Simply S&M: why it's going to be a kinky summer

This summer is going to be a kinky one. In a couple of weeks Venus in Fur will be released. The erotically charged film by controversial director Roman Polanski riffs on the mistress/slave dynamic of Venus in Furs, the power-play novella written by Leopold von Sacher-Masoch (the man who put the Masoch in masochism) in 1869. Then there’s the bicentenary of the death of the Marquis de Sade (the originator of sadism), with an exhibition at Paris’ Musée d’Orsay. The Fifty Shades film was scheduled to coincide with the bicentenary, but is now due in early 2015.

These events bring with them an opportunity to reflect on the writers’ legacies: how we feel about sadism and masochism, albeit the consensual and safe interpretations as they are largely practised today; how these 19th- and 18th-century authors may have paved the way for EL James’ ‘mummy porn’ bestseller; and an excuse to watch, consider, even engage in something beyond the vanilla.

‘There can be a huge erotic charge in giving up, or in taking control,’ says psychologist Dr Sandra Wheatley of the themes thrown up in Venus in Furs, an often ponderous text published in German about a marble-hearted dominatrix. ‘The story endures because, in reading it, you can imagine that you could possibly turn into something extraordinary (either dominant or submissive) like the characters in the book.’ In his film, Polanski, director of The Pianist, takes the mistress/slave heart of the book and layers on further dynamics: the film depicts a director auditioning an actress to play the part of Venus, the actress first supplicant then wresting control. An extra level is added by Polanski choosing to direct his wife Emmanuelle Seigner, casting her as the film’s heroine. (The director has not set foot in the US for 36 years as he is accused of raping a 13-year-old girl in 1977.) The film has already won a César in France.

Sade’s work is less easy to associate with than Sacher-Masoch’s. The 120 Days of Sodom, for example, is a grisly catalogue of sexual degradation in which four rich men keep 46 mostly male teenage victims captive to erotically torture and eventually kill. The author himself was a coprophiliac who poisoned prostitutes with aphrodisiacs and seduced — among many others — his wife’s younger sister (leading to his lengthy spells of imprisonment). He also, ironically, may have been more of a masochist than a sadist.

Unsurprisingly, these aspects of Sade’s character will not be at the forefront of the bicentenary. Instead, in a series of talks and events, including a festival held at his château, and in a book by French intellectual Jean-Pascal Hesse, the Sade standard-bearers are pushing him as a loving husband and one who liked champagne (true, one suspects, in part); a man who fought censorship; a kind of intellectual freedom fighter whose writing pushed the sexual and political boundaries in order to investigate the nature of humanity.

Sadism and masochism were terms coined in 1886 by psychiatrist Krafft-Ebing, who viewed any deviation from the sexual ‘norms’ of the day as degenerate — from sadism and masochism to homosexuality (a word he introduced to the English language).

What does all this mean for us today? Thankfully, we’ve seen the light. We have, at last, legalised gay marriage. We live in a culture where we have the possibility and the right to learn about and follow whatever is our sexual predilection (within the law). Had Krafft-Ebing suggested in 2014 that Sacher-Masoch’s work ‘might have achieved real greatness had he been actuated by normally sexual feelings’ he would surely be trolled out of the park. Indeed, had he written it today, who knows, maybe like EL James he would have everything from a line of duvets to a movie starring Jamie Dornan.

‘S&M is definitely more available, it’s all over MTV and part of our national conversation, our national psyche,’ says Lucy Beresford, Radio Shrink on BBC London and author of Happy Relationships. The trope is everywhere: S&M is even the name of a London café that serves bangers and mash. In Girls, Adam, the geeky boyfriend of Lena Dunham’s character, spanks her, and shouts from his window: ‘If you come up, I’m going to tie you up and keep you here for days.’ Whips and collars are a fashion perennial and Rihanna may not know it but some of her videos channel Sacher-Masoch.

‘People are more informed about alternative models of sexuality, and with knowledge comes understanding,’ continues Wheatley. ‘There’s a widespread recognition that S&M is not about violence, but about what adults can choose to do together. Once you recognise that it doesn’t have to be hardcore, or about PVC and chastisement, well, what’s wrong with a bit of experimentation?’

In 2014 we are finally at a place where, as well as playing with the accoutrements of S&M — the latex dress (Lily Allen in her ‘Hard Out Here’ video, Rihanna in 2011’s ‘S&M’) — we may be bold enough to give it a go. Certainly the rise in sales of bondage rope and silk wrist ties at the UK’s largest adult site Lovehoney — up 111 per cent last Christmas — would suggest it.

Of course, at entry level, props such as clothes or cuffs can be enough: S&M can be the idea of pain, as a representation of giving your trust, of surrendering control. Rather than needing a full hood and a cat-o’-nine-tails, it can be as simple as tying someone to your bed and running a thumbnail along the sole of their foot, or sliding an ice cube down their body before kissing them with a mouth hot from hot tea. Volunteering yourself totally, or offering entirely to please someone else, can be life-affirming and terrifically arousing.

But S&M apologists may not wish to pop the champagne corks just yet (despite there being a special Marquis de Sade commemoration vintage). It’s remarkable how tricky it can still be to talk about S&M as distinct from abuse or violation. In Fifty Shades, EL James took care to delineate a relationship in which the sub-missive, Ana, had discussed and agreed her boundaries. ‘The prejudice around the whole subject is terrible,’ James told me. ‘Nothing makes me angrier than critics who suggested the book was about abuse. It demonises people who enjoy this lifestyle.’