There’s something strangely alluring about the sight of a strong man in ropes and chains, struggling to be free of his bonds. Well, I think so, anyway. All that muscle, straining. His sweat making the bonds slippery, ever tighter. The struggle is hopeless; he sees defeat staring him in the face and still he is spirited enough to fight on.
You’ve only got to type in the word ’bondage’ into any search engine, to be overwhelmed with images, and stories, of men and women, bound and helpless. Mostly, it’s consensual, at least I hope it is. A little piece of BDSM, being acted out by adults involved in a highly charged erotic game.
But bondage is nothing new. The Internet generation cannot claim to have discovered it. Neither can writers of porn and erotica. Bondage is in ancient art and old, old stories.
Laocoon and his sons are bound and helpless by fierce serpents. There’s a statue of Laocoon in his death throes, in the Vatican in Rome. Pliny attributes it to three Rhodian sculptures, Agesander, Athenodoros and Polydorus.
Laocoon’s exotic, erotic punishment is for committing a sacrilegious act; that of procreation in a place holy to the god, Poseidon.
Punishment through bondage, for a sin, real or imagined and often trivial, is the catalyst for many modern bondage stories. A slave forgets to collect his master’s dry cleaning, and is tied to a whipping bar; he is helpless and is whipped. The whipping is secondary; it is the fact that he is bound and helpless, that is the important part of the ritual. In another story, a submissive craves his punishment and will contrive to get it by inventing any misdemeanour. He visits his Mistress in his lunch break and is forced to return to his office, wearing a cock cage beneath his pants. The cage is screwed tightly, pressing painfully against his balls, yet still his cock struggles valiantly for an erection that just cannot happen.
The old stories are even in the Bible. Delilah contrives to discover the secret of Samson’s great strength. This is a man so strong and powerful, he has ripped a lion in two. Eventually, he tells her. His strength is because of his long hair. Delilah tells Samson’s secret to the Philistines, and Samson is shorn of his locks while he sleeps. His strength is gone and Samson is bound and chained. His eyes are put out and Delilah pockets the silver that the Philistines have paid her.
The eroticism, the beauty of bondage, whether in art, or literature give us our images, our stories, our fantasies.
Strength and power are contained, controlled and relinquished. There is beauty in their bonds. The victims suffer in their strength.
This blog post was compiled using sources from the web.
OMG, billierosie. I never thought your interesting, visually-attractive blog would be visited by the likes of "Anonymous," above, but I suppose anyone can comment.
ReplyDeleteI'm always interested in your take on well-known works of art. I remember seeing that image of Laocoon & his sons in an art history class, & finding it sexy, but at the time, I thought my response was inappropriate (I was about 20.)
The earliest erotic art I remember seeing was in a big, full-colour, coffee-table book named World-Famous Paintings that my parents let me read because they thought their children should be exposed to "Culture." The pictures in that book were definitely the hottest I had ever seen, & I sometimes wondered why my parents couldn't seem to see what I saw in them. Your analysis of art always seems refreshing and accurate.
First of all, it's an interesting piece that reminds us that 'bondage' is, in a way, a mythos all of its own. Obviously it's most easily represented by physical bonds, but in the Bible and elsewhere in antiquity, being 'in bondage' had other meanings we now tend to think of as 'being dominated by' or 'being the slave of'. For a victor in war to display captives in bondage was also to demonstrate the victor's power. And so on. I wonder if anyone's done a proper exegesis of the way the term 'bondage' has been used down the centuries.
ReplyDeleteAs to the Anonymous comment - judging by the standardised format and the concerns with sexism, chastity and female bondage, the comment's from a guy who's been posting misogynistic stuff on dozens of blogs and tweets recently, and pissing off a lot of people. So you're not alone in being insulted, his business appears to be to insult almost everyone who puts any serious thought into aspects of BDSM...
'the victims suffer in their strength'. Or are strong in their suffering? x
ReplyDeletePs I'm a different anonymous (having seen the earlier comment, and not enjoyed it)
All you can see is her long legs as they move around and she struggles to get free. She is screaming for help and wants someone to rescue her.
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