Fetish Dayz

TORCHWOOD AND UFOS — TOO MUCH SCIENCE FICTION FOR ONE WEEK!

Since I seem to have obliged myself to continue watching Torchwood to the bitter end (see previous item), I don’t feel that I can really let episode three (BBC3, Sunday Nov 5) pass without comment.

Who would have guessed that the bloke in the suit (who hadn’t previously had a proper speaking part let alone a piece of the action) would turn out to be hiding his pretty girlfriend-cum-Cyberman in the bowels of Torchwood’s underground HQ, eh? 

Sporting a very non-standard Cyberman outfit — a fetishy, flesh-flashing cross between Metropolis’s female automaton and a SintheteX latex ‘web’ suit — our Cyberchick spent most of the episode switching between her former human self and her altered ego — a deadly android intent on destroying everything in its path. This caused suit-bloke much weeping and gnashing of teeth; he just couldn’t accept that there was a conflict of interest between Torchwood work and harbouring what was, even by the most liberal standards, an illegal (not to say homicidal) alien.

As a plot, it was barely up to old Doctor Who standards, and the inevitable bit of ‘adult’ homo-erotica (Cap’n Hardness giving mouth-to-mouth) again just looked bolted on for shock value.

But the thing that’s irritating me most about this series is that beneath all the flash and bravado, it shows a sloppy disregard for the quality of internal logic necessary for sci-fi to suspend disbelief. There is just not enough effort to provide a credible framework for the show’s back-of-a-fag-packet story ideas.

Credibility was in similarly short supply in an earlier documentary on Five (Wednesday Nov 1) entitled The British UFO Mystery: Stranger Than Fiction, which surely deserves an award for the lamest UFO documentary ever made. Either that or it was a brilliant spoof by the people behind Garth Marenghi’s Darkplace and Man To Man With Dean Learner.

Purporting to examine the case of a UFO widely reported flying through British airspace in March 1993, it based an hour of speculation on the views of a chap whose job at the Ministry of Defence had been to evaluate reports of this very kind. He had investigated the numerous sightings of an apparently huge, triangular craft passing slowly and/or at great speed through the night sky, and had been unable to satisfy himself that there was an innocent explanation for it all.

However, bad science just swamped this hour-long effort, rendering any conclusions the programme attempted to draw nigh on worthless as far as I was concerned. It didn’t help that the show’s makers seemed to have about ten minutes of legitimate material which they were determined to stretch to an hour by any means necessary — the means including an artificially slow and solemn voice-over and repeated use of bizarre stock aircraft footage that had no relevance to the events under discussion.

Other features of this strange programme included an audio recording supposedly of nervous American service personnel investigating the weird phenomenon, which was unaccountably illustrated by some Blair Witch Project-style torch-swinging in the woods. And there was a ufologist who, though wheeled out (you would think) to give some credibility to the theory of an extra-terrestrial intruder, said no, it wasn’t that at all, it was some bits of a Russian spacecraft burning up as it re-entered the atmosphere. I don’t know about you, but I always reckon if the ufologist doesn’t think it’s extra-terrestrial, it probably isn’t, and you might as well go home.

But this programme didn’t. It stayed out well past its bedtime, got all tired and confused, and left me with no better idea of what had been in Britain’s skies that night in 1993 than I’d started out with. An Unedifyingly Feeble Offering.

www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood
www.five.tv/aboutfive/press/pressreleases/200602309_strangerthanfiction
www.garthmarenghi.com

TORCHWOOD — ON A MISSION TO SAVE WALES

I’m not that surprised that there’s a close correlation between being a perv and being a Doctor Who fan. The revival of the BBC favourite by Russell T Davies imbued it with enough style and coolness to appeal to grown-ups and kids, and its combination of free-wheeling fantasy, geekiness, and the prospect (albeit now sadly past) of Billie Piper in a short skirt being abducted by aliens has guaranteed it a firm following among fetish folk.

