Putzes

(Hey folks -- it's a genuine new post!)

In DiD-speak, a putz is a male “damsel in distress.” The term is pejorative, because it seems most heterosexual male DiD fans are very turned off by the sight of a bound and gagged man. Some even find a man captured alongside a woman to be a buzzkilling distraction. A classic example is Jimmy Olsen (played by Jack Larson) in the old 1950s Superman TV show. I assume he was usually captured alongside the luminous Noel Neill so that the censors didn’t think the writers were trying to sneak in something… . unhealthy. Another example is Payton Hass, who played an irrelevant co-hostage with the often-captured pre-robotic Jessica Alba in a refitted Flipper series from the high 1990s. I have no idea why he was there.

I should also add that there is a less pejorative terms, “dude in distress” which is presumably employed by those who like that sort of thing. I won’t go so far as to spoil anyone’s parade, so I’ll only speak for myself: I find calling them “dudes in distress” as silly as calling myself a male lesbian – I like girls, but I just happen to be a guy. That is a prejudice, I am not defending it -- I am just laying out my tastes.

I can’t say that having a male tied up with a girl ruins the effect for me in, say, a movie or TV show. However, it is a minor irritation, and in a TV show or movie where a male character is the one taken captive, rather than the girl, I do feel a disappointment. (Or rather, did – I hardly ever have time for TV any more, and the movies I watch seldom have peril or actions scenes like that in them.) I feel about the same as I do when a damsel in distress is treated badly – bruised or injured for the sake of some cockamamie ‘realism’ – what a shame, the actress could have been a pretty damsel. Of course I feel empathy for any physically abused character, but it loses all erotic appeal instantly.

But I thought to something that really does instinctively piss me off, and that is a gagged dude. (By the way, why does no one remember the origin of the term ‘dude’: a dude ranch was a place for dudes, people who are ranching neophytes. That’s right, whenever you call your bro ‘dude’ you’re insulting him as a ‘noob’ – but I digress) I was thinking in particular of the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie, which I was dragged to see for some forgotten reason. In it, Orlando Bloom – Legolas – was the feckless lover of Keira Head-on-a-Stick Knightly, and the pirates gag him as she I think had to walk the plank. I was more than disappointed that KK – mantis in human disguise that she may be – was not bound and gagged. I was deeply annoyed. And it was not some sort of longstanding pining to see KK in bondage (although the costuming was great).

This revulsion makes me think that the gag is really, somehow, the essential part of a DiD’s captivity for me. Once the heroine can’t speak, she’s really helpless. Maybe because it assumes she’s already restrained and unable to pull the gag off – maybe a gag is a particularly potent synecdoche for her overall captivity. Maybe I have an oral fixation – but I really don’t think so. Maybe because I like bantering with a damsel, toying with her, and once she’s gagged there is no going back.

It’s odd, because I wouldn’t come to that conclusion from my DiD imagination itself. It’s not like a heroine always has to be gagged in her perils. I’m not a “gag snob” to use another term from the DiD-tionary. But a gag just seems to be off limits to men as far as I am concerned – I find it unwatchable. How very strange.

Oops

It has been pointed out to me (by a reader far more assiduous than I am a writer, apparently) that my last post attracted no comments, when it in fact garnered one. Sorry, Evil Tru -- I did not intend to snub you. The post was a repost from the old blog (where it in fact did not receive any comments)  -- and I just cut and paste with abandon. Really, between my lackadaisical attitude and my my time constraints, it's a miracle anything comes out intelligible at all.....
I do appreciate any and all comments! Thank you, Tru! And thank you, Miss Anonymous, for pointing it out!

Fictional villains I admire from a distance

Having bored you all (well, I got no comments so I assume it bored or confused you all) with the characters I draw on for my villainous persona, I'd rather turn the tables and talk a little about villains who most definitely are not me, but whom I nevertheless, for lack of a better term, admire. Well, find interesting. OK, tolerate.

1. Maximilian Largo (from the sort-of-last Sean Connery Bond film, Never Say Never Again). You just can't beat the smirking, joking, scene-chewing Klaus Maria Brandauer as Maximilian Largo. His yacht has a screen that keeps minute to minute tabs on his net worth (the number keeps racing upward like the National Debt billboard near Times Square). He has the cheesiest 1980s taste in videogames (he and James Bond play a ridiculous version of something that resembles Tail Gunner (the primitive arcade version) for those of you who have your advanced degrees in paleogaming). He likes nuclear weapons, a key megalomaniac obsession. But most of all he has excellent taste in villainess sidekicks (the mesmerizing Barbara Carrera as Fatima Blush, who reponds to Largo's plans to kill 007 with this line delivered with her unforgettable, hyper-enunciated alto: "Oh, Maxi-millllian. Youh sense of humah issss deeee-licious!")

