Title: Loving violence? The ambiguities of SM imagery in contemporary popular culture
Abstract:It has been noted by numerous commentators that a significant element
of contemporary popular culture has been the apparent ‘mainstreaming’
of explicit sexual imagery and discourse. An integral elem...It has been noted by numerous commentators that a significant element
of contemporary popular culture has been the apparent ‘mainstreaming’
of explicit sexual imagery and discourse. An integral element within this
development is the popular proliferation of imagery using the motifs of
Bondage Domination Sadism and Masochism (BDSM). Fashion, advertising, music and the movies have all brought into the cultural mainstream a
kind of aestheticised recoding of sex, in which the play of domination and
submission take a key role. This would suggest, prima facie, that a previously marginalised and stigmatised form of sexual practice has been ‘rehabilitated’ and brought into the cultural mainstream. However, through an
analysis of recent media imagery, it is argued that these popular representations risk blurring the normative boundaries between consensual BDSM
‘play’ and coercive violence/violation. For example, Vogue Italia’s controversial 2006 photospread entitled ‘State of Emergency’ combines ‘BDSM
chic’ with post 9/11 signifiers of terror and torture, thereby potentially reinscribing BDSM as a socially and morally dangerous activity.
Mainstream imagery therefore tends to consistently gloss over the centrality of consent in BDSM culture, thereby reinforcing negative stereotypes about the practices and their practitioners. Moreover, we hold that
these media representations cannot be understood in isolation. Rather,
they inter-connect in a relation of reciprocal influence with other discourses around ‘deviant’ sexuality, especially the medico-moral and legal
discourses. Working together, they perpetuate a confusion of sexual
consent and violence, which serves to fuel wider public anxieties about SM
as ‘deviant’ and ‘perverted’, and supports moves to censor BDSM imagery,
such as the recent prohibition on the possession of ‘extreme violent pornography’ introduced by the UK government.
In the first part of this chapter, we consider the ways in which popular
media has of late mobilised SM imagery, across diverse field including
film, fashion photography, advertising and music. In the second part, we
explore how these media representations intersect with medico-moral andlegal discourses, and might thereby work in concert to reproduce the supposed ‘deviance’ (and, indeed, ‘criminality’) of BDSM practitioners.
However, we also note the ways certain practitioners actively embrace the
status and symbolism associated with deviance, as an integral element in
the production of a desired social and sexual identity.Read More
Publication Year: 2013
Publication Date: 2013-06-17
Language: en
Type: book-chapter
Indexed In: ['crossref']
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