Bondage and Discipline, Dominance and Submission, and Sadomasochism (BDSM) at the Movies

Abstract

In the wake of Laura Mulvey outlining a sadistic male gaze in ‘Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema’ (1975), and the subsequent reconsideration of spectatorship as a possible site for masochistic pleasure for the male observer (Willemen 1981; Neale 1983; Hutchings 1993; P. Smith 1993), it is surprising that so little analysis has focused on cinematic depictions of coercion that throb with the resonance of BDSM. Recent exceptions include McCosker (2005, 2008), Krzywinska (2006), Barrett (2007) and Burr and Hearn (2008), but earlier studies tended to skirt the issue. Some purport to address it but misappropriate ‘sadomasochism’ when violence is their sole concern (Gitlin 1991). Others, as we saw in Chapter 1, approach BDSM by analysing the masochist’s position but isolate the reading in psychoanalytic vocabulary (Silverman 1980; Studlar 1984); the culturally encoded meanings of BDSM are therefore neglected. In recent years, these aspects have begun to be charted (see, for example, Langdridge and Butt 2004; Weiss 2006; Barrett 2007; Ritchie 2008; Beckmann 2009) but without a concerted effort to situate them against a lineage of filmic representations. Yet, only by achieving a clearer understanding of what BDSM means to its participants can we determine whether the cinematic depictions correlate with or deny the essence of their controlled interactions.