He's not like me because his villainy is too easy, too Eurotrash, not nearly obsessive, warped, intellectual or driven enough. He wants to conquer the world because...because...pourquoi pas? Not me.

2. Dracula: Drac has lots of traits I like in a bad guy: weird charisma, immortality, thorough sense of history, and he's particular about his beverages. But there is something offputting about him. I can't really say I've roleplayed him to my satisfaction (and I have tried with generous partners, it still didn't work).

I know what the problem is: it's lack of empathy in the character. How can Drac really relate to his heroines? If you really are a different species, and you feed off damsels, how could you not treat them like cattle after a while? I really don't want to objectify my heroines, not matter how diabolical a peril I put them in. In fact, the mere act of planning a diabolical peril requires some basic respect, in a twisted way, for the damsel. It's almost out of character for Drac; he just wants to bite them. After a while, kinda repetitive. I think I'd rather be Van Helsing in this one (and not like in the movie).

3. Agent Smith (from the Matrix movies): Lots of good stuff about this guy. Smart, motivated, malicious, unpredictable. That great line in the first movie, "You are the disease and we are the cure!" -- well, anyone who has played as a heroine defending law and order against me as a villain in RP knows that I love riffing on that kind of sentiment.

But Smith is just implacable, there is a lot of intelligence but no soul there (well, he is a computer programme). It's not just the heroine who has to have a weak spot; the villain should have one too (preferably, if obviously, for the heroine herself).

4.  Liam Neeson's Ra's Al Ghul in Batman Begins: Well, first of all, I would want Liam Neeson to play me on film -- he's about my height (ie very tall), quiet, intense, with not an ounce of the fey about him. He's older than me but so what?  And he was married to Natasha Richardson, whom I admired, thought was very pretty, and have direct proof was a sweetheart (no I never met her personally).

Anyway, Neeson's "Ra's" is soulful, brooding, and warped beyond recovery. Hmm, maybe my villainous persona really is like that. I think though that the portrayal is of a character too ascetic to really be me. I have my need for purity (specifically, in freezing cold, on two fiberglass planks at 12 000 ft elevation, surrounded by rock and ice), and I have a deep appreciation for the aesthetics of, for example, Japanese calligraphy. But I don't make asceticism a goal for long unless I am in a really, really foul mood. And in RL I just find that (for me) that is running away from something, rather than reaching for something. For me Zen is a tool, not a state of being. YMMV.

5. Verbal Kint (from The Usual Suspects): I love the whole story of Keyser Soze, the way Kint plays the police for fools. I am just not that good a liar, and don't really want to be. Deceptive, yes. Manipulative, of course. But profuse lying like that? As a villainous character I'd rather distort the truth than completely reinvent it.

That doesn't mean I think the character of Verbal Kint is a level of evil to which I won't stoop (in character of course). Quite the opposite. For a brash lie may require more pyrotechnic skill than a subtle distortion of the truth, but the latter can endure, and can change the victim. Which weapon is more diabolical: a grenade, or a virus?

6. The Operative (from the movie Serendipity):skilled, principled, and utterly misguided. I like his style, his articulate nature, and his dedication to a deeply flawed cause. At the same time, the character is politically naive. And that is one thing I am not.

It has become a cliche that "no villain knows that he is evil." Well, that was a useful corrective to some of the stock Snidely Whiplash characters in the movies, but in a world not of black and white but grey, I think a villain who recognizes his own morally compromised nature is more dangerous, as he can empathize with both heroes and heroines, and find their vulnerabilities more easily. In short, the notion that "no villain considers himself evil" is turning into a crutch to make bad guys static characters. In any drama or literature, characters should go on a journey. If you take the cliche too strongly, that process does not happen.

And I suppose I should supplement this little excursus (having started with a Bond villain) with a comment about 007 as anti-hero. You'd think I, as a guy, would love to be James Bond: Bond gets all the girls, he gets to shoot whomever he pleases, and he looks like (oh, who is it now? who cares).

