Positive S&M in the Media
Thursday, January 15th, 2009In the last post, I talked about how S&M oftentimes gets a bad reputation in popular media, whether it’s from the news story of a scene gone wrong, or the depiction of a psychopath disguised as a BDSM enthusiast in a television show. However, there are also some positive and/or accurate depictions of S&M in popular media, too. So I thought I would talk about just a few of those here. Feel free to let me know about others in the comments.
The Secretary
This movie is a good depiction of how people can discover that they are into BDSM, and also how it can be a healthy tool to cope with and work through life trauma and mental disorders.
CSI – Lady Heather
Lady Heather is the most sensible example of a BDSM practitioner I’ve seen in popular media, bar none. She represents a good example of the more ritualized aspects of the lifestyle.
Rome
This scene is just an incredibly hot example of rough sex, with overtones of submission and dominance. It’s set in Rome, so of course this is real slavery and not roleplay, but salient nonetheless, I think.
3 Comments to “Positive S&M in the Media”
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I haven’t seen the other two, but have mixed feelings about “Secretary”. Yes, it is kind of overall positive, but it doesn’t actually give us any idea of how to create any reasonable communication in a relationship. On the other hand, romantic comedies never do, and I guess it’s pretty cool to have a BDSM romantic comedy out there.
I also don’t like the way it makes it seem like neither partner in that relationship has any actual preferences. Seriously, they just do whatever … there’s no indication that one of them has any real sexual preferences, other than “yay BDSM”, which is too broad. Again though, what can you expect from a romantic comedy? I guess vanilla romantic comedies are simply “yay sex” with no talk of preferences, so … it’s just doing what other romantic comedies already do, and I just notice it more.
It certainly isn’t an ideal representation of BDSM, no. However, as far as something digestible by the American culture at large, I think it did a reasonably good job of giving an example of a BDSM relationship (though admittedly unrealistic in many ways, as you point out).
Interesting link. I’ve always known on an intuitive level that romantic comedies (and romance movies in general) are incredibly unrealistic. Movies in general tend to be that way — exaggerated at the least, ranging to the fantastical. I would like to dig into the study itself more. As is said in statistics, correlation does not imply causation — it just could be that people who already have unrealistic goals of relationships tend to watch those movies.
I liked “Secretary” more than lady heather couse its like a real couble experince new thingsbut lady heather focus on a life style.
I couldnt see “Rome” . it needs another link couse ‘youtube’ says its a private video.