Naturally, therefore, a lot of the same people will have keenly anticipated the arrival of Davies’ spin-off series Torchwood (BBC3, 10pm, Sundays). Not least because of its promise to put an entirely new, post-watershed ‘adult’ spin on its subject matter. Doctor Who with sex, eh? What could be better than that! And so, three episodes into the series, what do we think of it so far?

Well, chances are that if you liked Buffy, Angel, Lexx or any similar type of American televisual fantasy, you’ll like this. Although, to be fair, the basic idea — of a group of dedicated alien-hunters who have to stop other-world types coming through a gap in the space-time continuum and messing with our planet — is more of a straight cross between The X-Files and Men In Black than anything else.

Originality may not be Torchwood’s strongest point. But it aims to overcome this by brazenly plundering from so many sources that you can’t keep count. And also by being set in Cardiff (which, for my non-Brit readers, is a city in Wales, which is a country next to England). And I don’t just mean set in Cardiff, I mean wilfully set in Cardiff. It doesn’t just take place in Cardiff, it rubs your nose in Cardiff, from every possible angle, but not least from above. You could easily persuade me that BBC Wales, who make Torchwood, spent 90 percent of the entire production budget just on helicopter flights for the show’s CSI-style aerial views. But I’d be less surprised to learn that this unrelenting exercise in municipal product placement had been funded by the Welsh Tourist Board.

The distinct regional flavour of Torchwood extends to having many of the supporting characters, and even the show’s female lead, speaking with that sing-song Welsh lilt that I personally find attractive, but that might be a bit of a gamble if you’re trying to sell your show to Americans. And let there be no doubt that Torchwood is out to woo America. The most obvious clue is that the handsome boss of this secret alien-busting organisation, Captain Jack Harkness, is, by all appearances anyway, an American.

But while this follows a time-honoured rule of British B-movie-making — the one that says your male lead character must, however inexplicably, be American if you’re to have any hope of US distribution — Torchwood’s producers have cheated by having their American hero played by an actual American (Scottish-American actor John Barrowman, left) rather than the more usual ex-pat Canadian. This must have been as galling to the programme’s co-producers, Canadian TV network CBC, as to the large and powerful British Union of Canadian Actors Willing to Prostitute Themselves by Playing Americans in British Television and Films, or BUCAWPTPABTF for short. What is this country coming to when a Canadian can’t rely on getting a job playing an American any more, eh?

The other thing, apart from Cardiff, that Torchwood rather rams down your throat (if you’ll pardon the expression) is its ‘modern’ sexuality. And for ‘modern’, read ‘non-hetero/bisexual/polyamorous’.  Presumably to please creator/executive producer Davies, the writer of each episode so far has included some substantial affirmation that there’s more to human sexuality than is dreamt of by your ordinary heterosexual breeder. This in itself would be fine were it not for said messages being dropped into the plot with all the subtlety of fluorescent Post-It notes stuck to the script and inscribed “insert example of alternative sexuality HERE”. Already we’ve had an alien pheromone spray that led to two straight boys snogging (shock!) and an alien entity that feeds on the energy of human orgasms while (horror!) being watched on CCTV by a masturbating security guard. Oh how very grown up.

Then there’s the, ahem, mystery of Captain Harkness’s own sexuality. He’s camp enough to need his own Lloyd-Webber soundtrack, but with his plasticky good looks and toothpaste-ad smile, he seems certain to become the lust object of the team’s doe-eyed Welsh heroine, police-girl-cum-reluctant-alien-chaser Gwen Cooper (Eve Myles). On current evidence there’s not much chance of Captain Harkness developing a personality, so to keep things interesting, my money’s on his coming out as gay by episode six at the latest. Not to worry though; police constable Cooper will almost certainly have discovered her inner fag-hag by then.

