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by Robert Grimm
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
The
theoretical space concerning the filmic gaze and its structuring
around straight sado/masochistic configurations has been well explored
by feminist film criticism. However, such criticism is limited by a heavy
dependence on psychoanalytic theory that essentializes a gendered and
heterosexist hierarchy of the filmic gaze. While the proclamation of the
gendered gaze implies a possible liberation from its power hierarchies,
this theory propagates the same disciplinary constraints it purports to
overcome. As an academic discipline, it is only relevant within a discursive
function, providing no vision for a marginalized s/m subculture that self-consciously
derives pleasure from negotiating power relations outside of the gendered
hierarchy. Furthermore, feminist film criticism is a theoretical perspective
that addresses male- female power relations only within textual readings
from a heterosexual standpoint.
To counter this straight feminist account I will present one possible
gay s/m perspective on the commercial cinema. While explicitly gay
s/m representations are relatively absent from the Hollywood screen, such
subjective readings become an Interpretative practice based on the interpretation
of textual images into a gay s/m discourse. While lam far from proclaiming
(gay and lesbian) s/m as a universally suitable or "liberating practice,
I am going to argue that s/in-by self-consciously staging dominance and
submission-has the potential of breaking down conventional power hierarchies
and disciplinary constraints, in this case, the hierarchies of the gendered
gaze.
Laura Mulvey's 1979 essay "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema" sets
the framework for a feminist, psychoanalytical film analysis. She argues
that the matrix of different filmic gazes (actor on actress, camera on
actor and spectator on screen) opens a space for basically two scopophilic
pleasures. One pleasure is voyeuristic-constituted by a hierarchizing
gaze which objectifies the representation on screen-and the other is narcissistic-constituted
by identification with the representation and consequent idealization.
Scopophilia in this context depends on gendered difference, in a Lacanian
reading on the difference between the phallus and the owner of the phallus.
The phallus must he read as the referent of cultural interchange, in which
the woman is the symbol, and the owner of the phallus is the man. The
underlying Freudian theory renders the threat of castration, posed by
the female lack of a penis, as a central theme, played out in various
ways between the genders. This threat of castration can be resolved and
thus neutralized a) by objectifying the threatening representation and
asserting its inferiority, i.e. "investigating the woman, demystifying
her mystery" (Mulvey, 311) orb) by idealizing the representation, over-valuating
it and therefore moving it from a human position to a reassuring and dc-humanized
position as a visual fetish, i.e. "the cult of the female star (Mulvey,
311).
Mulvey ranks the voyeuristic gaze as the more important of the two possible
gazes and-within a psychoanalytical reading-ascribes this gaze as having
a sadistic point of view. The threat of castration is neutralized by the
subjugation and violation of the female body. This submission is then
represented for the voyeuristic pleasures of the male viewer. Gaylyn Studlar's
essay "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures" of the Cinema complements
Mulvey's argument: by drawing
on a study by Gilles Deleuze, she emphasizes the fetishistic gaze as a
genuine foundation of pleasurable looking. Deleuze argues that sadism
and masochism, contrary to Freud's dialectical evaluation, are completely
separate conditions and furthermore that the genesis of masochism temporally
precedes sadism-at least within a psychoanalytical discourse which traces
psychic disorders back into early childhood. Since fetishistic scopophilia
renders the spectator in an inferior position, compared to the super-human
status of the fetish, Studlar argues that fetishistic scopophilia pushes
the spectator into a masochistic position. While Studlar rejects Mulvey's
position and tries to formulate an alternative account, I want to argue
that her argument is essentially complementary to Mulvey's: both arguments
depend on the same basic matrix of gendered gazes, which is evaluated
according to the same Freudian and Lacanian theories. The particular emphasis
on voyeurism/ sadism on one hand and fetishism/masochism on the other
hand must be understood as a purely academic exercise, bearing significance
only within a clinical, psychoanalytic framework. Mulvey and Studlar can
apply this model of the gendered gaze, but because they are working within
an essentially gendered system, they cannot explore the various possibilities
of the filmic gaze.
This body of feminist film theory was clearly important in opening tip
spaces for non-hegemonical reading of films and partially understanding
the dynamics of the filmic gaze. But nonetheless its methodology is terribly
flawed, its aspirations naively utopian (with its assumption that there
might be a space outside power hierarchies and specifically outside s/m).
