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RedBottomGirl26 -> RE: Films I loved before I knew I was... (11/1/2010 9:37:39 PM)
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NymphetamineGirl, wow are you sure we're not movie related [btw, do you like Cradle of Filth as a band, I kind of assumed based on your user-name, am I wrong]? I totally agree, when I was a kid, Laybrinth seemed very innocent on the surface and in many ways it is, yet...you do some digging and you figure out it's actually pretty complex. The fact that Sarah moves from an innocent and kind of bratty to figuring out that her opinions and assumptions might have been very wrong, was telling. Jareth in riding crop gear (please, as if that wasn't indication enough of his dominance, yet they make him a bit cowardly at parts, he advances to Sarah at the beginning, yet he's walking back from her near the end...not sure how that affected his dominance, or what that was making of Sarah's char. Yes, I have thought much too hard on these ideas haha.
Drop Dead Fred, wow...I thought I was in a limited group of ppl who loved that movie as a early pre-teen and thought it was hillarious b/c it catered to the innocent still inside me, but even now...as an adult, I still get alot of enjoyment from that movie. I'm not sure I saw any kink or BDSM elements in there much, except for the fact that Elizabeth's char. did seem very naturally submissive (her mom was over-bearing, and her husband, erg...he was a total asshole, he was kind of like the wannabe Dom, he had all the makings of a good Dom, yet he ended up using his power for bad or dare I say, evil disguised as good. Fred was great b/c he helped her see her real self, the self she was too afraid to see. He was the best friend she ever had, but I'm not sure there was a romantic element there, except for the kiss at the end. It was kind of weird that a kiss had to free her (maybe b/c she was a little repressed in her life, before all that?).
I agree, Beauty and the Beast certainly had some strong elements in it, perhaps that's because the original story was indeed darker than our watered-down version these days, in fact many of the fables and stories from long ago, were not very innocent at all [reminds me of Rosetti's "Goblin Market"], they were suppose to be warnings, that if you hanged out with this good looking man (as in Sleeping Beauty), that bad things will happen to pretty girls (not that I believe in that, but it did seem the mentality of ppl writing those "warnings" back then, suppose they wanted beautiful women to be afraid of everyone, so they would remain pure, but that's only my speculation. I mean in the real sleeping beauty story, not the disney version, she was ravaged by the prince, is the kind way of putting it, and the ending wasn't really as happy as our versions [I mean the lesson there seems to be, keep your eyes peeled and open].
Here are some other movies or shows that kind of showed me the direction I was drawn to, as well as the movies you listed above, and yes I agree Alan Rickman is often in roles where he is a driving force, though I'd disagree w/ Darth Vader, he just doesn't do it for me, I mean, any roles where ppl are heartless bastards, doesn't really turn me on, well except for one character, but I think that time I was letting my eyes do the thinking, and wasn't really focused on what the char. was physically doing. That's rare for me to ignore the over-all picture, but it can happen.
I also think Magneto from the X-men comics (more so than the movie) but he always struck me as the intellectual dominant, and he did have his nice points in the comics, the movie really misrepresented his true goal.
There was one actor on Millennium [this was a show, so maybe I shouldn't list it, but it was a highly influential show in me understand BDSM before I even knew what it really was, at times it seemed to villify it "Broken World", "Loin Like a Hunting Flame", "Pilot Episode", "A Room with No View", and "Collaterial Damage" I might even put "Sense and Antisense" on there (not any main char).That actor wasn't in all of these ep. in fact only "room, and sense" played an image of a demonic character who was evil and could shape-shift from man into a woman, or even at times, into a dog. Anyway, that was the one char. I was always attracted to, even though he does very wrong/bad things, & he didn't even have a justified reason, only "just cause" he wanted to, normally in real life a person like that would repulse me, but in the movies or on t.v it seems that you can suspend your beliefs for awhile. Really the whole point to the show is that good never dies (seen in Lance Henricksen's char) but that evil also doesn't really die (seen in the Lucy Butler/evil men char.s abounding through the show, you also see a mix of the two in "The Beginning and the End", where good is indeed more than tempted by evil, in order to save his wife, Frank has to kill the bad guy, and he usually didn't have to kill anybody in the show, in fact, he drew his gun very little, instead usually talking them down, or they killing themselves, or an accident happening.