Ultimately, I think, Torchwood is trying too hard to be everything to everyone. Its attempts to be post-modern sci-fi with a twist miss as often as they hit. And it’s way too smug for a show that’s set in Cardiff. But, just as cheesy props and creaky plots endeared successive generations to Doctor Who, so Torchwood’s cheeky appropriations from different styles and sub-genres will probably secure it an audience every bit as dedicated. Far from perfect it may be, but I’ll still be watching every episode.

www.bbc.co.uk/torchwood

NOW THAT THE BALL IS OVER…

I hope I can be forgiven for the absence of new postings over the last couple of weeks. It hasn’t been for lack of anything to say. The truth is that covering the Skin Two Rubber Ball Weekend creates an enormous workload (even if you’re not working on the magazine any more). And since that long weekend of 5-8 October, it has felt to me as if I’ve done nothing in my waking hours at all except view, adjust, retouch, crop, save, resize and resave pictures in Photoshop.

I had a photo pass for all the events and this meant that as soon as I’d recovered from the After Party after the After Party after the Finale, I was faced with around a thousand digital images to sort through and selections to supply to various clients, not least Skin Two itself, within fairly tight deadlines. So that’s what I’ve been doing. Finally, though, my various obligations have been discharged and I can get back to updating my blog and working on my fetish webzine launch which is scheduled to happen in November (and about which there will shortly be much more info here at Fetish Dayz).

As you might expect, there will be major coverage of Rubber Ball Weekend in the forthcoming ’zine. But as a taster, you’ll find a report with 12 of my favourite RBW pictures — including this one of Viktoria at Torture Garden’s Rubber Ball night — in the Fetish Dayz Features section of this site.

Click here to take you there.

PUGH WHAT A SCORCHER! KYLIE’S KILLER CALENDAR

If there’s one thing better than seeing the lovely Kylie Minogue making a full recovery after treatment for breast cancer, it’s seeing the style with which she has made her return.

Australia’s most important export since Fosters lager, Kylie chose some of London’s hottest designers to give her the image with which she is launching her comeback tour in November, not to mention her official 2007 calendar (left).

In the UK, Kylie has long been not only a big mainstream pop name but also a gay icon. And like Kate Moss (see my earlier blog item) she has also been worth keeping an eye on for fetish style, displaying a frequent willingness to embrace, erm, extremes of costume both in her live shows and promotional photo shoots. Fetish fashion fans will surely have noted, for example, that one of Bondinage designer Stephen Fuller’s many claims to fame is that he kitted Kylie out in rubber for one of her legendary earlier tours.

Anyway, Ms M is now reasserting her rights over fetish chic by choosing outfits by such hotly-tipped designers as Gareth Pugh and Marios Schwab. The same Sunday Times Style mag that broke the new of Kate Moss’s move into overt erotica ran a Kylie cover story (right) featuring the singer done up with heavy metallic eye-make-up and Marcel-waved hair, reclining in a tight, white, corselet-style Schwab dress, hands crossed above her head in a pose suggestive of bondage submission.

Inside, the mag featured other outfits that appear in her calendar, shot by William Baker, including Gareth Pugh’s fabulous Harlequin body (below) and another tight dress by Marios Schwab, this time a little black number. Both these outfits are offset by a razor-sharp Louise Brooks bob and some extremely pervy black lace-up Manolo Blahnik shoes.

Of all the new wave London designers, Gareth Pugh is, of course, the one that pervs should be watching the closest. As Vogue’s reports show, he has taken all kinds of kinky influences from goth to the inflatable creations of House of Harlot and Pretty Pervy and melded them into an unmistakable style of his own that makes most of the other new season’s fashion collections look very ordinary. And even more impressively, he seems to have kept the fashionistas on his side, and avoided being ghettoised (as creators of such bold designs often are) as a pure novelty act for the catwalks.

