It started with this, when someone on IC said:
“Wow oh wow. Did anyone see Eastenders on Tuesday night when Archie pushed Janine in the face against the wall?”
And someone else replied with:
“You mean the scene where he assaulted her? What does that have to do with BDSM?”
My gut reaction was to jump straight in with a snide, sarcastic, and generally sneering post saying: “You do know it’s not real, right?”
Yet it brings up some fascinating questions about the boundaries between fantasy and reality. In my world, a woman being assaulted is obviously wrong, BUT a fictional character being pushed up against a wall and threatened by another fictional character on the telly, fully scripted, directed, and played by actors, is sexy as hell.
Most of what happens in BDSM role-play could be construed as assault if perceived outside the context of fantasy – the classic scenarios of a military interrogation, a teacher caning a helpless pupil, some police brutality, whatever happens behind the barbed-wire fence of a prison camp, slavery of any sort, beatings, asphyxiation, anything involving rope or handcuffs, and so many others – they would all be abhorrent if *real*… Yet of course they’re something completely different when they’re safe, sane, consensual role-play, between adults. In BDSM, fantasy and reality live on entirely different planets.
Here’s a blog post I wrote last year about the controversial waterboarding scene on “Spooks”. If you can’t be arsed to click on the link, I’ll summarise: a man being tortured in a Russian prison = bad; An attractive actor in an exciting tv show playing the part of a man being tortured in a Russian prison = very, very good.
I’ve been catching up on a lot of “24” recently, and am now only three and a half days behind what Bauer’s been up to. A lot of the intensely violent gunpoint scenes between Jack and Nina would, of course, be horrific in real life, but they’re not real life. They’re fantasy. And they’re the hottest thing I’ve seen on the telly in a long time. Other people’s YouTubery here, here, and here.