Well, I don't envy him, not really. Why not? Pretty simple. It's not the anomie of his existence that is so charmless. It's not even his fundamental misogyny (although I just can't relate to that either). It's that his tastes, his peccadilloes, are so...so...pedestrian! Shaken, not stirred? It doesn't make a goddam difference. Only a fanboy could give a monkey's. I do want the car, though -- well, only the Astin Martins -- the DB5, the DB7 or the V12 -- not the stupid Beemers….

Vulnerability

A repost from long ago that followed up a rather air-headed post on my favourite terms in English. Well, skip the bad and go staight to the, er, better...

Another favorite word is "vulnerable." I vastly prefer this term to "weak" as a general attribute of heroines because (I think) it emphasizes what makes a damsel so desirable without disparaging them. Of course, most women are physically weaker than men (certainly than me at 6' 3" and 200 lbs), and of course if I use tricks like choloroform on a damsel then she is going to feel quite weakened and confused.


But more generally, vulnerability rather than out and out weakness more comprehensively describes what makes a heroine so attractive. That vulnerability can stem from sheer lack of physical strength, or else innocence and meekness, or excessive curiosity, all the way to a headstrong spirit that gets our intrepid heroine in a situation she can't handle herself, to the classic weaknesses of superheroines (kryptonite or what have you.) - These vulnerabilities are not character flaws -- they actually make the heroine a better person usually, all the more reason for one to be very focussed on her in peril.

Also - and this may or may not make sense -- as villainous as I am, a damsel in distress, even in fantasy, brings out very protective instincts even in a "cad" like me. I can't help it and I suspect most men can't -- we are hard wired to respond to females in trouble. This is the reason why, ladies, if you are ever pulled over for speeding, crying works better than showing a little leg. The protective instinct transcends (but does not replace) the more direct desires a man feels when he sees an attractive woman. It's a very chaste sentiment, actually: "Dans le véritable amour, c'est l'âme qui envelope le corps." (In true love, it's the the soul that surrounds the body.)

Every damsel in peril moment is a hit of such "true love." Even as a villain I feel it. It creates huge tugs of war when I really have to decide if a damsel in my (online) clutches is really going to snuff it or not (which of course is always resolved the right way). Her utter helplessness can be a tremendous source of power to her.

In real life I am not the diabolical fiend at all. I can recall very vividly being on the London Tube (Piccadilly line actually) in a crowded train and some guy was giving a woman (apparently his ex-girlfriend, although it was not clear) a rough time -- verbally. He was just laying into her, "who do you think you are" etc etc - it seemed that her crime was to reject him or she was unfaithful to him. She just had her head down, ashamed, and wasn't even answering back to his abusive onslaught. At any rate, whatever her offense, she didn't deserve public humiliation I thought. Everyone else was pretending this wasn't happening.

Finally the bloke says "And you know what? You're not even that pretty." At that point I just had had enough of this bully. That just crossed a line for me -- not sure why. Maybe because she was in fact quite attractive, but I hope I am better than that. Anyway, I just said, loudly, "Uh, I think you're wrong there, mate." So the guy starts challenging me to a fight (bad idea as I was younger, bigger, and certainly meaner). I declined his offer, long story short.
But out of the corner of the woman's mouth, in a whisper to me, after I had defended her looks, came a soft "thank you." I never saw her again of course. But I was high on that thank you for a week.

Components of My Villainous Persona

At the risk of sounding incredibly vain, I'll mention a few of the characters whom I have used to "construct" my villainous persona. By that I mean creating those components of a villain in roleplay that are necessarily inventions because in real life I don't want to do horrible things to damsels. Another way of putting it is that the personalities below intersect with my own if I were actually living out my fantasy life. To some extent, they reveal the "hidden me" obscured by the tedious conventions of everyday life.

Some are real historical personages, some are famous characters from fiction. Some (not many) have traits I admire; more have flaws I guess I also possess.

I wanted to avoid the obvious cliches -- I mean, I know my nom de guerre is Sylvester Sneakly, but that's just because I want to trap Penelope Pitstop. I do not want the high-pitched voice of Paul Lynde. Nor should I have to: my real life voice is pretty low (not gravelly) and (I am told) mellifluous. I guess I give good phone lol.

