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The Corset Question: real controversy or pornographic wish fulfillment?

The Corset Question: real controversy or pornographic wish fulfillment? published on No Comments on The Corset Question: real controversy or pornographic wish fulfillment?

I was reading Wikipedia the other day and I came across an exhaustive article on The Corset Controversy. I read all the testimonials, arguing pro- and anti-, in various 19th-century periodicals, and I was like, “Is this for real? It sounds like something out of Penthouse letters.” My question occasioned an entire essay on the subject, cast in the form of a dialogue between me and Jareth. I’m just excerpting it here because I don’t feel like rewriting it univocally.

Me: Maybe you can help me.

Jareth: Certainly! Shall we parse the intricacies of Georgette Heyer’s complex portrayals of her female characters? ^_^

Me: No, but it’s tangentially related, insofar as I was reading about the Regency period on Wikipedia. Then I moved on to fashion in general, which, of course, got me into corsetry, which ended me up at an article called The Corset Controversy.

Jareth: Is this like The Woman Question?

Me: I dunno. What are you defining as The Woman Question?

Jareth: Oh, all that piss going back and forth in the latter part of the 19th century and the early 20th about women’s rationality, educability, legal rights, suffrage, etc., etc., etc.

Me: Not directly, although the two overlap chronologically. The Corset Question was a debate that ran on from about the 1790s to the 1890s. It was, of course, a disagreement over whether women should wear corsets, which was also referred to as tight-lacing or figure training. Detractors said that corsetry caused pain, squished the wearers’ bodies, reduced their lung capacity, muscle strength, and stamina, and ruined their health. Proponents said that, if practiced correctly, wearing corsetry was physically enjoyable, harmless to health, strength, and posture, and also fashionable/sexy.

Jareth: Are you sure that debate is over? –Because I don’t think it is. Whenever the subject of corsetry comes up online, usually in the context of costuming, Ren faires, and/or kinky clothing, there are always people who sound off on how disgustingly restrictive, painfully disfiguring, and generally evil corsets are. Then there are always people who are into corsetry who counter with something about it being perfectly fine if you do it right. Boy, is it tedious…

There are certain subjects, I think, that people have learned are bad through received wisdom. Like you should never put metal in a microwave because it will cause a nuclear detonation and wipe out your house. Or you should never trust a stranger who asks you for directions or offers you a ride because they’re clearly a child-molesting pervert who’s going to kidnap you, rape you, and leave you in a ditch. And you should never do any illegal drugs ever because they will either kill you the first time or damn you to a hell of escalating addiction and misery.

…I’d put people’s unreasoning objections to corsetry in the same category as stranger danger and the War on Drugs. People have worked themselves up into such a froth about the putative damage caused by corsets that they won’t stand to hear any actual information on the subject. Of course, the received wisdom is also so pervasive that it’s very hard to figure out what is true about corsetry.

Me: See – that’s kind of my problem.

…Reading selections of letters in the Wikipedia article makes me suspicious – specifically, all the pro-corsetry ones. Seriously, they all sound the same, especially when they insist over and over again that it was painful at first, but they quickly got used to it, and now they enjoy the “snug,” “tight” fit.

For example, there was a whole protracted argument in the Toronto Daily Mail about corsets, especially for girls and teenagers. It was in a weekly section called Woman’s Kingdom, and it started off on April 7th, 1883, with some mother asking if tight-lacing could be done without damage. There were the usual pro- and anti- sound-offs, and then there was a sidetrack about preventing girls from cutting the laces of their corsets overnight.

Here’s where I get suspicious. This is directly from the May 19th, 1883 Toronto Daily Mail in the Woman’s Kingdom section, page 5:

HOW TO PREVENT LACES BEING CUT.

“Mother” asks how to prevent her daughters taking off their stays during the night. I must confess I am a disciple of the old school, and believe in the efficacy of corporal punishment. The “severe punishments” …were whipping, which I administered. They were severe, but they served their purpose. Two applications prevented any further interference with the staylaces. I would recommend “Mother” to try the rod with her daughters. –STAYLACE.

