This is a show on Netflix about sexual fetishes.
I cannot recommend it for everyone. Too bad because it cracked me up. But I cannot recommend it to any of my brothers and sisters so I cannot recommend it to you.
It's very funny in spots if you're accepting to bizarre sexual impulses and find them funny, if not, then you'll not like this show on grounds of morality. You'll be all, television is nothing but filth.
It's also sensitive in places, to individual psychologies, and to acceptance of unusual sexual desires. The key to the film is honesty about yourself and accepting yourself as yourself and not as some projected image. The film is about how accepting and how open people already are.
The story is about a young twink who works as a waiter and cannot afford his rent and who would like to become a comedian but is too afraid to go on stage.
A High School friend of his asks him to be her assistant, body guard, gofer, helper in her work as dominatrix.
She is a beautiful young woman, thin at the waist and filled out on top, and she looks awesome in her dominatrix costuming. She shows the young man the ropes of her trade. Literal ropes. As they go on he is drawn in more and more to the nitty-gritty of her work. He is ill prepared and ill suited for the things that she puts him through. This is the basis of much of the humor.
The trouble begins when a man comes in who wants to be ridiculed about his small penis. Originally it is the woman who is to ridicule the man but by being there the twink laughed at the man wanting ridicule and that was a terrible faux pas in that situation. The dominatrix scowled at the twink, both of them dressed up in black leather, the man being ridiculed naked on the table.
"You laughed at me ... I think ... I like it."
Now the situation is reversed. The dominatrix wants the twink to continue ridiculing the man but the twink is way out of his depth. This is not what he signed up for.
"Do it!"
He relies on his comedic wit that makes him want to be a standup comedian. "Uh, okay ....
... Uh, this is the smallest dick I've ever seen ...
... I've seen more meat in a vegan kitchen ...
... Is that Pulitzer? Because it's a Raisin in the Sun ...
... A little bit of Proactiv outta clear that the fuck up.
The Lollipop guild wants to make it an honorary member.
My anorexic friend wants the number of your dietitian.
I've seen bigger dicks in a dyke bar without my contacts in."
[This makes the viewer contrive their own small dick jokes. By viewer, I mean me.]
Oddly, this satisfied the customer well. In this manner the twink becomes more important as such scenes go on, more and more crucial to the activities of the dominatrix.
Because she is honest with the twink he learns more about her real life. More about psychology. While she is still a psychological mess herself in real life meeting genuine men outside the dominatrix scene. The twink is having difficulty dating because he cannot be openly honest with the men that he meets. Although they're honest with each other they are still not fully honest with themselves nor with the world at large. They're both holding back too much to find satisfaction in their larger lives beyond their activities together.
As the episodes go, and there is only the first season, they are forced to face the world at large honestly in order to make any progress toward their personal satisfaction. With comic difficulty the twink opens up to his landlord/roommate and satisfies his landlord/roommate's own perverse sexual desire. He also becomes more open to a man he is dating, and the dominatrix forces herself to be honest with a man in her psychology class whom she has non-dominatrix interest, and to her entire college level psychology class.
The twink realizes this new avenue he's pursuing is now part of who he is. And that his self-identity is rather funny. He puts on a master's leather mask and goes onstage and treats the entire audience as masochists. He takes off the mask while still in leather outfit and simply describes his new life. The audience accepts his bizarre track as honestly confronting the psychological self and as genuine legitimate comedy.
Across episodes along the way the Netflix audience is treated to other bizarre sexual fantasies. To fill out the development of the twink becoming equal partners with the dominatrix. More and more is demanded of him, things he did not sign on for.
A man wants to be peed on but the twink cannot pee in front of anyone else. Earlier in the bathroom he was told to sing Happy Birthday, or some such, ways to think about something else. Pressured in the S/M scene he sings Happy Birthday to satisfy the perversion.
Another man wants to wrestle in penguin costumes.
Another timid man wants to be tickled and his uptight librarian-like wife really wants to punch someone in the face. They're both too tightly wound to do this without help. As their story develops they both get what they deeply want and they settle into a mutually satisfying relationship. But first they must be honest.
A bad incident happens with a wealthy dangerous client in his home that could result in murder causing the twink to perform well beyond anything that he was previously capable of and causes him to insist on equal partnership, which she accepts.
The dominatrix using the manner of mistress busts her professor using psychology to manipulate a vulnerable student, and she kicks him out, exposes him to college administration and takes control of his class in her way. Their assignment is to examine the reason why they are pursuing psychology, they are studying the psychology of psychology, so each student is taxed to expose their own private psychologies to the rest of the class. This takes a lot of uncomfortable introspection and exposure. After shocking her fellow student who is her new interest, in the bathroom with stark honesty about her profession, to break through the block that she had set up for herself for protection, she then shocks the entire class by ripping off her coat to show them her leather dominatrix costume.
