So here's where all of this started for me:
There were three things I can trace back to the origins of interest in BDSM.
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| Allen Jones, Table, 1969 |
The first was this photo of this Allen Jones (1969) sculpture. I'm not sure where I saw it, I'm assuming it was from one of my father's art magazines. I don't remember what I thought of it at the time or what I thought it meant, but it stuck with me and has never really left.
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| The Jones inspired Korova Milk Bar scene in A Clockwork Orange, 1971 |
The second was the nymphomaniac scene in Fellini’s Satyricon. Here, the hero who is suffering from some erectile dysfunction is sent to a man in the middle of the desert. To cope with his wife's uncontrollable nymphomania, she is kept tied up in a wagon, available for the use of any man who wants her.
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| Fellini’s Satyricon, 1969 |
The third is My Fair Lady. With it's blatant pygmalionism and dominant / submissive power exchange, I always thought it was one of the kinkiest movies ever made.
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| My Fair Lady, 1964 |
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| Bill Ward |
Then I discovered porn, Anne Rice and the Sleeping Beauty trilogy and I started to learn what S&M was "supposed" to be and the visions I had in my head were replaced by what was essentially an Ellen Von Unwuerth photo.
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| Revenge by Ellen von Unwerth, 2003 |
That picture in my head turned out to be the picture in most people's heads, too. An ex-boyfriend once told me that he wasn't kinky, he just liked the way it looked. I understood what he meant immediately. I had a pretty clear image in my head and you probably have a similar image in your head, but then I thought what does that mean?
What does kink look like?