ANOTHER PLAN.

I have a very simple plan to prevent my children cutting their laces when they are first put into tight stays, to obtain a temporary relief from the pain which is undoubtedly severe at first. When one of my girls disobeys me by removing her stays, I adopt this plan: After retiring, I fasten her wrists together with a silk handkerchief. This keeps her hands out of mischief, and she soon gets accustomed to the stays. –A.B., KINGSTON.

And here’s some more on the subject from the next week, May 26th, same paper, same section, same page:

CHILDREN AND STAYLACES.

I can entirely endorse what “A.B., Kingston” says, that the best way of punishing children cutting the laces of their stays is by confining their hands. Instead of a silk handkerchief I use a small leather strap, with which I fasten the wrists together at night to keep the hands away from mischief, and as a punishment I fasten the hands behind the back for the greater portion of a day. I find that a week’s restriction, which means a good wholesome position for the hands, induces a respect for the laces for all time to come. –A.R.

ANOTHER SUGGESTION.

I positively smiled at the plans suggested to prevent girls under training removing their stays, such as whipping them or tying up their hands. Mothers, listen to my plan. I get a small chain and a little padlock. When the stays are laced, I put the chain round the waist and fasten it with the lock, and put the key in my pocket, and there the stays have to remain till I remove the chain. Is that not simple? –COMMON SENSE.

Jareth: O_O Are you fucking kidding me?

Me: No! I’m legitimately getting this from pdfs of scanned Toronto Daily News microfiche that are freely available on Google News. Here’s a link to the head of the Woman’s Kingdom section for the May 19th quotes; go read it for yourself:

https://news.google.co.uk/newspapers?id=Yv1MAAAAIBAJ&sjid=9jQDAAAAIBAJ&pg=6659%2C4384004

 

 

 

Jareth: *clicking, reading*

Holy shit, you weren’t kidding. Wow, that makes me so sad.

Me: Yeah, but do you think that’s true?

Jareth: Are you seriously doubting the existence of corporal punishment?!

Me: I’m doubting the existence of bunches of people practicing what sounds weirdly like kinky bondage fantasies, combined with corsetry fetishes, on their kids.

…To me it sounds suspiciously like people getting a thrill from airing their fetishes in public through the medium of fictional letters.

Jareth: Oh… I was looking at it from a child abuse viewpoint. I can believe that it’s true because people visit all kinds of of horrible, degrading, painful treatment upon their kids.

I can also believe it’s true because of the simple fact that people wore corsets regularly  at that time. That includes kids! I’ve seen the ads for kids’ corsets, so it’s not like it was a rare phenomenon. Also there was a whole spectrum of attitudes toward corsetry for children, so naturally there would be people toward the extreme end who would lock their kids into stays at nighttime.

…I’m sure that some of the pro- letters were just elaborate whack-off hoaxes, but you say that this Corset Question went on for over a century, with pretty much the same arguments back and forth. I don’t think a 120-year-long whack-off hoax campaign over multiple countries, through multiple media outlets, is really likely. I think it’s much more probable that people were just coughing up the same pro- and anti- arguments at each other. Some of the pro- testimonials, I bet, were distortions and outright lies, and some were accurate reflections of how the writer perceived their experience. But I’m inclined to judge it a real controversy with real beliefs, real people, real stories, and real experiences behind it, even if it sounds pornographic.

By the way – I think you’re imposing your own modern judgment on this whole subject.

…Nowadays, pretty much no one wears corsets; they’ve gone from ubiquitous articles of clothing to costume-like things associated with extreme sexualization and kinky sex. You’re probably reading kinky sex back into the Corset Question because that’s what corsetry signifies to you, the modern reader.

Me: Mmmm, true. That makes sense. At the same time, though, I also see the Corset Question as intimately related to the Woman Question. If the Corset Question is about women’s physical freedom, then the Woman Question is about women’s legal and political freedom. The social body thus literally becomes a site for conflict as various people try to control it via the Corset Question, thus expressing their answer to the Woman Question.