She is stunning.
She tells them her story, and it is touching and sensitive. She knows why she is who she is. The class is riveted to her confessions. She slides a chair to the center of the room and asks, "Now. Who wants to be tied up in this chair?"
How rude! How aggressive.
A hand sheepishly goes up. Then another. Then another. Then half the class. Then the entire class wants to be tied up in the chair.
It's very funny to think this could happen.
They all accepted her story. They all are intrigued. They all want to be part of her story. They all want to play the masochist. She calls the name of her new male interest. "Get the fuck up here. NOW!"
This ends the season.
If you stuck with it this far, then at this point you want the story to continue because now both characters are developed and both finally fully interesting. But it doesn't continue. And that's rather masochist treatment of Netflix audience to offer only one season.
16 comments:
Does the show offer any insight into the formation and development of sexual fetishes?
A little bit. But it doesn't dwell on it.
The dominatrix is probably the best when she gives her report to her class. The previous confessions were blasé compared to her story, but it's told in fractured bits and cuts between scenes.
I'd say no. It does not. It just shows people ending up twisted.
Bonding, or bondage?
Sweet summer children of the corn.
Bonding. Because the two principal characters are bonding.
Twink? I looked it up. Now I know.
As usual, I live and learn. Having not read or watched Game of Thrones, I wasn't familiar with the term "sweet summer children of the corn", but found it refers to someone who is inexperienced or does not know the full extent of something, while they thinking they do which puzzled me further into wondering who doesn't know what? And what don't they yet know?
I don't think George R.R. invented the "sweet summer child" concept. I'd heard that saying years before GRR-fter came along. Basically, it's a kid (or someone behaving like a child) who has never experienced any want or need. It's been summer his whole life. Supposedly he's a lovely, innocent little lad because of it. But he's not. He's a snot. So is she. They know nothing. (Hey, just like Jon Snow.)
Anyway, we're kind of in that sort of a summer" period now. No wars of serious world-wide consequence for a while, standard of living improving everywhere, etc. But we have all these whiny brats and ne'er do wells who are never satisfied. Nothing is good enough, they're bored, they're better than everyone who came before, the great men and women of past ages are a bunch of -ists, they don't know any better because they have no idea of how much worse it could be. Some are never satisfied sexually and take rather extreme measures, hurting and humiliating each other. Fine. Live your life with your like-minded friends. The larger problem is these morons, every generation of them, get weaponized into the cult. Hence the children of the corn reference.
Children of the Corn is a reference to a movie about these spooky little kids with white hair who as a group used their mental powers to take over the adults and rule their town.
In the book the kids were in a cult that required anyone over 18 to be killed. Don't know about the movie.
I appreciate the explanation, Amartel. It may be a combination phrase, and if so it's a good one, with the Children of the Corn as one of King's short stories in 1977 (movie in 1987) and George RR Martin using it thusly in Game of Thrones:
“Oh, my sweet summer child," Old Nan said quietly, "what do you know of fear?
Fear is for the winter, my little lord, when the snows fall a hundred feet
deep and the ice wind comes howling out of the north. Fear is for the long
night, when the sun hides its face for years at a time, and little children
are born and live and die all in darkness while the direwolves grow gaunt and
hungry, and the white walkers move through the woods”
I found the phrase fitting at the point in the post where the dominatrix was described as "stunning" and someone "who knows who she is" while the young men who sheepishly responded to her and began to open themselves to what was to come appeared to have done so without any clue as to what intrigued them, who they were or why they wanted to go along.
A hand sheepishly goes up. Then another. Then another. Then half the class. Then the entire class wants to be tied up in the chair.
It's very funny to think this could happen.
They all accepted her story. They all are intrigued. They all want to be part of her story. They all want to play the masochist. She calls the name of her new male interest. "Get the fuck up here. NOW!"
What disturbs me most isn't the morality of the sexual behavior, a sense of filth or the young men's cluelessness regarding the door they think they want to walk through but this observation from someone I respect and usually regard as somewhat discerning: "It's very funny to think this could happen".
Since I had an opposite reaction, not picking up on anything funny or humorous in the situation described, I am left wondering what about it seemed funny to think about?
My own life experiences have made it difficult for me to consider another's need, desire or decision to dominate, humiliate or hurt others as valuable life work; or find the young men's cluelessness and willingness accept and go along with it funny to think about, particularly in light of the post that follows this one, which I also found hard to read and "stunning" from another perspective.
I paint with an art instructor whose father entered the army at 18 years of age to fight in WW2 as a member of the Rainbow Division (the 42ndID)--the first to reach Dachau. His life and hers were both affected by what he experienced there. As a young man, raised on a farm, he walked into a reality that involved more humiliation, pain, subjugation, domination, and shame than he could possibly have imagined. He returned home to raise a family, and the life and light his daughter now carries and offers to others blesses me. I'm thankful for both of them, valuing their different yet similar commitments to life and liberation.