Most of the names here are from English language literature and history. There are great differences in cultural attitudes to villainy. In most Anglo-Saxon melodrama, the villain is exceedingly smart and powerful, making him a very capable threat to hero and heroine alike. All you need to add is a sporty loucheness, and the heroine is really in dire distress! The French tradition often has the most genuinely terrifying villains being extremely stupid. Stupidity is dangerous because of its random destructiveness. It reveals much of French attitudes that evil intelligence is less feared than evil stupidity -- at least you can reason and negotiate with the former. I think the French really have a point here.

However, I am more in the English than French speaking world, though I grew up with both. I find playing evil intelligence a lot more fun than playing stupidity. So here are the 'villains' (or not) I channel while I have our heroine in my clutches:

John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester (1647-1680):

The notorious wit and rake of the English Restoration, an indiscriminate boozer, hustler, and fornicator with both men, women and probably other things. He died, horribly but inevitably, of the pox (syphilis) in his early 30s. Oops -- don't you hate when that happens? A movie about his life, The Libertine, starring Johnny Depp, was released a few years ago. It was savagely panned by the likes of Entertainment Weekly. To be sure, the technical aspects of the movie are terrible (editing, sound, etc) but all the performances are startling. I am a huge Johnny Depp fan and he gives Rochester all the wit, danger, and charisma of the real person. I think the real problem many people have with the film is that it truly depicts the spirit of the Restoration -- a period whose people would look on our times with derision, laugh at us and make us feel small.

Anyway, enough digression. Rochester was smart, very handsome, with a rapier wit and absolutely no compunction about using others to suit his ends. A true model villain for me. Great at parties. Decent poet. Rochester, appropriately enough, kidnapped his future wife when she was eighteen. Just bundled her into his carriage, and took her. She stayed with him to the end. In that respect at least, my kind of guy lol.

Cardinal Richelieu (1585-1642):

The villain of the Three Musketeers; also, in history, the architect of the France we know today, who saved the country from the collapse caused by the Wars of Religion. His will was inflexible, his energy implacable.

Here is a synopsis from a new biography on Richelieu by Anthony Levi. "For a man who might justifiably lay claim to being the father of the French nation, Cardinal Richelieu , the first minister of King Louis XIII's council, was quite remarkably unpopular. His overtaxed countrymen, ever rebellious during his lifetime, lit bonfires to celebrate his death, and "it may well be true," according to his new biographer, "that it is impossible to name any historical personage in French public life who has provoked more hatred." [Richelieu was] a complex man of manipulative intelligence and inexhaustible nervous energy, capable of good humor and charm as well as violent mood swings."

Captain Nemo (20 000 Leagues Under the Sea):

Jules Verne's classic villain. A tortured soul, inscrutably bent on revenge against civiliation, Nemo is both cultured and estranged. I like drawing on him as an explanation of villainy - some tragedy in the past, some injustice, that has warped a clever mind into twisted evil and total paranoia.

Cary Grant (1904-1986):

The ultimate male movie star. How boring today's leading men are by comparison. He was suave, debonair, but there was a hard, impenetrable centre to him - probably the result of growing up Archie Leach, a poor boy with an insane single mother, eking out a hardscrabble existence on the London vaudeville stage before moving to New York with nothing more than the shirt on his back. He could, and did, play both hero and villain at a time when Hollywood did not often let you mix and match types as an actor.

Joker and Riddler (Batman comics and movies):

Both Batman villains intrigue me. I have found Joker a bit too brutal for heroines, Riddler a bit too fey, so I like drawing on both of them, each balancing the other's limitations, for camp value. Plus, I can do the Riddler's demented cackle just like Frank Gorshin did.

Edward III, King of England (1327-1377):

A vastly tall, blond Plantagenet, "with a face like a god" according to contemporaries, Edward III launched what has come down to us as the Hundred Years' War. I can recall the thumbnail sketch of him in Desmond Seward's very readable book on the war --- I am quoting purely from memory, so it won't be perfectly accurate:

"Edward III was one of England's most formidable kings. No one will ever know what drove him -- a father complex or simple megalomania -- but for over thirty years he ruled the country with a demonic energy. The cult of chivalry, so much admired in its day, has obscured the man beneath, yet a personality nevertheless emerges: extravagant in friendship, hardhearted and cruel in enmity, he was also a relentless womanizer who eventually ruined his health. He saw himself as the perfect hero-king, but for all this he was also practical and clear-headed: his motto was 'It is as it is.'"