Brimstone, was another show which had some elements at times, yet...there it was more about the difference between right and wrong, and the ends justifying the means type of deal. Not all things were black/white, many times Zek's char. had some dilemmas about who he was suppose to send back to hell, one guy he felt sorry for, and another woman had been a victim most of her life, and she ends up killing men indescriminately, but again he could identify w/ her as a cop b/c he had seen many cases similar to that, and his own wife was the victim of a terrible crime, so he wasn't always thrilled to do his job in order to get out of hell.
Anyway, I would also have to list Kiss the Girls on that list, in fact, if there wasn't any killing at all in that book/movie, I would say it would be practically every subs or slaves fantasy, but...again the writer villified BDSM to the point, where some of the women ended up dying for being "disobedient" I mean...I understand it was just a story, but ...um, there has to be a learning curve for anything, that was really the only thing that ticked me off about it, is that anyone had to die in there. I did like reading some of the letters, that he would write to the women, I mean, a man who likes writing love letters, is a very rare thing nowadays oh except the part of : "If you try any karate moves on me, you will be disfigured, if you try to escape you will be killed, as much as I like you"...that is very psychotic isn't it? I mean, the rest of the letter was all praises of her and her abilities and beauty, and then, we hear this one tiny line that ruins the whole fantasy back to a harsh reality for Kate. But, overall good story, keeps you tense and guessing throughout, and the characters all have a real sympathy to them, unlike some of the other Patterson books (kind of liked Violots are Blue, but it was a very different story, & some of his char. are not always sympathic, like one thing I noticed is that Alex is usually not very sympathetic to any of the criminals he hunts or finds, he just tries to get into their heads, but he doesn't really like facing the truth, in my eyes. That doesn't make him a bad char. he just kind of lived in denile at times.
Well, those were the most influential ones, I'm sure there's plenty of other material, as far as thrillers, I would also have to say that: Captivity, p2, Oxygen:Dying to Escape, Taken in Broad Daylight (the only movie based on a real event, all the others were fiction). I think I would also have to list Hellraiser as being very BDSM related (I mean Clive Barker is known for writing extremely graphic things in detail; there is a reason he's called Master of Horror [:D] ). And, Dean Koontz's Intensity again not strictly related, but there are elements if you look at the overall picture, but at least it had a happy ending (It always bums me when movies, no matter how dark a movie or show is, I usually want some closure, resolution, or happy ending, even if it's ambivalent, just not a total downer. I get down enough in my real life, that I like to see some triumph every now/then). I would also have to list The Entity as having some of those elements too, but I think the story also dealt with certain matters in a more humane way, instead of things just being gory, it really relied more on tension and fear, they didn't have to be overly graphic, De Felitta's writing I mean, always had alot of compassion, which given the subject matter, you just didn't expect, it also seemed about family strength through unity,through a unified front of facing a problem together, instead of apart.
I'm sure there's really many more movies out there, or shows, that hit closer to these topics, but these were the ones I was drawn to, because they weren't all black and white, in many of these, you could feel empty for the hero figure just as much as you could for the villain (maybe there were one or two "bad guys" who didn't have many redeeming qualities, but like every good person, I often look for the few sparks of redemption rather than the total evil package we're presented with on the outside, though it might be true some ppl are just more good than others, and some ppl will mostly be evil, but I think the majority of us are all somewhere in the middle, in those grey areas, where we do a little of both most of the time, which makes it hard sometimes. Sorry, for my long post, but I figured it wouldn't hurt to share, and maybe it will cause further discussion about BDSM in movies (or other media formats).
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