Who’s going to be first to sport Gareth Pugh style at a fetish night, I wonder? This year’s Rubber Ball festivities would be the perfect opportunity to step out in something like the outfit on the right from his latest collection. So I for one will be keeping my eyes peeled next weekend for the first of the Pugh to appear.

www.garethpugh.net
www.kylie.com
www.sunday-times.co.uk
www.vogue.co.uk/Shows/Reports/Default.aspx?stID=38726

THE WEEK IN PERVERSITY/3: FROM PANTS TO ANTS

In the news in the past week — a selection of items not necessarily perverted, but definitely perverse…

NURSE, STOP SHOWING YOUR PANTS! An Essex hospital has banned its nurses from showing cleavage while on duty. Southend Hospital’s new uniform rules also outlaw G-strings peeking over trousers or skirts. Seems, though, that the hospital has fallen short of banning other aspects of traditional Essex dress such as white high heels, luminous orange legs, micro-length skirts and no knickers. Presumably that would be asking just too much.

FAITHFULL TO THE ORIGINAL I’m sure all our hearts go out to Marianne Faithfull, who has just been diagnosed with breast cancer. And obviously when you’re a 59-year-old woman facing such a thing, what you want is for the Daily Mirror to publish the story alongside a big picture of you in your prime posing seductively in stockings and a basque which shows off your cleavage, and a quote claiming you have pledged to ‘bounce back’. Unfortunately for Marianne, who was famously Mick Jagger’s girlfriend in the 1960s, her name is still linked in the minds of tabloid journalists to one particular sex myth involving the Stones’ singer. But I’m sure that was not what the Mirror sub-editor was thinking when, in the same story, he captioned an inset pic of her and Jagger: “With Mick in 69”.

That’s not supposed to be us in that TV show, is it?

GREETINGS FROM A PARALLEL UNIVERSE  Did you know that whenever you see a bizarre, non-sequitur or just downright substandard episode of a long-running TV sitcom or drama series, it means the main writers have gone on vacation and the stand-ins are in charge of the plot? Ever since I found this out, I’ve been looking for examples — and I think I just found two contenders, one from the USA and one from the UK. Has anyone else been wondering what has happened to The Sopranos, whose news series just started airing in the UK on E4, or to Spooks, which returned to BBC1/BBC3 last weekend? Neither of these usually gripping dramas appears to have kicked off its new run on the same planet the rest of us inhabit. Tony Soprano’s hospital coma dreams and Spooks’coup attempt on the British Government were both beyond belief. Did both series’ regular writers decide to take their holidays early this year?

(DON’T) WAKE ME UP BEFORE YOU GO-GO  So Ant and Dec, UK Saturday night TV stalwarts and hosts of such televisual milestones as I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here, have each taken out insurance against the other dying. The exact sums insured haven’t been revealed but supposedly run into several million pounds. Dec said, “I just know that if Ant kicks the bucket, I get a massive payout.” Similarly, if Dec should go first, Ant will benefit. And if both should happen to die at the same time? Well in that case, obviously, everybody wins.   

KATE MOSS: FROM FASHION TO FETISH ICON

I can’t be alone in noticing that the ubiquitous Kate Moss is in the process of becoming a full-on fetish icon.

The supermodel is all over the fashion press at the moment in editorials and ads (such as this double-page Versace spread in Style), sporting the short hemline/ long-leg/spike-heel/any-colour-as -long-as-it’s-black look that threatens to make this autumn and winter’s high street style more palatable to pervs than fashion has been in ages. But top models are paid to display the season’s hot looks, and if that’s all there were to it, you could argue that, however appealing appearances may be, she’s just doing her job of being a classy clotheshorse.

However, as any Moss watcher will tell you (and we are legion), in her personal style, the model has been way ahead of the look that’s just coming in. She was teaming short hemlines with yards of black opaque-clad leg while the rest of A-list chickery was still intent on exposing max bare flesh from ankle to Brazilian. Moss can do skin as well as anybody, and has never been slow to play on her sexuality. So she must have decided that the competition among celebs to be as naked in public as possible while still technically wearing clothes had reached its nadir, and the only way forward for sexy was to start covering, in interesting ways, that which had become terminally overexposed.

