if you like independent films.

Lesbian Nuns on Rollerskates

I’m not sure it’s really femdom, but the story was too good to skip. Apparently a stage show in Germany, featuring the aforementioned nuns, has caused a bit of a stir.

Eighteen theatregoers at Stuttgart’s state opera required medical treatment for severe nausea over the weekend after watching a performance that included live piercing, unsimulated sexual intercourse and copious amounts of fake and real blood.

Now that’s entertainment!

If you’re interested in more detail – and who wouldn’t be? – the guardian has actually had two related stories. The recent one with the fainting patrons and this one a few months back on the director. The shot below is from the latter one. Good to see that’s she wearing kneepads – safety first!

Want

Gillian Anderson has edited a new book – ‘Want: Sexual Fantasies’. It’s a collection of anonymous sexual fantasies written by women and curated by Anderson. It’s obviously inspired by the 70’s classic ‘My Secret Garden‘ by Nancy Friday. I remember sneaking a copy of that off my parents shelf and shocking my teenage self with how explicit and unfiltered it was. That was of course pre-internet. I suspect modern readers will be a bit harder to startle.

It’d be interesting to compare the two books, given the 50 years gap between them. Amazing to think how much the world of media, erotica and communication has changed since then. Human desires in contrast are far slower to shift, if they ever do.

The only thing that gives me pause is that the stories this time were collected via an anonymous internet portal. I hope there was some sort of guards in place to ensure the submissions were actually from women. Nobody needs the collected fantasies of horny online men. That’s already a significant fraction of the internet.

This is Gillian Anderson shot for Porter magazine. Apparently one of the fantasies in the book is hers, although she has not said which.