Except for the womanizing part and the crown (and if my face is 'that of a god' it's not an A-lister deity) -- wow, that's pretty close to the real me.

To this day the upper (male) echelons of British royalty carry the title KG after their names, which stands for Knight of the Garter and originated as a military decoration in the Hundred Years' War of the 14th and 15th centuries. The Order started when Edward, making "outrageous advances" to the Countess of Salisbury, the beautiful nineteen year old daughter of one of his closest friends, removed her garter from her leg, put it on his arm, and dared anyone to say anything with the line "Honi soit qui mal y pense" (shame on him who thinks ill of this". The slogan -- and the garter! -- can be found on Royal Coat of Arms to this day.
Mr Darcy (Pride and Prejudice):

"Hardly a villain!" all Jane Austen fans will protest. Entirely the point. Cold, sneering, distant, Mr Darcy eventually wins Elizabeth Bennet, mostly through irritating her to the point of distraction. A lesson for all "nice guys" out there.

I especially liked the portrayal by Matthew MacFadyen in the recent movie based on the book. I seldom like Jane Austen's men -- the world they inhabit is too closed, too girly to appeal to me. I know I am not being fair to Jane Austen, whom I admire from a distance -- but she did set her novels in what she knew: the rather privileged (although fragile) and fairly useless world of late 18th century English gentry. There are only so many tea parties I can handle. Anyway, MacFadyen does a great job of being a man in this movie, not a little cardboard cut-out whose sole purpose it is to eventually fall in love with the deserving heroine.

And -- in case I am giving you the wrong impression by all the reprobates above -- no, I am not promiscuous, alcoholic, bisexual, paranoid, distant, or delusional. But it is fun to pretend.

A Canterbury Tale

Reposted from a long time ago....

A Canterbury Tale


I recently saw again a favourite film of mine, one I had not seen in ages: Michael Powell’s A Canterbury Tale, made in the UK in 1943. The opening sequence is a landmark: it shows a group of medieval pilgrims out of Chaucer, ends with a falconer releasing a hawk, which rises in the air, changing into a Spitfire which then comes down at the falconer, now wearing a helmet and an Army uniform. It was later stolen by Kubrick for the classic shot out of 2001, where the ape tosses up the bone and it comes down as a space station.

Now, this is in many ways a weird film: the central plot involves discovering “the glue man” who is dumping glue on the hair of women who dare stray out after dark, in order to deter them from dating those horrid Yank servicemen stationed all over Kent (where Powell was raised: he knows every inch of the Canterbury area, and it shows.) Never mind the bizarre silliness of the idea – Powell uses it, in my view, to tremendous, though highly idiosyncratic effect. For example, when the female lead (Sheila Sim, who would later become Lady Attenborough, is tremendously appealing as a doughty but vulnerable and damaged character) has her hair glued, there is a shot which closes with her head in a bucket, her hair being soaped and washed by five pairs of male hands. Weird.

Anyway, the reason for highlighting this is, as you might guess, the villain: Culpepper, played by the amazing Eric Portman. For subtlety, sympathy, attenuated charisma and threat – whose villainy is less and less obvious as the film goes on – you can’t do any better than Portman in this film.

I can’t say enough about how much I relate to this figure – not the vaguely creepy glue jobs, of course, but the twisted morals, the profound loneliness, the irony of being in a position of respect in his public life and reviled in his alter ego. Portman breathes into it a sadness so deep, an alienation so complete that you almost don’t see it at first.

It helps me (if I may flatter myself) that my speaking voice, altered for accent of course, is not that far away from Portman’s. His voice has the same smoothness as mine, although even his has a slight tang (not twang – I mean something acidic) to it that mine doesn’t.

If you want to see what my villainy is like – hell, you want to see what my real personality is like, watch the scene in this movie where Portman’s character is holding a lecture for the servicemen. It’s one of the most striking visual sequences in black and white film I have seen -- at times blatantly so, then turning to great subtlety in the blink of an eye.

If you do view it, I hope you can see the greatness behind the technical limitations of the time and the velly odd 1930s actor’s diction that comes out of Miss Sim (“Oh, end how dooo we dooo theyat, I wondah?”) I didn’t say she was sexy; I said she was extremely appealing. Oh, and please see the UK version, not the US version, with its moronic (though charming in its own obsolete way) bracketing story. Just like The Third Man – for Jah’s sake, see the UK version, for the US has a different opening voiceover that completely changes the tone of the film.