Jareth: …So the Corset Question really is the Woman Question. Interesting.

Hey, can we talk about Georgette Heyer now?

Me: How ‘bout later? Writing an essay on the Corset Question just tired out my brain.

Jareth: Okay! I’ll hold you to that! ^_^

 

“It’s a novel; it’s not a manual!”: the problem with 50 Shades of Pooooooo

“It’s a novel; it’s not a manual!”: the problem with 50 Shades of Pooooooo published on No Comments on “It’s a novel; it’s not a manual!”: the problem with 50 Shades of Pooooooo

50 Shades of Poooooooo somehow came up in discussion at the Friends of the Library meeting this evening when we were talking about the prospect of a book swap and donations this spring. I felt it apropos to mention that the first book in the series keeps getting stolen from the library, so I keep donating copies to replace it. [Okay, just twice, but still…]

Favorite response: “Why would you steal it?! It’s a novel; it’s not a manual. You’re supposed to read it and then return it, not keep it for reference!” That cracked me up because clearly the speaker was not thinking about the pleasures of rereading. I was also entertained because, distressingly, people actually do take the series as a manual for either an ideal relationship and/or how to practice bdsm.

On the subject of pooooooooooo, a friend has sent me a pdf of Masters of the Universe, which is, of course, E.L. James’ Twilight fanfic that eventually spawned the Media Juggernaut of Poooooooo. If I don’t get lost in some infinite wormhole of recursion upon reading it, I might post a thought or two about it here.

Robert Dear, domestic terrorist and “gentle loner”

Robert Dear, domestic terrorist and “gentle loner” published on No Comments on Robert Dear, domestic terrorist and “gentle loner”

I’m really late to the party here, but I see that a New York Times article described Planned Parenthood terrorist Robert Dear as “a gentle loner who occasionally unleashed violent acts toward neighbors and women he knew.” After criticism online from numerous sources pointing out that this was basically white straight cis male apologism [especially when black male victims of white male violence receive vilification when described posthumously — hat tip to Chaedria LaBouvier], the NYT made some cosmetic changes to the article, but, to date, has made no direct acknowledgment of the multiple levels of bullshit involved in its portrayal of Dear. This reminds me of the 2012 coverage of the death of Lorena Escalera, trans woman of color, wherein the NYT’s confluence of racism, sexism, classism, and transmisogyny led me to cancel my subscription.

I think I’m going to start writing like the NYT.  In fact, I’m now going to characterize the paper itself as “an objective, trustworthy, fair-minded, egalitarian news source that occasionally unleashes bigotry toward anyone who’s not a straight white cis bourgeois male.” That’s accurate, right? :p

Just in case the article isn’t enough of a cesspool already, two other threads in it piss me off. First, there’s the strong assumption that anyone who lives by themselves, doesn’t socialize much with the locals, and keeps mostly to themselves is automatically up to no good. They must be like that because they’re hiding skeletons in their closet.

Second, there’s the strong implication that Dear’s interest in bdsm correlates to his recent murders. In the sixth paragraph of the profile, the topic sentence discusses “sporadic brushes with the law, neighbors, and relatives,” while the last sentence notes that Dear looked for bdsm partners online. The position of the sentence about Dear’s online profile thus groups it in with “brushes with the law,” suggesting that kinky sex and domestic terrorism are on a continuum. Apparently the slippery slope argument is alive and well in supposedly reputable news sources.

 

I’m really surprised that there’s nothing in this profile proposing that Dear is mentally ill and that his mental illness correlates to his criminality.

 

 

“Doing a Devo,” or, What Goes On in My Imagination

“Doing a Devo,” or, What Goes On in My Imagination published on No Comments on “Doing a Devo,” or, What Goes On in My Imagination

I rarely share in public what goes on with the characters in my head, but this is one of the more innocuous events.

