Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist

I recently watched Sick: The Life & Death of Bob Flanagan, Supermasochist. It’s a documentary detailing Bob’s life as a writer, performance artist and sexual submissive masochist. What made him particularly extraordinary was that he suffered from cystic fibrosis, a disease that normally kills people before they reach their mid 20’s. He died age 43, making him one of the worlds longest lived suffers from it.

If you’ve never seen it I’d urge you to rush out and get a copy. I thought it was an extraordinarily moving film. I’m not ashamed to say I cried a little at the end. I also think it captures some aspects of masochism, submission and D/s better than any other film I’ve seen. Using a fairly standard documentary format, cutting interviews of friends and family into home movie footage, it paints a very frank and honest picture of his life with his partner and mistress Sheree Rose.

This is actually the second time I’ve seen the film. I first saw it over 10 years ago, before I’d gotten physically involved in BDSM, and I remember being fairly horrified at some of the SM activities they did. Now I look at the footage and think “Yes, done that. Loved that. Oh play piercing, that’s fun. Drinking piss, done that…..” I’ve never actually nailed my cock to a board as Bob does at one point in the film, but my sense of ‘normal’ has clearly shifted.

There’s some attempt in the film, particularly by his parents, to tie his early childhood experiences with his illness to his kinkiness. I understand that desire to look for a cause and effect, but it seems to be misplaced. The vast majority of kinky guys don’t have major childhood trauma and medical procedures. I think he was someone with cystic fibrosis who happened to be kinky. The one clearly influences the other, but it seems misplaced to think of it as a cause.

Two quotes really stuck with me. The first from Bob was near the start of the movie. The second is from Sheree and was towards the end when he was getting very sick.

People don’t think of the masochist as being a strong person. The stereotype that the masochist is sniveling and weak is actually not true. The masochist has to know his or her own body perfectly well and be in full control of their body, in order to give control to somebody else or to give control to pain. So the masochist is actually a very strong person.
Bob Flanagan

I don’t even think he’s a masochist anymore. I think life has beaten him down too much. The pain he lives with every day is so intense that there isn’t any other kind of pain that he can even think about right now.
Sheree Rose

I certainly agree with the first quote, and I think the second helps emphasize the same point. Being a masochist (or submissive) doesn’t mean being a needy person or someone who has no control over their life. You need control and a strong sense of self in order to successfully gift that to another. By the end he’d lost that, the disease was taking over and he could no longer give away power. His body and its sickness had already stolen it.

The movie is available on DVD from amazon. You can read Roger Ebert’s review of it here.

Update: Scott of Mrs Kelly’s Playhouse was actually friends with Bob in the early 90’s. He’s left a lengthy comment on this post describing some of his memories of Bob. My thanks to Scott for that additional information.

Y: The Last Man

I’m part way through reading a really excellent graphic novel entitled “Y: The Last Man.” I’ve never been a fan of the more traditional style comic books, but this steers clear of superhero cliches and the traditional clunky expository style speeches. Instead it reads more like a clever hip TV show, with funny snappy dialog and sly cultural references.

The premise is that every man (and male animal) drops dead at exactly the same time, leaving only those people without a Y chromosome alive. The only exception is a single young man named Yorick and his pet male monkey. What follows is the story of his quest to find his girlfriend (he’s in the US, she’s in Australia), while the 3B remaining women in the world try and deal with the aftermath of this cataclysmic event.

The author has obviously had a lot of fun thinking about some of the less obvious effects of such a societal shift. The obvious male dominated fields like engineering and law enforcement are clearly going to be a problem. But what about politics? There are comparatively few female politicians, and most of those are from the Democratic party (in the US). So by default the Democrats end up in charge, which doesn’t sit well with the surviving wives of the Republican politicians. The military is another male dominated area, with the exception of Israel, which conscripts and trains women and men. Israel is therefore vaulted into the forefront as a military power, something they’re not slow to take advantage of. There series is full of such intriguing ideas, most of which are great illustrations of just how unequally divided the world still is.

