Tag: Mainstream

That title sounds like something from a bad porn movie. It’s actually the name of a book by Bram Stoker of Dracula fame. More importantly, for the purposes of this blog, it got turned into a crazy film by Ken Russell.

It stars Hugh Grant (in one of his earliest starring roles) and a very sexy Amanda Donohoe. She plays the role of Lady Sylvia Marsh, a seductive snake lady who protects the lair of the aforementioned worm. In the scene below she’s taking care of a boy scout who is unlucky enough to come calling at her mansion. That look on his face in the second image is what you get when you let seductive snake ladies bite you in delicate areas. Things don’t end well for him, as this animated gif shows.

I can’t say it’s a great movie. Or even a good movie. It’s pretty cheesy with some ridiculous dialogue. But if you feel in the mood for an entertaining old school monster movie, then you could do worse than this. It even has a catchy soundtrack.

Advochasty recently put up in an interesting post describing his enjoyment in being assigned tasks, and it reminded me of an older post by Lily that I’ve been meaning to link to for ages. Lily’s post draws on a book called Real Service that describes a categorization scheme for dominants and submissives. What stuck in my mind was the spectrum of domination styles it defined, ranging from parental to celebrity.

The “celebrity dominant” stays outside on the cell phone while their s-type goes into the restaurant, arranges for a table they know the dominant will like, begins ordering the food, and orders the dominant’s favorite cocktail. The dominant snaps their phone shut, sweeps into the restaurant, sits down, and begins enjoying the meal.
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The parental dominant, by contrast, chooses and drives to the restaurant, orders for both of them, and is definitely carrying the wallet.

I’ve never really explored a service D/s dynamic. Mostly that has been an opportunity problem, but for a long time I also wondered if it was something I’d even be interested in. I’d read blogs that featured a service dynamic and find the idea very unappealing. I hate micro-managing and I hate inefficient decision making. So when I read Lily’s post it was a light bulb moment. The idea of simply taking care of things and smoothing the way for the domme was highly appealing. Clearly I’d be reading about parental types where I needed a celebrity dominant! And there’s no shortage of celebrities playing with a domme look. Maybe Miranda Kerr or Katie Holmes would be up for a coffee sometime?

For a post illustration I thought I’d go with a couple of different styles of service. The first makes me think of the celebrity PA style. Although in this case, whatever he’s done, she doesn’t look too pleased about it. The second is obviously a fair more personal and hands on type of service. I found both on the Miss tumblr.

The New York Times featured an article on BDSM today. It wasn’t anything too surprising. Just the obligatory mention of 50 Shades of Grey and commentary on how BDSM is moving more into the mainstream. It’s nice to see a positive non-judgmental article in a major newspaper, but that’s nothing too unusual these days. What did surprise me was the photograph they featured with it (viewable here).

The 50 shades phenomenon has triggered a lot of BDSM articles and most of them either feature stock images of equipment (handcuffs, gag, etc.) or a cliched dominatrix trope (leather boots, a coiled whip on a hip, etc). The dominatrix photograph doesn’t make much sense given that 50 shades was a maledom story, but using an attractive women in a sexy outfit to sell a story isn’t exactly unusual. What surprised me about the NY Times images was that it actually featured a femdom image with both a man and a woman in it. That’s rare in my experience. Most mainstream articles are happy to describe BDSM play but rarely feature an image of it.

This isn’t to say D/s pairs can’t be seen in mainstream media. Fashion photographers seem to love that dynamic. I regularly stumble across arty fashion shots that have models portraying ideas of dominance and power. So it would seem mainstream publications are happy to use D/s pairings to sell entirely unrelated products, but are reluctant to use them in factual stories about real D/s. That must make sense to someone, but that someone isn’t me.

This image is from a fashion shoot called ‘The Night Porter’ by the photographer Harvey Miedreich for The Libertine. I found it on the Undiscovered Limits (aka Untamed Dark Mane) tumblr.