For context, I got Whip It by Devo stuck in my head, which is clearly a goofy set of puns, even if you haven’t seen the video. Then I started thinking about Jareth’s workplace, which is mostly your basic corporate office, except for the fact that the business, the Mortal Coil [yes, thank you very much — I like the name too] sells party space, scene space, kinky equipment, and bdsm services. [And that’s one of the ways you can tell it’s imaginary — because such a company would never exist anywhere in Vermont. :p ]

Sadine is the Coil’s rock star domme who brings in so much business that she gets her own assistant, which is Jareth. It’s mostly executive assistant work, with a ton of calendar management. Lately, though, she’s been getting a lot of really low-quality crap from the web content specialists who are ghosting her blog copy, and so we begin our vignette…Continue reading “Doing a Devo,” or, What Goes On in My Imagination

Superhero and/or drag queen and/or dominatrix names

Superhero and/or drag queen and/or dominatrix names published on No Comments on Superhero and/or drag queen and/or dominatrix names

Anna Phylaxis.

 

 

 

Vivian Oblivion.

Hmmm, you know what would be an interesting story? A woman who works as a professional domme and has secret, shameful dreams of being a modern comic-book superhero. She imagines herself as a brave person who uses the element of surprise to scare the crap out of evildoers and then her imposing physicality to thwart them. Clearly we have some wish fulfillment here, as she has neither a generally imposing personality or physicality.

But of course she feels conflicted about her superheroic interests. For one thing, she imagines beating up people in a sloppy, raw, brutal way — concussions, broken teeth, de-socketed shoulders, crushed toes — that produces a maximum amount of mess and suffering. From this she feels a vindictive satisfaction in her fantasies, but the very existence of such thoughts horrifies her because she would never, ever, ever do something like that outside of her head. She abhors and abjures violence; in fact, she has a history of pro-peace, anti-war activism. Nevertheless, inflicting retaliatory pain has a seductive appeal for her inside her head.

 

For another thing, there’s all that sexualization and objectification mixed up in concepts of superheroic women. Some of that appears in her imaginings, as when she imagines herself as a femme fatale with weaponized accoutrements of femininity [i.e., stabbing heels, garrotting jewelry, poisonous lipstick]. This really disturbs her because her gender presentation is more like casual, sensible femme, and she thinks that she’s probably internalizing some societal misogyny or something.

 

Insert exploration of and commentary on roleplaying, shame, secrecy, power, powerlessness, the link of fantasy to reality, etc., here. Obviously someone needs to figure out how to relate to her deep wellsprings of RAGE!!!!

Desperately seeking irrelevance

Desperately seeking irrelevance published on No Comments on Desperately seeking irrelevance

I conclude that Slate keeps around certain commentators [Camille Paglia, Katie Roiphe, William Saletan] precisely because their uninformed, reactionary blatherings piss people off. That’s the only reason I can think of. I mean, surely no one takes these clueless blowhards seriously?

This week’s bloviation comes from William "Pointless and Sententious" Saletan’s column on The Trouble with Bondage. That’s bdsm, by the way, and the article discusses the reasons why bdsm will never go mainstream.

I thought the reason was that the majority of people weren’t interested in it. But no, silly me. Saletan’s article, as near as I can figure out, goes something like this:

blah blah blah lifestyle blah blah blah voluntary pursuit of pain wtf?! ewwwwwwwww blah blah breath play is dangerous blah blah anti-feminist sickos who like rape scenes blah some people take it to extremes blah blah I have no idea what I’m talking about, so I’m just going to call bdsm "consensual domestic violence" and cash my paycheck blah blah blah lifestyle choice.

As a human being with a functioning sense of decency, I find it repulsive that Saletan trivializes intimate partner abuse by using it as a metaphor for something it has nothing to do with. Way to go, you picayune, misogynist fuckhead. I’m glad to know that you’re more interested in making false equivalencies than dealing with actual deleterious symptoms of kyriarchy.

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1478727.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

This is not an Awkward Stock Photo!

