Review of Fetishes (1996) by Edith N — 16 Mar 2011

Ultimately Disengaged From Itself.

When I pointed out to Gwen that Roger had liked this documentary, her response was that Roger likes any movie which treats sex in an adult manner. This is possibly true. I know he gets really snippy on the subject of the NC-17 Stigma, given it's why he lobbied so hard for the rating in the first place. And it is certainly true that this movie, if nothing else, treats sex as a subject for mature adults. Not, it should be noted, that there is any actual sex in the film. These women are professionals, but they aren't professionals in that sense. They are mostly able to speak sensibly on the subject of what they do for a living and why. They can express how it affects their day-to-day life. And so forth. Even the people who pay for the women's services can do so. The problem is that filmmaker Nick Broomfield doesn't seem to be listening.

He has traveled to Pandora's Box, a dungeon owned by famed dominatrix Mistress Raven. She's stopped seeing clients herself. She later tries to explain why, but it's obvious she has a hard time putting it into words. We do, however, get a glimpse of what her employees do. There's standard bondage and discipline. Sadomasochism. Phone sessions. Standard role playing fantasies, though what these women think are standard is different from what other people do. There is even one man--who is willing to be interviewed on camera without disguise--who is into infantilism, a fetish I don't think most people know exists unless they've seen that one episode of [i]CSI[/i]. We even get a lengthy session with a submissive woman. Mistress Raven opens her business for a free and open examination of what she does, presumably in the hopes that people will be able to see what they're really like.

By the end, they don't seem to like the guy, and I don't blame them. Midway through, after he's been observing for some weeks, he mentions something in passing about pain, and the woman to whom he mentions it very quietly and very firmly reminds him that what they do is not all about pain. It is quite clear that she's told him this before, and she obviously believes she will have to tell it to him again. Yes, most of what appears in this film is the pain part, but that seems almost to be a fixation on Broomfield's part more than a true sampling of what goes on behind those tasteful blue-painted doors. We do linger for quite some time on that pretty blonde submissive woman, even though she isn't actually a client per se. The infantilist is given a closer examination than a later client who I think is only there for roleplaying with no violence of any kind.

In a way, though, it's the infantilist for whom I feel sorriest. He's put on display, and he knows it. He's willing to be on display; one might almost suspect it's part of what he's there for. However, what wasn't part of his fantasy was having his wife leave him because she couldn't cope with what he wanted from her. Indeed, it doesn't strike me as quite what is covered by the term. He's more interested in being a little girl than a baby, and he's willing to be dressed up as a "big girl" and told how being a big girl can hurt. What people want doesn't always fit into neat categories. Similarly, someone is there paying $1000 a session for the privilege of acting out fantasies he can't at home. The women insist that they are providing a service, and a serious look at it shows this to be true.

But of course the reason so few movies out there treat sex like something between mature adults is a chicken-and-egg situation. We aren't prepared to handle a plain look at things outside our comfort zone, and what our comfort zone is can be pretty heavily programmed by a society where sex is something to giggle at--and be ashamed that you know enough to giggle. Really, Pandora's Box could be the subject of serious anthropological and psychological study, but the most interesting stuff to me is what gets lingered on the least. A white cop calls in to be treated the way he's afraid he treats black suspects. A half-Jewish man asks to be interrogated by a Nazi. A black man asked to be treated like an antebellum slave. And a man "forced" to lick a (presumably pre-sterilized!) toilet clean gives an interview with his head in the bowl which makes clear that, at least while he's being told what to do, the weight of the world is off his shoulders. Someone else is making all the decisions and giving all the orders, and there's something appealing to that.