Embracing your inner villain

A lot of thoughts come to me while I am in transit or busy with the annoyances of real life, and never get committed to paper. However, this thought stuck with long enough to get down. And it's this little memory that might help people -- mostly guys in my situation but it might help potential fantasy damsels as well --
I was thinking that I never thought of girls I really liked as being, shall we say, damsel-fodder when I was an adolescent or even well into my 20s. But then I remembered that this was not always so: as a little kid, in primary school, all of the girls I fancied back then I always thought of in danger, usually tied up in the clutches of some mad scientist or something like that. At that time I always saw myself as the hero rescuing my heroine.
So I guess the change -- when I was squeamish all of a sudden about putting together my love of the damsel in distress trope with my more mainstream attraction to girls -- might have less to do with adolescent awareness of sexuality and more to do with the roughly parallel process of identity formation. Long before I became terrified that a girl might find out that I liked the DiD scenario and think me bizarre/criminal/laughable (in increasing order of mortification) -- before this came the absurdity of imagining myself the hero of the story. I was at least as uncomfortable with the hero trope as I was with admitting my damsel in distress fantasies with a girl. But I was so wrapped up in conventional thinking then -- wanting to be a "good guy" and all that BS -- that I couldn't see how the fun of villainy was admissable.
So I guess this is the message for younger folks out there today who face similar need to conceal something about themselves. The need to conceal is still real -- the world is a very unforgiving place socially, even more so now, with social media and all the tyranny it enables. But you also need to confront your inner censor as well. If you like the DiD theme -- you're not evil, you really are misunderstood. Embrace your bad side. As the comic Doug Stanhope says (I paraphrase heavily) "Jesus died for your sins?... Your sins are the only interesting things about you."

Penelope Pitstop Sinister Beat "Damsel in Distress"

Stumbled on this on Yutoob. No elaboration from me needed:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FIchv4HcfH4

Vocal Fry, and how Corinne Drewery Got Me Over It.

A long absence, and now I am going to ramble. Well, I finally connected an observation in real life with my feelings toward damsels in distress and, as my thoughts are still a little inchoate, I might meander. Off and on I’ve mentioned how sensitive I am to auditory signals, maybe even more than visual ones. Most straight guys focus on how a girl looks; my reactions are driven at least as much by how she sounds. A bad speaking voice and, sorry, forget it, I lose interest immediately. Accents in speaking voice matter to me, and not in a snobbish way.

So I am more annoyed than most by a general trend in the US over the past few years – the rise of what is called vocal fry among women, especially young women. It’s this irritating elongation of some vowels accompanied by a slight rasping of the voice, as if the speaker just got out of bed. Unlike upspeak, which even Americans understand makes them sound idiotic, vocal fry is seen as an affectation among the upwardly mobile.

To me it sounds upwardly mobile in the most slovenly, lazy way possible – a vocal reification of a huge sense of entitlement. I blame Disney – their stable of young female vocalists tend to accentuate vocal fry, and as we now aspire to little more than mundane celebrity, their creaky voices begin to represent aspirational values. Also, Disney has its wildly successful princess franchises, and although the expressed message is all right-on girl power and you-can-do-it-without-really-working-to-achieve-it, we all know the hypocrisy of all that ( I have a 5 yr old daughter, so I am exposed to all this to toxic levels).

I hate the mix. It’s redolent of the expectation of pampering, or the nearest psychological equivalent, bestowing respect for no particular reason or accomplishment. Don’t get me wrong: I embrace aspirational values, I fully support women in real life being not merely allowed but encouraged to maximize their potential, etc etc. But this poisonous Disneyfied mix of reward for no apparent effort or sacrifice reinforces a mistake that tends to afflict girls more than boys, at least here: the notion that respect is transferred from others rather than emanating from within. It’s a horribly complacent, conformist formula for all the lip service to girl power. It’s just bullshit.

So how does this connect to DiD? Well, on a few levels. First, the obvious: a girl with vocal fry just rubs me the wrong way – any fantasy I might have about DiD excludes anyone speaking this way, It’s so irritating and non-threatening that I can’t even imagine a villainess with it – as a vocal register it’s a complete waste.

But onto a more intricate point. I got so bloody annoyed by tha fry a few days ago that I looked for a remedy in music, as I will do. And I found it. For those of you who don’t recognize the name Corinne Drewery, she is the girl with the bob hairdo from 80s sophistipop group Swing Out Sister (yep, the “Breakout ” (1987) people). For a long time I considered that song a sort of guilty pleasure, but as I age and sink slowly into senility mellow I am revisiting them. They’re still around, producing, yes, easy listening music, but at least good easy listening. No, I do not make this style of music a habit, so for me to like them is quite an outlier.