This is not an Awkward Stock Photo! published on No Comments on This is not an Awkward Stock Photo!

This is awesome! How often do you see fat, kinky, androgynous, pierced people with disabilities in stocky photos? WOOOOOO HOOOOO! What a cute pair. ^_^

EDIT: I fixed the link!

This entry was originally posted at http://modernwizard.dreamwidth.org/1459890.html. You can comment here, but I’d prefer it if you’d comment on my DW using OpenID.

Anti-BDSM AND misogynist!: Philip Galanes of NYT’s Social Qs

Anti-BDSM AND misogynist!: Philip Galanes of NYT’s Social Qs published on 3 Comments on Anti-BDSM AND misogynist!: Philip Galanes of NYT’s Social Qs

I read advice columns for the same reason I watch mediocre TV shows. I gain entertainment not only from the stories told, but also from the advice supplied by the columnist and, frequently, the commenters. Plus there's always the opportunity to castigate the TV show or the advice column for how good it could have been.

Before I go into critiquing the NYT's most recent Social Qs, let me just say that the only advice column I can currently take seriously is Captain Awkward. She's a person with no official credentials to tell other people how to live their lives, but she, along with the trenchant commentariat, manages to provide practical, straightforward, explicit, helpful advice to the questioners. Be warned, though; she does use sexist slurs ["bitch" and "dick"], as well as ableist adjectives ["crazy"]. Despite her failings, I approve of her generally open-minded approach.

Now back to my original subject. In the most recent Social Qs, a letter writer says that her daughter's future mother-in-law loves Fifty Shades of Grey, a BDSM romance novel. "As a feminist," the writer dislikes the books and wonders how to respond when the future MIL asks the writer what she thinks of the books.

Philip Galanes, author of Social Qs, advises the following:

Engage your future in-law, mother to mother. Steer clear of judgmental terms like “offensive,” but try to get to the bottom of her excitement. Say: “I’d hate for a man to treat me or my daughter that way. What do you think the big appeal is?” She couldn’t object, and it might start an interesting conversation.

Good advice. When someone asks you your opinion of something controversial with which you disagree, you can neutrally state that you have a different view and, if you're interested, attempt to start a more general discussion and go from there. Of course, you can react in other ways [for example, "I don't really feel comfortable talking about that" is also perfectly acceptable], but this is a polite option.

I agree with the advice, but I resent the snide tone in which it's delivered. Galanes spends one paragraph of four answering the writer's question and the other three making sneery judgments about BDSM. In effect, he undermines his advice to be respectful and tolerant about things you don't know anything about by being derisive and dismissive about a subject with which he is [clearly] unfamiliar. Wow, he's really shoring up his credibility.

Besides an anti-BDSM stance, I also detect some misogyny in Galanes' response. Romance novels are predominantly read by women and, for that reason, are frequently not taken seriously, especially by male critics. Galanes' incredulity that female readers could find romance novel tropes interesting seems to subserve his distaste with Fifty Shades of Grey.

P.S. We're not even getting into the letter writer's assumption that feminism is incompatible with BDSM.

Techniques of Pleasure by Margot Weiss

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So Margot Weiss wrote an ethnographic study of San Fran's kinky scene, Techniques of Pleasure, finding it much more conservative and less transgressive than it would like to believe itself. Weiss challenges BDSM's portrayal of itself [see review/interview in Salon], saying that:

It's not diverse. Weiss finds that, at least in San Fran, the community is boringly white in its racial homogeneity.

It's not wild. Strict rules govern scenes.

It's not transcendent. It's mired in consumerism [all those special toys!] and reproducing societal inequities.

I'm definitely interested in reading this analysis. In parting, I leave you with one of my favorite Onion articles: S&M Couple Won't Stop Droning On About Their Fetishes.

“I like my women better as furniture.”

“I like my women better as furniture.” published on No Comments on “I like my women better as furniture.”