For the most part the books do a good job of subverting the obvious sexual expectations of being the only man on a planet full of women. Yorick spends most of his time hiding and trying not to be killed or kidnapped, rather than trying to repopulate the planet. But there’s one interesting sub-plot where he has an encounter with an aggressive and apparently dominant woman. Things don’t play out exactly as you might expect from these two front page shots, but it adds an entertaining erotic twist into a plot that’s already fairly unusual from a gender and sexual point of view.

A little bondage

Amazingly Bondage magazine was actually the official magazine of the James Bond fan club. It’s an obvious word play to use, but I’m kind of surprised they went with that particular title. I guess back in the 70’s and 80’s they didn’t have to worry about internet keywords and search filtering.

The shot below is from Quantum of Solace, the most recent Bond movie, and shows Daniel Craig with Gemma Arterton. I like his look of passion, the sense he’s drinking in the scent of her flesh. In contrast she looks relaxed, amused and controlled. Sadly the movie itself wasn’t all that great, and was nowhere near as good as the excellent Casino Royale that preceeded it.

Bond has had a number of interesting femme fatales to deal with over the years. As a kid I remember being entranced by Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush, with her scene as a nurse being particularly compelling. There was also the predictably ridiculously named Xenia Onatopp from Pierce Brosnan’s first (and best) Bond movie, Goldeneye. She enjoyed aggresive rough sex when she wasn’t gleefully gunning down men. Some people get a touch vexed about these kind of stereotypes, but that’s really like getting upset at finding alcohol in a bar. What were you really expecting? Nuanced views on sexuality, gender or politics are not really the strong points of the series.

I found this on the Alternative Female Domination tumblr site.

The joy of referrals

One of the things I’ve most enjoyed about creating this blog is all the interesting sites it has led me to. My original plan was simply to use it to share all the random links and images that I personally appreciated. But thanks to comments, emails and my referral logs, I’ve ended up gaining far more than a simple place to broadcast my opinions.

The latest interesting incoming link that I’ve spotted is from the “he stoops to worship” blog. It’s an unusual femdom blog, in that it contains a much broader selection of artwork than most, drawing from both mainstream and kinky sources. It’s written by slave c and he’s done an excellent job of both selecting the images and providing useful background to them. There’s everything from German pre-war art, through Hollywood Film Noir to erotic illustrations.

The following two images were taken from a post featuring the work of Craig Morey. I think the contrasting bodies together with the sense of balance and symmetry creates something really beautiful.

he stoops to worship

You and me babe, how about it?

This image is taken from a sequence titled ‘Backyard Love’ by the photographer Ville Varumo. That title makes me think of a pulpy porn novel set in the deep south of the US, with a cover featuring a busty blonde in daisy dukes. Instead it’s actually based on the classic love story ‘Romeo and Juliet’. Or, if like me you tend to the cynical, the classic tale of two idiotic teenagers who would make fine candidates for a Darwin award.

Anyway, regardless of the source, I kind of like the image. Although I’m not sure I can put my finger on why. There’s a nice sense of balance and elegance to it. The wall and the blindfold actually makes me think of a firing squad, which isn’t sexy, but certainly adds an interesting edge to it. You can see the rest of the sequence at the homotography blog.

Oh, and ten bonus kinky points (zero monetary value, non-transferable, void where prohibited) to anyone who can name the link between this post and the title I gave it.

Kinky Catwoman continued

Yesterday’s post got a couple of follow-up comments on the snarling sexiness that was Julie Newmar’s Catwoman. lovetosubmit commented about her taunting Batman when she had him in a compromising position, and that certainly struck a chord with me. As a youngster I can remember being transfixed by scenes of her tieing up Batman, long before I knew what femdom, kink or even sex was. So for all the other fans out there of Ms Newmar’s catty glory, here’s her another shot of her, this time taunting the helpless Adam West.

