Why It Is Hard to Make A Good BDSM Movie

I haven’t seen very many. I’ve seen two that I think are very good. Secretary (2002), and The Duke of Burgundy (2014), then additionally perhaps on a related topic Eyes Wide Shut (1999).

I watched Lars von Trier’s Nymphomaniac: Volume I (2013) and Nymphomaniac: Volume II (2013) yesterday.

I didn’t watch the director’s cuts, (the normal versions were leaving Amazon) which adds an entire hour onto the second film, and either 25 or 40 minutes to the first film, and so I will not be talking much about these films specifically.

One thing I’d noticed though — it can be hard to make a good BDSM movie because in real life, people getting into BDSM isn’t usually a super big transformative thing for them, BDSM qua BDSM.

People have all kinds of kinks and fetishes, and generally do not have one very big overwhelming defining experience that pushes them into a whole new world. Sometimes this happens when a person enters a new relationship with somebody — but even then, they found something attractive about the person, sought them out, and kept seeing them and getting to know them better, and so it is not a complete phenomenological shock.

There are a few movies that involve a woman being kidnapped, and then “forced to fall in love” or something of this sort — but I have not watched any of these yet, and these would be relying on a sudden intense forced dynamic. (A reminder — very uncommon in actual BDSM, and this intense power dynamic has way less to do with BDSM and way more in common with…being kidnapped.)

Overwhelmingly, people who are into BDSM notice at some point, in small ways across time, and like other interests and other ways of exploring sexuality, are attracted to pursuing the interest and developing it as occasions come up, or as they meet other people with similar interests. There isn’t really a dramatic arc here.

Lydia Laurenson (as Clarisse Thorn) wrote a book I like quite a lot, The S&M Feminist, which has a lot of interesting stories, and also grapples with what it means to be a feminist and also enjoy being hit by men.

This book was written quite a while ago, long before OnlyFans, long before it was seen as particularly safe to be writing about alternative lifestyles.

There is a legitimate set of awakenings that can come from being hit for the first time and having an erotic response, a pleasure response rather than a displeasure response. And then a set of conflict and confusion that comes from how that squares with a pre-existing identity (such as being a feminist).

Dramatic arcs around these conflicts can be built.

However, there isn’t really a good arc around, “whoooa I was vanilla and then had this BDSM experience, crazzzyyy!”

****SPOILERS**** In 50 Shades of Grey, this is kind of what happens. (I have not seen the movie, I started it, found it basically unwatchable, and watched Secretary instead. I have read the book. I found it basically unreadable, but I read it.) But even there, the arc isn’t really about BDSM. It’s about a woman who meets a guy she thinks is weird, and she is into him, he has her do BDSM which she does not want to be doing, and then at the end he spanks her, she gets mad and leaves. The book is about how a woman does not like BDSM but is into this guy, and about her falling in love with him despite finding him pretty weird and annoying. (The book is filled with things like emails and text messages showing her annoyance.) If you replace BDSM with making her get on a fighter jet with him every day because he’s an adrenaline junkie and really needs to be on a fighter jet every day, it would be the same book. That’s how you can tell the book isn’t really about the BDSM.

The Duke of Burgundy (2014) has a very special place in my heart, because of how good it is as a BDSM movie. What makes it so good? I WILL NOT TELL YOU! It is too good a movie. I will not give any spoilers.