The thing that's funny to think about is the students are all studying psychology. They want to become psychologists.
By experience, every psychologist that I've met is in need of a psychiatrist.
It's rather clear to me, and has been since about age eighteen, that psychologist took up the study of psychology to figure out what's wrong with themselves.
One day I tested my theory with no sense of amusement to it, just curious, I resolved to act as psychologist in my next conversation with an actual successful psychologist.
I encountered a psychologist friend in line at IMAX theater.
He asked me how I was doing. (I happened to be doing very poorly health-wise at that point in time. I told him that, and gave a quick synopsis, then I said, "But I'm much more interested in how you are doing."
He told me what's going on.
I asked him, "How did you respond to that?"
He told me how he responded.
"How did that make you feel?"
He got right into how that made him feel. He knew exactly how he felt.
"Why do you think that you respond that way?"
He thought a bit then told me why he thinks he responds that way.
"Where does that come from, anyway?"
He told me where he thinks it comes from.
And so on. I kept thinking of what I imagined a psychoanalyst might ask then asked it. And he kept answering cooperatively. It was very VERY easy to do and I was surprised he was so cooperative.
And the whole time I was thinking, goddamnit Dude, don't you see that I'm pretending to be a psychologist? But the whole thing came off like an ordinary conversation. And I never quite understood why the guy even liked me.
So I tried it again with a different guy. A psychiatrist this time. This guy could actually prescribe medication. And he always struck me as extremely fucked in the head. He's the guy with the parrot that I already told you about.
Lives on the 22nd floor of an elegant apartment building on Larimer. He invited me over to paint blank white cutouts of Egyptian workers that Joslin's downtown used for their window dressing during the Ramses II exhibition at the Museum of Natural History. Joslin's was throwing them away at the same time that dentist was throwing a party. It happens the dentist lives directly across Colorado Blvd from the Museum of Natural History. His house is huge. The party was huge. Guests would go from the house to the museum to visit the Ramses exhibition.
You can see how this is right up my alley.
Naturally, the psychiatrist thought of me to help him paint the blank cutouts. They were life-size blanks. Pretty cool actually.
My birth certificate name is Robert. The psychiatrist's name is Bob. The parrot does not talk that I knew of. I never heard the bird say anything.
Although Bob the psychiatrist talks baby-talk to the parrot, and that right there is fucked up.
The bird lives in a giant cage that takes up the whole bedroom of his two-bedroom apartment. It is a very expensive place. Especially for a bird.
He also does woodwork from kits to make extremely fancy furniture. Instead of designing his own And that's a bit fucked up too.
He also likes to line-dance in the western style and that's just fucked up.
He's also 6 " 6', divorced and dates tiny women and that's totally mismatched and fucked up.
He eats strange food like kippers from jars and that's fucked up.
He brought out his stupid parrot and attached it to the balcony railing. A small wooden table set up with supplies. The parrot kept picking up paint brushes and gnawing them then dropping them down onto the alley far below. We both went down to pick up the brushes that his parrot destroyed.
He invited me over to paint the blanks but then half way through he departed for a dentist appointment leaving me alone with his parrot chained to the balcony railing 22 floors up, I hardly know the guy at all, and that's fucked up.
While he was gone I painted the Egyptian necklace. It's like an upside down rainbow with a thousand little parallel lines delineating the outline of jewels. My mind was focused on the tip of my brush. The whole place was extremely quiet. Like a Buddhist temple. Goes like this:
Line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, line, X 1,000
Right then, from behind me:
*LOUD parrot voice* "HELLO BOB!"
Screetch there went my parallel line.
I froze solid. My heart pounded to my throat. It sounded like a SWAT team rappelled onto the balcony from an even greater height. The voice sounded perfectly human and and clear as a bell and LOUD.
I could have swung and KILLED that goddamn parrot.
E-e-e-e-w, I hate that parrot to pieces.
That's how fucked up this psychiatrist is. Nothing about him is sane and settled. Much as any person I know, this guy needs a psychiatrist.
Village of the Damned was yet another charming movie about charming little children. I was not allowed to see it in the theater in 1960, and when I finally did see it a few years ago I figured that was because my parents didn't want me getting any ideas.
What, did they think I was going to turn English or something?
I can now see how a group of would-be psychologists responding as they did in cluelessness rather than self-awareness could strike someone as funny. My humor, however, tends not to go in that direction.
How funny would it be if the psychologist friend in the IMAX line took his friend at his word and decided to respond to his expression of interest in how he was doing by offering open, honest answers in return?
I found this post, in conjunction with the Dachau post, unsettling. It stayed on my mind most of the day.
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