I may have misspoken last issue when I said there’d be “lots of dancing,” but there will be music by DJ Wade Ellars what that music accompanies is anybody’s guess.
The Atons invite you to the first Thrust party of the year. You can buy leather pants at the Gap.” So there!įriday, January 30, 9 pm-1 am, Club Metro Underground, St. It may already be happening-Kate Betts, a top editor at Vogue, is quoted in Newsweek dismissing SM as “last year’s trend. After our moment in the spotlight, mass culture will move on and find something else scandalous to glom onto, and we’ll be left to ourselves again. As I’ve said in this column before, I don’t relish being part of the floor show I’m sure there will be the times I’ll wish mass culture had found some other imagery to appropriate.Īnd you know what? That’s exactly what will happen. Others will try to get into leather spaces and dungeons for gawking purposes only. Some people who react to the imagery with curiosity may be moved to explore further and may find a home.
It makes us less threatening and more accessible. How are we in the leather/SM community, for whom this is more than a fashion statement, supposed to react? What are we to think of this turn of events? Yes, Madison Avenue and Hollywood are appropriating our imagery and our heritage for commercial purposes, but it also raises the visibility and acceptance of the real thing. This is the general public we’re speaking about, of course. SM imagery has become so non-threatening that even Pat Boone isn’t afraid of it. Now, instead of inspiring outrage, it provokes responses ranging from curiosity to a jaded yawn. SM/BD imagery used to be viewed by the general public as a shocking outrage (or at least titillating naughtiness).
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Long-time community members may say, “So what’s new?” Wasn’t it just a few years ago that Exit to Eden appeared in movie theaters (and very quickly disappeared)? Wasn’t it about the same time that Mary Tyler Moore and Dick Van Dyke posed as Rob and Laura Petrie in bondage gear? Hasn’t Madonna already taken mass culture through this territory? Well, yes, and there have been many other instances in recent history where SM imagery has been appropriated to hype something or sell something.īut recently there’s been a change. An article titled “Lick Me, Flog Me, Buy Me!” by Rick Marin is illustrated with the recent Bass Ale boot-licking ad and a photo of a waiter at La Nouvelle Justine, Manhattan’s currently-trendy SM-themed restaurant where, along with food, the menu includes such things as Verbal Abuse and Spanking for $20.
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Is the image shocking? Not too shocking to post outside Manhattan theaters.” (As of this writing, the full text of this thought-provoking article is still available on the Web at Newsweek offered a slightly more irreverent take on the subject in their Decemissue on page 85. Among his examples: Janet Jackson’s nipple ring and proclamations of her high threshold of pain, and the poster for the movie Sick, featuring a portrait of the film’s “Supermasochist” subject, Bob Flanagan, “seminaked, collared, shackled, and with a 10-pound chrome weight suspended from his testicles. In an article titled “The Mainstreaming of Kink” in the Novemissue of The Village Voice, Guy Trebay examines the increasing appearances of SM/BD imagery in mass culture.
According to The Village Voice and Newsweek, your lifestyle of choice is either going mainstream or already there. Drag has now gotten so ubiquitous that RuPaul’s hit talk show on the VH1 cable network doesn’t even raise eyebrows-Ru is just Sally Jesse Raphael with bigger hair. (Published in Lavender Magazine, Issue #70, January 30, 1998)ĭo you remember, a few years back, when only gay people went to drag shows? Then came Priscilla, Queen of the Desert and To Wong Fu, Thanks For Everything, Julie Newmar, and suddenly drag shows were the hip, happening destination for straights as well.