Part of the reason for their appeal is the luscious mezzo-soprano of singer Corinne Drewery. I have seen interviews with her, and she comes across as an absolute sweetheart, still retaining her thick East Midlands accent. Her looks are striking but polarizing, I bet, and the bob ‘do amplifies that. I found her gorgeous. God I had a crush on her back when “Breakout” came out. (Digression before we leave the dreary topic of my starf***ery from yesteryear: if you watch the video for the song, wait until the very end, after she’s doing the modeling thing with the 80s airblowers, just before the end, before the cute little OK wink. You’ll see a moment where she takes a little bow, and is overcome by the adulation in the video scene. It’s a split second, and shows a little charming vulnerability. That split second is all it takes for me to develop an infatuation that to my recent surprise is still there over a quarter century later.)

It also helps that Corinne is (a) tall, (b) from sort-of Northern England, (c) with straight black hair, (d) a mezzo-soprano voice and (e) has a signature bob hairdo. She reminded me of a fantastic online damsel in distress (it’s not that hard to guess whom), and thinking of both of them is a powerful tonic to dispel the taste ofmy little pet hate of vocal fry. Anyway, thanks Corinne, for making me think of a gorgeous voice and bringing back happy thoughts of a very special damsel. 

Prepare her for the Machine, Igor!

Yeah I know I know, it's been forever since the last post -- I am sure the last 3 readers gave up long ago expecting anything new. Well, RL has gotten in the way, and I frankly haven't had anything new to say. But an idea came to me, so here we go:

A recent dawdle through DeviantArt led me to an artist who among other things dwelt on the theme of "preparing" the heroine for her peril or doom -- and I don't mean a pep talk. The theme here is, of course, the idea that after a heroine's capture, she is somehow re-dressed, or prettied up, or stripped, or otherwise made ready for some ghastly trap, usually, but not always, a machine or contraption. This preparation gives the villain more time to gloat, heightens the suspense of just what will happen to our valiant girl, etc.

Now what interested me was that this particular artist was a woman (Molly Footman if you want to look her up). It got me thinking: usually, the idea of "prepare her for the Machine!" was motivated by the villain. The value of this interlude for the person playing the heroine seemed to be one purely of building suspense. And when preparation involved changing the attire of the heroine -- actually, altering her appearance in any way -- it could come across as delightfully cheezy/louche. (Example, Dr Evil's line " You like the clothes? I designed them myself" delivered to a silver-clad Vanessa Kensington.) Go too far and it gets creepy.

But clearly for at least one woman out there the preparation idea is more than just a drawing out of the peril set up -- it's erotic for her in and of itself. This reassures me, because I'd like to think that that all the components of the damsel in distress melodrama have a value for the heroine. At no point do I like the idea that she is just forbearing or phoning it in until we get to a part she likes.

Maybe some heroines out there could add there perspectives on this? Or villains?

Googled

Like many others (Danger Theatre and Cyndi Wilde have posted about it) I got a TOS warning from Blogger about adverts to adult sites. Well, not a problem for me per se but a quite sh*tty thing to do to those two fine women, as well as others I might not be aware of. I don't post my musings here as a cheaper alternative to therapy. I do intend, ideally, to communicate and also to read what others have to say on DiD topics. If Blogger makes life intolerable for them, they'll do it to me, too. I am thinking of Tumblr, folks. Yeah, yeah, I know, but still....

The Anti-Damsel

OK, I have to torture the theme of today's post to get it even remotely close to topic. And in doing so I  risk creating a huge misunderstanding. But this really got under my skin, in an annoying, non-West Nile mosquito kind of way, and I think sorting out the potential misunderstanding in my title, "The Anti-Damsel," might actually elucidate something.

Maybe some of you have already come across this video of a woman at a Dunkin' Donuts trying to cash in on a company pledge to give each customer a receipt or to make the order free of charge. What follows is an 8 minute rant that eventually turns racist for... no particular reason, as the poor employees were being a lot nicer to this rude trash than I would be.

Now, I am sure most people find the woman unpleasant, low-class, entitled, lazy and just plain nasty and rude lonnnnng before she unveils her lovely racist rant. Nevertheless I bet most people would be able to at least endure her until she starts calling the employees names -- that's the moment where she unambiguously crosses the line from "obnoxious" to "I-can-throw-you-out-of-my-store."

