It’s going to be a kinky summer. In a couple of weeks Venus in Fur will be released [may 30]. This latest, erotically charged film by The Pianist director Roman Polanski riffs on the mistress/slave dynamic of Venus in Furs, the power play novella written by Leopold von Sacher Masoch (the man who put the Masoch into Masochism). On top of that there’s the bicentenary of the Marquis de Sade (Sadism, check), and a concomitant hooha of new books, festivals and exhibitions, notably one in the prestigious Parisian Musee D’Orsay. The new Fifty Shades film was even scheduled gloriously to co-incide with this anniversary, though it has now slid to early next year.
On the one hand, this gives us the excuse to consider, watch - heck, even engage in something beyond the vanilla. On the other, it’s an opportunity to reflect on the legacy of Sade and Sacher Masoch: how we feel about (consensual, sane and safe) ‘Sadism & Masochism’ today, and how these Nineteenth and Eighteenth Century authors may have paved the way for EL James’ Mommy Porn bestseller.
What is it about Venus in Furs, an often ponderous text published in German in 1870 about a marble-hearted dominatrix, that still has currency today? “There can be a huge erotic charge in giving up, or in taking control,” says psychologist Dr Sandra Wheatley. “The story endures because, in reading it, you can imagine that you could possibly turn into something extraordinary (either dominant or submissive) like the characters in the book.” Polanski takes the mistress / slave heart of the book and layers on further dynamics: the film depicts a director auditioning an actress to play the part of Venus, the actress first supplicant then wresting control. An extra level is added by Polanski’s choosing to direct his real-life wife, Emmanuelle Seigner, casting her as the film’s heroine. So successful is the depiction of the charge of these exchanges it has already won a French Cesar award.
Sade’s work is less easy to associate with than Sacher Masoch’s, and is the opposite of arousing. 120 Days of Sodom, for example, is a grisly catalogue of sexual degradation and torture. The author himself was a coprophiliac who poisoned prostitutes with aphrodisiacs and seduced - among many others - his wife’s younger sister (incurring the wrath of his mother-in-law and leading to his imprisonment). He also, ironically, may have been more of a masochist than a sadist.
Unsurprisingly, these aspects of Sade’s character will not be at the forefront of the bicentenary.
Instead the Sade standard-bearers are pushing him as a loving husband and who liked champagne (true, one suspects, in part). A man who fought censorship. A kind of intellectual freedom fighter whose writing pushed the sexual and political boundaries in order to investigate the nature of humanity.
What does this all mean for us now?
Sadism and Masochism were terms coined in 1886 by psychiatrist Kraft-Ebbing, who viewed any deviation from the sexual ‘norms’ of the day as degenerate - from sadism and masochism to homosexuality (a word he introduced to the English language).
Thankfully, we’ve seen the light. We have, at last, legalised gay marriage. We live in a culture where we have the possibility and the right to learn about and follow whatever our sexual predilection.
Had Kraft-Ebbing suggested in 2014 that Sacher Masoch’s work ‘might have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings’ he would surely be trolled out of the park. Indeed, had Sacher Masoch written it today, who knows, maybe like EL James he would have everything from a line of duvets to a movie starring Jamie Dornan.
“S&M is definitely more available, it’s all over MTV and part of our national conversation, our national psyche. ” says Lucy Beresford, Radio Shrink on BBC London and author of Happy Relationships. The trope is everywhere. S&M is the name of a London cafe which sells bangers and mash. In /Girls/ Adam, the geeky boyfriend of Lena Durham’s character, spanks her, and shouts from his window: “If you come up I’m going to tie you up and keep you here for days.” Whips and collars are a fashion perennial and Rihanna may not know it but a number of her videos channel Sacher Mascoh.
“People are more informed about alternative models of sexuality, and with knowledge comes understanding,” continues Wheatley. “There’s a widespread recognition that S&M is not about violence, but about what adults can choose to do together. Once you recognise that it doesn’t have to be hardcore, or about PVC and chastisement, well what’s wrong with a bit of experimentation?”
In 2014 we are finally at a place where, as well as playing with the accoutrements of S&M - the latex dress, hello Lily Allen, the leather gauntlets, Sienna Miller - we may be bold enough actually to give it a go. Certainly the continued elevation in sales of bondage rope and silk wrist-ties at the UK’s largest adult site lovehoney.co.uk - up 111% this Christmas from last Christmas - would suggest it.
Of course, at entry level, props like clothes or cuffs can be enough : S&M can be the /idea/ of pain, as a representation of giving up your trust, of surrendering control. Rather than needing a full hood and a cat o nine tails, it can be as simple as tying someone to your bed and running a thumbnail along the sole of their foot, sliding an ice cube down their body before kissing them with a mouth hot from hot tea. Volunteering yourself totally, or offering entirely to please someone else, can be life-affirming and terrifically arousing.
And yet... S&M apologists may not yet wish to pop the champagne corks (despite there being a special Marquis de Sade commemoration vintage). It’s remarkable how tricky it can still be to talk about S&M as distinct from abuse or violation. In Fifty Shades, EL James took care to delineate a relationship in which the submissive, Ana, had discussed and agreed her boundaries. “The prejudice around the whole subject is terrible,” she told me. “Nothing makes me angrier than critics who suggested the book was about abuse. It demonises people who enjoy this lifestyle.”
In her recent book The Sex Myth, Belle du Jour author Dr Brooke Magnanti identifies various strains of radical feminism taking it upon themselves to police and to argue against certain forms of sexual desire. “Unfortunately,” says Magnanti, “it looks like the debate around S&M has shifted in the last few years to a landscape in which some people have appointed themselves as the true arbiters of consent. The S&M world has a lot to teach the rest of us about enthusiastic consent, how to express and negotiate it, and yet that gets buried in an avalanche of ‘violence against women’ discourse which would be better directed at genuine abuses.”
Two hundred years after Sade focussed attention on questions of sexual violation, individual freedom and censorship, it would be a great shame if today we were to fall back into the trap of confusing degeneracy, perversion or coercion with the joyfulness of mutually thrilling, kinky love-making. And if you need reminding of the erotic potency of power play, of spending an evening in thrall to someone else, you could do worse than make a date to go see Venus in Fur.
Original article published in ES Magazine, in May, 2014