Hence, while trying to formulate a critique of phallocentric representation
and male hegemony, a feminist psychoanalytic film theory ultimately only
creates another disciplinary institution.
However, other possible readings of the sado/masochistic gaze do exist.2
They do not define s/in as a clinical disorder arid they are not
centered on a heterosexist exchange. In this context s/In is a pleasurable
practice, potentially transcending the subject and therefore destroying
disciplinary constraints. The starting point for this reading of s/m is
the understanding that s/m does not depend on a story,' but is constituted
through gestures, ruins of rituals arid even still frames. At its center
is the image of the lacerated, de-subjectified and intruded body. While
is very much possible to embed this image of the lacerated body within
"traditional" narratives,4 1 want to argue that the image by
itself, removed from a narrative content, is crucial to this form of s/m.
A narrative form demands some form of introduction and conclusion, and
thus makes the threat of a possible end to the activities described a
structural necessity. The image of the lacerated body strictly represents
the act of s/m. It is most likely an image shortly before its climatic
peak, and therefore leaves space
to imagine its constant practice, its perpetual continuation and its never-ending
supply of new victims. Furthermore, the image of the lacerated body does
not depend on a specifically constructed text. Existing texts can serve
as a source for this form of imagery by removing single scenes from their
content and ascribing to these scenes a new meaning?
The gaze which constitutes the image of the lacerated body and which I
am going to call the lacerated gaze, stands in sharp contrast to
the gendered gaze-as defined by Mulvey et al-as well as to the panoptic
gaze-as described by Michel Foucault in Discipline and Punish. The
gendered gaze depends on a narrative and on an essential representation
of gender hierarchies. The panoptic gaze is part of the foundation of
power and disciplinary institutions: "Power has its principle not so much
in a person as in a certain concerted distribution of bodies, surfaces,
lights, gazes; in an arrangement whose internal mechanisms produce
the relation in which individuals are caught up." (Foucault, 1979, 202,
my emphasis) The specific potential of the lacerated gaze is its ability
to break through these arrangements of power and gender and to cut through
their representations. Furthermore, the lacerated gaze is by definition
never complete, it is lacerated itself It therefore stages its own function,
thus being able to generate its own, alternative representations without
falling for the fallacies of an utopian liberalism.
Evidence that this is not just a theoretical proposition, but a practical
one, can be found in the column "Roger Roper's Video Bondage" in Bound
& Gagged (B&G) a gay bimonthly bondage magazine. "Video Bondage",
which covers one, sometimes two pages in B&G, generally starts
with a short introduction by Roger Roper. where he describes his reader's
feedback and letters. He then lists between ten and twenty films by title
(which is highlighted) and describes the bondage scenes which can he found
in each movie. The criterion for inclusion of a movie in this column is
the existence of at least a short scene, which entails some sort of tying
up and gagging of a man. The scenes being described are usually evaluated
according to the quality of the bondage and gagging applied (about the
Superman series: "lots of gagging Jimmy Olsen, but seldom in the
mouth, mostly covering it (and that won't do, as you and I know)" compared
to his comment about the Sky King series and The Rifleman: "Both
Johnny Crawford and Chuck Connors deserve praise for wearing saliva-soaked
bandannas properly between their teeth" (issue 36). A movie will he given
more column space if the bondage scenes are plentiful and/or long and
if the helpless victim is tortured in some way o while tied. Torture of
the tied and gagged victim is not considered necessary but may very well
be an integral part of a bondage scene (At Sword/c Point "Cornel
Wilde, hung by his wrists, his back muscles strongly defined, is tortured
with a hot iron and lashed across the chest with a sword" (issue 36) and
Cocaine Wait "hunk John Schneider-shirtless, barefoot, sweating
like a pig-spread-eagled to a bed frame and attacked with a cattle prod"
(issue 35). Roger Roper's column is based on his own extensive video collection
and on reader contributions.
It is important to emphasize that this reading of s/in as a pleasurable
rather than textual/clinical practice is grounded in actual spectatorship.
While Mulvey et al. make a theoretical proposition about the filmic
gaze, Roger Roper and his readers, who regularly contribute to his columns,
document a subcultural practice. Actual-possibly dissenting- spectatorship
is excluded from a feminist, psychoanalytical film theory, where the text
alone determines its meaning and its readings. The opposite is true for
Roger Roper's column: the bondage scenes listed in his column are removed
from their original context within mainstream film, which includes these
scenes in a larger narrative construct and usually represents them as
an aberration, as a deviant or criminal assault on the hero. The re-reading
of bondage scenes through the lacerated gaze is therefore against the
grain of a hegemonical representation and opens a space of completely
different concerns.