The racism is appalling, and I do not mean to suggest in what follows that my that-tears-it moment is worse than the racism, just that it comes earlier. My line-crossing moment comes a lot sooner than the vile, stupid  hate at the end. It's not the lack of the word "please" in anything she says -- the overwhelming sense of entitlement this idiot has. It's not the the laughingly incredible assertion that she has, like, a business degree, so she knows how things are supposed to work -- the unsubtle threat (well, maybe subtle for her) that she can get the poor minimum wage sap at the counter fired (the hilarious 'this is all under video surveillance' comment as she holds up her smart phone). It's not even the harassment of another customer, who just tries not to get involved (and I don't blame him, although I don't think I would remain neutral for that long in his place.)

It occurs around the 6 minute mark in the link above. The woman, one Taylor Chapman, originally from Indiana or Kentucky but apparently deported to Florida for crimes against civility, starts suggesting that the workers in the rear making up her (free) food order are hacking up spitballs into her food. Then she says, "That's why I'm giving this to my boyfriend. I don't trust them."

What a lucky guy.

Now on one level it's just disgustingly amusing. I laughed at first at the hideous mendacity and selfishness. However it also speaks volumes as to what this girl-thing thinks of her boyfriend, how she conceives her "empowerment." She doesn't have to put up with any inconvenience -- that's what her bf is for. Note: not her besties. Not her sis. Her boyfriend.

This is the Anti-Damsel: what makes her the anti-damsel is not her "empowerment" -- plenty of strong, capable, brave and smart women can er, serve as damsel-fuel. It should not be assumed that a damsel "needs a man to rescue her" - a rescue fantasy is not the same thing as a woman's always requiring it to be seen as attractive. Not in the least.  For me, a woman constantly requiring bailing out would get pretty tiresome, even in a fantasy world, after a while.And we'll always cheer a heroine who triumphs through her own abilities. A damsel in distress is not an object, until you expand the notion of object to encompass anyone merely spoken to.This confusion is one of the reasons I tend to prefer the word ""heroine" -- a lot less baggage, and a lot closer to the identification even I, as the fantasy villain, experience.

No, what makes her the Anti-Damsel is that her lack of compassion makes us unable to feel any compassion for her. She cannot see the difference between "empowerment" and "privilege." Her world, without her knowing it, is ultimately the most base, Hobbesian zero-sum culture imaginable. Who would even want to save her? Leave her tied to the tracks. I'm going to go
get a donut.

Got asked to do a book review

This will be a departure from the usual, so if you are interested in DiD and only in DiD narrowly, then this may not be your cuppa. I was asked by someone who noticed the blog (who knew?) if I reviewed BDSM books. I said not as a matter of course but I'd be willing to read a book called Laura Meets Jeffrey -- which is not even really a BDSM book in the first place, more what the publisher describes it as: an erotic memoir.

I'll post my draft review of the book below -- hey, it's new stuff, even if it isn't exactly on the Damsel/Villain/DiD theme. The book is interesting and a quick read. It's got a lot of graphic sex in it -- the author was a full participant in the orgies of Studio 54-era NYC. It isn't even particularly about a BDSM relationship except toward the end. So the interest in it is really from a social point of view -- the intersection of extreme lifestyles and the glitterati of pre-AIDS New York, as well as an inadvertently poignant tale of a relationship that is really kind of doomed from the start, although neither participant sees it. The narration is very much in the moment, so there is zero treacly sentimentality -- a plus in my view.

This was a new one for me: I do not read these kinds of books -- hell, I have never read Anais Nin! So although I  liked the book, this is not "an endorsement from the author of In My Clutches" -- the book is too far off topic from the blog and the material is something I am nowhere near an expert in. But if you do read erotic memoirs, you might want to look into it. Anyway, here's the review:

Review of Laura Meets Jeffrey

Laura Meets Jeffrey is a frank, no-holds-barred memoir of “swinging” life in pre-AIDS New York. It is also – by the end of it – an unexpectedly sweet and charmingly unlikely extended love letter from Jeffrey to his former love.  It also is exactly what the second billing says: an erotic memoir, and as the author  spent a lot of time in 1970s and early 1980s orgies in New York, that means a lot of very graphic sex. Unusually for memoirs, the book also contains several extended passages from Laura, giving her point of view of their relationship and activities. It’s nowhere near a 50/50 split, but that matters less than the presence of a distinct voice from the author’s, which makes this memoir more interesting.

