Do the robot!

Last night I was watching t.v. and an ad came on for some car company. I don't know which one, I don't really care about cars, but they showed an assembly line with those rows and rows of yellow painted robot arms all tinkering in unison and because I am the kind of person that I am, I thought, "That's kind of hot".

I've always been fascinated by machinery. I always linger by construction sites when the cranes are in motion. I love those impossibly gigantic earth moving machines. Oily gears and metal chains have always turned my crank. Crash by J.G. Ballard is one of my favorite books. Then add to all that the suggestion of human activity. After all, these machines are replacing what human hands used to do. They are huge, yet doing the most delicate precise movements. They are bulky, but glide gracefully like ballet dancers that have had their feet nailed to the floor. They're all in unison like a Busby Berkeley* choreography each with it's own very specific task it does perfectly over and over and over again.



* There is so much in this little clip to talk about but I'll leave it up to someone else.

Paul Insect

Skeleton Table by Paul Insect

The Libertine (1969)

bebelestrange: La Matriarca (The Libertine) - 1969 (hop on pop... - Watch more Music Videos at Vodpod.

(this was the only video I could find online, but there are English subtitles)

In The Libertine, a newly widowed young woman discovers her husbands secret swinging kinky sex pad and decides to make it her own. She goes through an encyclopedia of abnormal sexuality trying out kinks one by one with a new hair-do and outfit for each one.

It's also why I now refer to my apartment as The Fornicatorium.

Dolls

Pygmalion and Galatea by Jean-Léon Gérôme (ca. 1890)


My Fair Lady (1964)


Weird Science (1984)


Dollhouse Joss Whedon (2009)

Pygmalionism is the love and sexual attraction to a creation of ones own making, usually a statue or a doll. The Greek mythological character Pygmalion was a king of Cyprus and a sculptor who created a beautiful statue representing his ideal of womanhood. He then fell in love with his work of art and in an answer to his prayer, the goddess Aphrodite brought the statue to life.

Kink is a creative process. There is something incredibly sexy about starting with a "lump of clay" and turning someone into exactly what you want them to be. It's more complex than just being a "sex toy" or simple objectification. It's about process, change, development and creation. It's an investment.

In Hitchcock's Vertigo, Detective John Ferguson haunted by the death of Madeleine, a woman he was hired to follow. After a stay in a mental hospital, he spots another woman who looks like Madeleine and begins a relationship with her. However, he is still consumed with guilt and begins to meticulously transform her into a replica of Madeleine. He buys her clothes that match Madeleine's to the smallest detail, he has her make-up done to look more like her and finally dyes her hair blonde, like Madeleine. Once the transformation is complete, he falls in love with her.

Wonder Woman

With her patriotic, waist cinching bustier, her metal arm cuffs, and her "lasso of truth", Wonder Woman (Amazon goddess / crime fighting superhero) as super dominatrix , is pretty obvious. But the character makes even more sense when you learn about the man who created her in 1942. William Moulton Marston was a psychologist, a feminist and polyamorous. He dreamed of a utopian society where women would "use sexual enslavement to achieve dominance over men, who would happily submit to their loving authority."

He also invented the lie detector.

Wonder Woman: The Complete History by Les Daniels

Belle du Jour (1967)

Romance (1999)

Catherine Breillat's opaque essay in eroticism has some brilliant moments...