How awful is this commercial? Not only does the male protagonist clearly privilege the alcohol over the woman, but he doesn’t give a care that the woman is smothered in the couch. That’s not funny.

Seduction of submission, creepiness of dolls in The Doll Maker by Sarban

Seduction of submission, creepiness of dolls in The Doll Maker by Sarban published on 3 Comments on Seduction of submission, creepiness of dolls in The Doll Maker by Sarban

Summary: Creepy, luxuriously described dark fantasy about lonely, intelligent Clare and her seduction by titular doll maker. Convincing, sympathetic main character, smooth prose, kinky subtext and great insight into the weird, ambivalent relationships people have with their dolls — all these things make The Doll Maker a neglected gem.

Most of us, with some atavistic part of our hearts, secretly suspect that our toys are alive. Of all playthings, we feel most ambivalent about dolls. The humanoid shapes of dolls make them seem more like Homo sapiens than, say, stuffed animals or toy cars. We easily envision dolls as alive. The perfection of their small scale and the stillness of their beauty seduce us with admiration and longing. They will never change, never wear, never die, never degrade. They are unsubjected to time and therefore immortal and desirable.

But there are melancholy currents in our yearning. Though pure in their design and unaging in their flawlessness, dolls are always under the control of their owners, which means that they are often victims of their owners’ careless abuse. When they are not being played with, dolls lie in a state of suspended animation like death. Their existence is bounded subservience on one end and coma on the other. What sort of immortality is this?

Sarban [pseudonym of John William Wall] explores the weird attractions of dolls in his novella of psychological horror The Doll Maker. It is the story of the lonely, intelligent ingenue Clare, a boarding school student in her last year before college, and her relationship with the titular character, a young scion of the nearby manor. Lacking room to exercise her curiosity and intellect, she first sees Niall [the doll maker] as an opportunity to open the narrow avenues of her mind and her life. As she pieces together the truth about his sinister, magical art, however, Clare realizes the danger of submerging her will in his: she might never get it back. She struggles to thwart Niall’s designs while she saves other students and herself.

For a story that’s basically a fairy tale of a young woman under the spell of an evil magician, The Doll Maker packs a surprising amount of character development and psychological truth. As a rule, I’m deeply suspicious of male writers who write about female characters seduced by male ones because male writers seem much more likely to create wilting, pliant, submissive, boring, UNREALISTIC female characters. Therefore, I approached Sarban and his portrayal of Clare with defensive hostility.

I was, therefore, gleefully surprised when Clare turned out to be an actual, fully rounded, active character. Sheltered, chaperoned and guarded by her boarding school, Clare first comes across as introverted, lonely, detached and dreamy, like a ghost with no place to haunt. At the same time, while not wildly rebellious, she is smart and curious, and these traits propel both her meeting with Niall and her eventual discoveries of his secrets. Clare is both appealingly intelligent and thoughtful, but also naive enough to be susceptible to Niall. To his credit, Sarban presents both Clare’s brains and her inexperience in measured detail, taking her seriously, rather than mocking her. In a delicate balancing act, he makes her passive enough to temporarily submit to Niall, but assertive enough to eventually throw off his yoke and find her own identity.

The Doll Maker crackles with sexual tension. As Niall tries, in some sense, to make a doll out of Clare, he brings the artist’s craft out of the realm of inanimate material and into the social world, where doll making becomes a power play. Niall wishes to be Clare’s creator and to make her do as he sees fit. He portrays his mastery over her as a release from the cares and changes of life, a perfectly fulfilling dream. Uncertain about her scholastic future, friendless and anxious, Clare eagerly lets him manipulate her. She does indeed gain a certain swooning ecstasy from Niall’s control over her; in fact, the passages in which she feels powerless and yet peaceful are accurate descriptions of the altered state of consciousness that a submissive may feel in BDSM play when he/she is being effectively topped by a dom. Clare’s pleasure dwindles when she realizes that Niall’s domination depends on death and annihilation. She must assert herself against Niall’s destructive power. The kinky subtext of The Doll Maker adds another level to the story so that it can be read as a sensually charged but non-explicit story of a woman who finds some erotic satisfaction in submission, but who eventually has to free herself from an abusive partner/dom.