LMJ was suggested to me because of my blog, which travels on the fringe of BDSM. That is the sole point of contact (and a tenuous one) between my life and that of Laura and Jeffrey.  As a bitter and twisted Gen-Xer, I also generally have little patience for the blank hedonism of the 1960s or 70s. All of that makes me a harder sell on this book than one might think from my blog. But LMJ managed to keep me engaged all the way through – I was never bored, or repulsed, or otherwise provoked into judgment.

As for “what all the way through” means: oh boy, well, at the beginning, lots and lots of orgies, described in blunt and sometimes hilarious terms. For someone who is not turned on by porn, I did not find the multitude of sexual escapades tiresome or repetitive – no mean feat, as you get a lot of them in this book.  While the descriptions of the swingers scene – the types of groups , the cast of characters, etc –  do not reveal anything you don’t already know about these sorts of activities or the times, the author’s voice and genuine enthusiasm makes it immediate all over again. It takes a special, sometimes cock-eyed, view of the world to make what would be cliché new again.  You may agree or disagree with Jeffrey’s point of view, but he never descends to nostalgia, not even at the end.

Laura takes a while to make her appearance in the book, and from then on both drugs and ever more extreme s/m behavior start slowly to take over.  One can see the end, not just of their relationship (this, trust me, is not a big spoiler) but also of the whole culture of sexual licentiousness of pre-AIDS New York.  Along the way we are also treated to digressions on Norman Mailer, Ryan O’Neal’s boxing, Yoko Ono and John Lennon, Jerzy Kozinski, and other luminati of the time.  (I have to thank the author for rehabilitating Mailer for me – in the end, what a mensch!) This memoir implicitly asserts that the (to contemporary mores) extreme sexual New York culture before AIDs was by no means a sordid bubble of its own but brushed against high profile and even elite intellects and talents and was at least partially integrated into high society as a whole.

LMJ never succumbs to the retrospective realization that the party just has to end sometime. In the book the author mentions that Mailer suggested the book be called a novel rather than a memoir, and when you’re done with it you can see why.  Part of its liveliness stems from the author’s insistence on trying to relive those times in the moment, without the knowledge of the future (ie now) that he obviously possesses. It means the future is unwritten, and for a memoir of this type that makes a huge difference in how it comes across.

That in-the-moment feel makes the narrative more compelling in light of the outcome of the story. As Laura demands more satisfaction of her masochistic desires as well as indulges in increasing amounts of cocaine, we feel the author’s lens shrink, the focus contract, until it really is just about the two of them – or to be more specific, about Jeffrey’s attempts to rein in what he sees as Laura’s more self-destructive tendencies.  Here again, a superficial and ungenerous reading of this book might dismiss it as a story told many times – and it is – but it really is not just that. The painful breakdown is contrasted not just with a beautiful beginning – as would be the case in a typical love story – but against the author’s open-ended sexual practices of the beginning of the book. It might be an accident – part of Jeffrey’s offbeat charm is a blindness to his own future – but accident or not the narrowing of Jeffrey and Laura’s relationship should prove poignant to anyone with a modicum of decency and a willingness to suspend judgment a little bit. It’s the exact opposite of how relationships are supposed to grow – and it says a lot that Jeffrey ascribes this constriction solely to drugs, as opposed to a fundamental lacuna in the way he approached relationships (at least at that time). I felt myself rooting for both of them all the way through --because of this lack, not despite it – even though the outcome is never really in doubt.

This makes it sound like the relationship part of LMJ is just a train wreck. If it were only that, it would be depressing without being edifying. But it’s not. The author really does throw himself into the spirit and mentality of his own self at that time. Time and again, the honesty transcends the cliché. Laura, on the other hand, comes across as a little more detached from her life in the period described in the book. This is a good thing as she was, by her own admission, a near casualty to cocaine. Overall the effect is not really a “balanced” view of what turns into a BDSM relationship; the difference in tone, in intensity, in location in time between Jeffrey and Laura makes it all the more poignant. It says a lot about Jeffrey (and you can read this as good or bad, inclusive or narcissistic -- but I don’t see the point of judging) that his girlfriend ends up writing part of his own love letter to her.  For what it’s worth, I think it’s the author’s genuine way of showing love. The great success of the book is allowing us to see that love on its own terms.