According to Roper, a bondage scene becomes more enjoyable if the hero's
body is being exposed or he is dressed up in leather about Scott Garrison
in the Swamp Thing television show: "In the first part he is shirtless
(and wearing tight jeans) with his arms tied above his head" (issue 36);
or Dolph Lundgren in The Punisher "in leather pants and hoots,
naked to the waist with great lingering close-ups of his
tortured torso" (issue 35). More importantly, this space allows for speculation
about the sexual effects of torture to the victim, either if the scene
is non-explicit about these effects Vim Robbins in Bull Durham: "his
black and white striped shorts conceal any yummy effects" (issue 32) or
if it clearly invites the viewer to consider such effects - Night Zoo:
"Guy gets raped, blond stud has a necktie yanked between his teeth,
and gagged this way, is kissed by the bald- headed policeman villain"
(issue 36). Roger Roper serves as a moderator of this space; as every
other editor he decides what to include in his column and how to present
it. But he does present material which does not necessarily agree
with his personal or most reader's expectations and tastes (he cites one
reader writing about Alaadin: I realize that some of your readers
would not be aroused by, or even interested in, bondage scenes from an
animated film, this flock is peppered with plenty of them. (issue 32);
or he comments about one reader's contributions: "Ohio is especially fond
of torture scenes, as you can see." (issue 35). And he also depends on
reader-editor interaction to correct or expand readings presented in previous
issues (he starts his column in issue 32: "I received a number of complaints
from readers who read in Issue #30 about a hot but apparently nonexistent
bondage scene in the novel and Disney film, Old Yeller. My
correspondent himself sent an abject apology ... But then, about a month
later, I received a second letter from him: Eureka!' he wrote. The scene
in which two brothers are captures by Indians is from the Disney film,
Savage Sam.").
The exercise of the filmic gaze as it is described in Roger Roper's
column constitutes an all-masculine matrix of gazes. Only in a very few
scenes, which are described in the column, is a woman present at all.
But even here the subjugated male is the main object of the gaze, not
the woman. The specific appeal of some scenes over others is the clear
masculinity of the man being tied and tortured. This explains the specific
fascination with Dolph Lundgren over several columns. Roger Roper cites
a reader:
Another of his favorites (‘He should be enshrined in the Victims' Hall
of Fame,' Ohio says) is Dolph Lundgren, who's whipped in Masters of
the Universe, pierced in Red Scorpion (tank top, bare feet),
stretched on a rack in The Punisher... and electroshocked with
wired tit-clamps on his bare chest (along with hot and gorgeous Brandon
Lee-two for one!) in Showdown in Little Tokyo. (Roper, issue 35,
his emphasis).
This gay sado/masochistic gaze depends on a masculine representation.
Domination and submission are being played out between partners who are
(almost) equally masculine. In this specific context, femininity is a
foreign and unrelated concept. Working back from the use of the masculine
body within the lacerated gaze, it can be questioned how masculinity itself
might be constituted through sado/masochistic practices. A full account
of the foundation of masculinity within sado/masochistic practices is
beyond the scope of the essay, but I want to argue tentatively that the
endurance, exercise and consequent mastery of sado/ masochistic practices
is one of the constituting conditions of masculinity. It is important
to note that the question of masculinity itself re-introduces a narrative
structure into s/in: masculinity within the lacerated gaze may he taken
for granted; by itself, it requires the mastery of a complicated set of
initiation rites (some of these rites are suggested by movies, such as
Predator I, Predator II and Under Siege and the consequent
narration of this initiation.
The image of the bound and tortured/intruded body7 as it is
presented in Roger Roper's column stands for itself and thus facilitates
the lacerated gaze. This lacerated gaze opens a new space for reading
mainstream movies. It defies established "liberating theories and questions
their basic assumptions." The lacerated gaze is not based on a theoretical
proposition, it is the social practice of actual people, in this ease
a specific subset of gay, male s/in practitioners. The lacerated gaze
is centered on questions of pleasure and is not concerned with questions
of deviance. It is relatively self-aware (e.g., Roger Roper's ironic descriptions:
"The rape is then wound around his head, sealing his mouth. An A+ sequence",
(issue 36) and knows about its specificity: the lacerated gaze cuts scenes
out from the closed body of a narrative; it stages an never-ending bondage/torture
session. The lacerated gaze thus has the ability to break the disciplinary
constraints of the subject. "[I]t's the real creation of new possibilities
of pleasure, which people had no idea about previously. (Foueault, 1984,
27) Finally: the lacerated gaze is a celebration of multiple and diverse
pleasures.