Sex Therapy

This isn’t so much a post as a pointer to an article of interest. It isn’t even a femdom related article, although it does feature kinky violent sex. I just thought it was an extraordinary article and worth sharing.

The article in question was written by Mac McClelland, a journalist who specializes in visiting the less pleasant parts of this world. After an intense and difficult trip to Haiti she began to suffer from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and found that a night of violent forced sex helped her to deal with it and move on.

I’ve fortunately never had to deal with anything as remotely difficult or emotional damaging as what she has been through. But, without wishing to draw any kind of direct comparison, I do understand how this very powerful blend of physical intensity and mental stress can lead to a cathartic release.

Deadly Little Miho

In my last post I mentioned I wasn’t a big comic book fan. As far as the traditional superhero comics go, this is a true statement. I was never a fan of their infinite episodic nature, the endlessly complicated back stories and their clunky expository dialogue style. However, in recent years I have started purchasing the hardback collected editions of some of the more interesting and self-contained comics (or graphic novels). Titles such as Sandman, Hellboy, The Last Man and Fables manage to combine striking artwork with interesting and complex storytelling.

By far my favorite purchase to date has been the Frank Miller library edition of Sin City. The story is ridiculous, the violence excessive and the morality dubious. But I love it. The artwork is both distinctive and beautiful, and the dialog has the staccato brutality of James Ellroy crossed with the romance of Raymond Chandler.

There’s certainly no shortage of characters with a fetish or BDSM slant. But my personal pick would have to be Miho, the sadistic Japanese assassin. Silent, lethal and unstoppable, she toys with each man she fights, before finishing him off in spectacularly violent fashion. She may not be a domme in the commercial sense, but she’s undoubtedly a beautiful dominant woman.

The first image below is taken from the film version, starring Devon Aoki as Miho. The second image is Frank Miller’s drawing of her from the cover of the Family Values story.

Super Sub

This image put a smile on my face when I stumbled across in earlier today. Not sure who the mysterious lady is (I was never a big comic book fan), but she seems to have put Superman in his place.

Although as I come to think about it, Superman would probably be a pretty boring slave to own. He’d be able to complete all his tasks and chores very quickly, but that would mean he’d be hanging around waiting for more instructions all the time. And he’d be pretty tough to punish unless you had some kryptonite toys. I guess you could get him to punish himself, but where’s the fun in that? In a genre packed with kinky subtext and power games, he always was one of the most conventional and vanilla characters.

Updated: This is probably carrying my fetish for attribution a little too far, but thanks to sub2mgi I can now add that the mysterious lady is someone called Star Sapphire. I was also hoping to add a couple of terse sentences describing exactly who she is. However, after looking at her wikipedia page, it’s clear she’s one of the many comic characters whose back story requires a supercomputer and a team of nerds to keep track of. As best I can tell, she’s something to do with the Green Lantern.

Hanging a left on geek street

Despite matching a number of the geek stereotypes (smart, bookish, analytical, software hacking guy) I typically don’t like the stereotypical geek TV shows. Things like Star Trek, Doctor Who, X-Files and the new Battlestar Galatica do absolutely nothing for me. However, there is one exception to this rule – Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I love this show with a passion that goes well beyond any rational measure and borders on the scarily obsessed (although not quite to the extent Simon Pegg portrays in the brilliant series Spaced). Powerful female characters, clever writing, multi-layered story arcs and tweedy British sex symbols – what’s not to like?

Of course my favorite character was always Willow, the quiet, shy, super smart, super nerdy red head, whose alter-egos always turned out to be über-dommes. The first of these was vampire Willow, shown in the first image below, who tried to both kill and make-out with her good counterpart. Then came dark Willow, shown in the second image, who pretty much tried to kill everybody.

If you’ve never seen the show, then it’s well worth queuing up on netflix. There are no sparkly vampires, and if you feel the need to intellectually justify watching a show about teenagers, then feel free to browse some of the academic papers writen on it.