I strongly recommend The Doll Maker to people interested in horror and/or dark fantasy and/or dolls and/or feminism and/or rites of passage for female characters and/or kinky sex. First published in 1953, The Doll Maker is inexplicably out of print as a stand-alone novel, but you can buy it in The Sarban Omnibus. Incidentally, I hear that The Sound of His Horn is also weird and strange and erotically charged too, although not as good. I should probably get a copy of The Sarban Omnibus because I bought a 1960s paperback of The Doll Maker, and it’s falling apart, and I am very sad, and so are my dolls because they want to read it too. :p

 

I just realized…

I just realized… published on No Comments on I just realized…

…I finally have enough skills to realize a project that has been bugging me for years: my music video to I Go Wild. Of course, it would be like a movie slide show because I refuse to animate it [it would take years], but I could do it nonetheless!! It’s a great excuse to get a straitjacket and some fiendish devices. [It’s a toss-up between MADLAB-4 and the Re-education thingy.] Alas, alas, no one would ever see it unless they personally came over to my home computer and looked at it because there is no way that I would put anything so explicit up on the Web.

I’m really looking forward to illustrating…

You left me; I’m braindead
I’m feelin’ nothing, strapped to my bed
On life support, tubes in my nose
Tubes in my arms, shot full of holes

In other, not really related news, Sadotronic would be a great name for a band, preferably a Norwegian death metal one that thinks it’s really edgy and blasphemous.

HAH!

HAH! published on 1 Comment on HAH!

On podcast 45, in response to a woman who thinks that S&M represents emotional disability and mental sickness, Dan Savage points out that S&M is PLAY, and he says, “What S&M is is cops and robbers for grown-ups without your pants on.” Now I’m just imagining law enforcement professionals chasing crooks out of a bank in a completely serious context, except all parties are lacking pants. :p

Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari published on No Comments on Das Kabinett des Doktor Caligari: The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari

Since most of my movies are packed in preparation for my move, I’m watching movies through my compooper. The latest…An earlier example of German expressionism than Nosferatu, The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1919), directed by Robert Wiene. I highly recommend it because a) it’s the prototypical horror film, involving murder, twisted psychology and the analysis thereof; b) it really exploits the form (black-and-white) to heighten the delirious, dream-like atmosphere; c) it’s a well-done classic.

The Cabinet features the magical mountebank Caligari who commands a clairvoyant murderous somnambulist Cesare. When Cesare correctly forecasts Francis’ friend’s death, then tries to run away with Jane, Francis’ fiance, Francis pursues Caligari. Cesare dies along the way, while murder, confusion and doubling take over, not to mention all the crooked doors. The entire set is askew, which, along with the half light/half shade dichotomy of the lighting, makes the film look like a disturbing dream in which even gravity doesn’t work right.

I’m a bit fuzzy on the plot, with its multiple layers of mania and mistaken identity, but I do like its examination of the man called Caligari. He consciously decides to reinvent himself in the style of a mythical monk who could command a sleepwalker so that the sleepwalker acted as his golem. The motivation of the Caligari wanna-be, however, seems murkier, with sexual, even sadistic, components. When Cesare is first admitted to the mental hospital where wanna-be Caligari is the director, Caligari rejoices, caressing the inert man with a demonstrative, lascivious affection that reminds me of, say, Nosferatu  reaching for  Ellen.  Caligari  seems to want control  over  Cesare as much as he wishes to possess Cesare in an inert, doll-like state to care for him, objectify him and quite possibly desire him.  Note that the wanna-be’s reaction to Cesare’s death  looks very much like a stereotyped silent film  husband’s reaction to seeing the corpse of his dead wife.  I humbly submit that there are sadomasochistic homoerotic tensions at work in this film which, along with the  slippage of identity, make  it all the more interesting.

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