NOTES
1 Freud's main source for a description of the masochistic "disorder"
was Krafft-Ebing's Psychopathia sexualis who in turn based his
account of Sacher-Masoch's deviant sexuality on hearsay. See Deleuze's
Masochism.
2 Theoretical discussions of s/m as a practice which brakes
down disciplinary constraints
can be found in various interviews with Michet Foucautt ("Le Gai Savoir,"
"The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will," "Sex, Power and the Politics
of Identity,") and in Gayle Rubin's "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical
Theory of the Politics of Sexuality." One of the more interesting practical
accounts of this breakdown is Pat Calilia's "Doing It Together: Gay Men,
Lesbians and Sex."
3 Mulvey's postulate that "Sadism demands a story, depends on making something
happen, forcing a change in another person, a battle of wilt and strength,
victory/defeat, all occurring in a linear time with a beginning and an
end," (Mulvey, 311) does not hold upon closer examination.
4 Narratives which place the lacerated body at the center usually follow
the lines of established (film) genres, using the characteristic genre
narrative as a backbone for their specific undertaking. The myriad of
gay s/m porn movies and stories involving army personnel and police officers
or taking place in fraternities and prisons clearly can be read in this
way. Another key element to the construction of a "lacerated narrative"
is the realization that the persons or institutions involved make discipline
and direct exertion of power more frequently than they would be in everyday
life.
5 My focus on a single image rather than a narrative form may also be
the result of a hegemonical hold on narrative forms (which are thus forced
to reproduce the hegemonical ideologies). Alternative practices do not
have the same access to narrative representations and may therefore result
in representational techniques which do not depend on narratives.
6 In fact it might he debatable among the readers of B&G even
if it is a necessary part of an interesting film scene. Approximately
half of the porn stories in B&G (which are all reader contributions)
are solely concerned with bondage, the other half combine some sort of
torture or humiliation with bondage. Both sorts of stories seem to be
popular, even though readers preferring one sort of story might not be
as much interested in the other kind.
7 An example for the lacerated body from The Pit and the Pendulum:
"The end of the film has the victim bound to a table, gagged with
cloth, while a razor sharp pendulum swings lower and lower. If you're
squeamish, you probably don't want to see the part where the pendulum
gets a bit too close to the victim." (Roper, issue 33)
8 One part of this specificity is the negligence of the notion of consent.
This is not to advocate random acts of transgression against other people,
but to realize that transgression of limits is an integral part of s/m.
WORKS CITED
Califia, Pat. "Doing It Together: Gay Men, Lesbians and Sex." The Advocates
(July 7, 1983). 24 -27.
Deteuze, Gilles. Masochism; An Interpretation of coldness and Cruelty.
New York: George Braziller, 1971.
Foucautt, Michet. "Le Gai Savoit", trans. Michael West, unpublished ms.,
1978.
Foucault, Michel. Discipline and Punish. New York: Vintage Books,
1979.
Foueautt, Michel. "The Social Triumph of the Sexual Will." Christopher
Street 6:4 (May 1982), 36- 41.
Foucault, Michel. "Sex, Power and the Politics of Identity." The Advocate
(August 7,1984), 17 - 36.
Mulvey, Laura. "Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema." Movies and Methods
Volume II. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1985.
Neale, Steve. "Masculinity as Spectacle." Screening the Male; Exploring
Masculinities in Hollywood Cinema, London: Routledge.
1993.
Roper, Roger. "Roger Roper's Video Bondage." Bound & Gagged (1993)32:3,33:3,35:10,36:9.
Rubin, Gayte. "Thinking Sex: Notes for a Radical Theory of the Politics
of Sexuality." Pleasure and Danger; Exploring Female
Sexuality. Ed. Carole S. Vance. Boston: Boston Press, 1984.
Studlar, Gaylyn. "Masochism and the Perverse Pleasures of the Cinema."
Movies and Methods Volume II, Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1985.
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