The slinky, full-covered look that she adopted for partying and public appearances got enough attention on its own, and not just because she’s a guaranteed high street trendsetter. It just looked so right on her, not least because it indicated a person confident of the relation between clothes and sexual allure even at a time when she can’t have been that happy, given her continual harassment by the press over drug allegations and her relationship with Pete Doherty.

But then, a couple of weeks ago, came what might be called final confirmation of the model’s personal interest in clothing-based erotica, with the announcement that she was making her screen debut in a series of short, sexy films for Agent Provocateur. The Sunday Times Style magazine, a long- established fan of the British lingerie label, had the scoop on this news and ran it as its September 3 cover story, with a cover pic of Moss (left) in an all-black ensemble shot from an angle that emphasised those perfect, stocking-clad pins. Inside, the mag revealed that Kate had been persuaded by Agent Provocateur to make no less than four short ’n’ sexy films with veteran movie director Mike Figgis, who’d previously shot that nugget of naughtiness Tied Up At The Office for the same label.

Apparently when Agent Provocateur approached her, Kate’s reaction was to wonder why they hadn’t asked her before. She is, it appears, a big fan both of Figgis’ films and AP’s knickers. “It’s the only lingerie I wear,” she told the magazine. In fact she and AP’s founders Serena Rees and Joe Corre have been close for a decade, so this new collaboration is being hailed as a logical progression for all of them.

The films of Moss in (and out of) her favourite lingerie are collectively called The Dreams Of Miss X, and the first dream, Shadows, can be viewed now on the Agent Provocateur website. You have to register as a member, but it’s easy, free and, given what else the site regularly has on offer, well worth it. The remaining three movies will be released through the site on November 1, January 10 and March 1. Dates for the diary, I’d say.

www.agentprovocateur.com
www.sunday-times.co.uk
www.versace.com

LIBERTY IS DANCING IN THE LONDON RAIN

Sydney director Michael Ney’s documentary Liberty In Restraint, about a relatively unknown Australian fetish photographer called Noel Graydon, is a refreshing take on BDSM that is finally getting some serious interest from film festivals.

And this month I’m pleased to say it’s coming to London, where it will debut in the prestigious Raindance Film Festival. The 90-minute documentary gets a 10.15pm screening on Saturday September 30 at Cineworld  Shaftesbury Avenue (at the Trocadero), Picadilly, London W1.

Ney’s film gives the lie to the notion that Australia can’t teach the rest of the world anything about pervery, and I certainly hope that a distributor in the UK (Tartan springs to mind) will now see this as the serious piece of film-making it is, and be brave enough to give it a DVD release, if not a spin on the arthouse circuit.

I reviewed the original cut back in September of last year, and an updated review can now be found in the Reviews section of Fetish Dayz — just click here to read it.
www.libertyinrestraint.com 
www.raindancefilmfestival.org/festival/programme/index.htm

THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO LONDON

Slovenian psychoanalyst and philosopher Slavoj Zizek’s documentary The Pervert’s Guide To The Cinema Parts 1, 2 & 3, which I raved about in an early piece for this blog, has been picked up by London’s prestigious ICA.

After screenings this week at the Toronto Film Festival (last one on September 14), it comes to London where it will play at the ICA from October 6. It will then go on a regional tour through ICA Films before being released on DVD at the end of November.

The brilliant Zizek (right), who has said, "cinema is the ultimate pervert's art: it doesn't give you what you desire — it tells you how to desire", will curate a season of films at the ICA during October, including some of those featured in his documentary series.

He will also take part in a series of special events and give two talks relating to the film on Saturday and Sunday October 7 and 8.

It is, of course, a complete coincidence that this is also Rubber Ball Weekend.

www.ica.org.uk

THE WEEK IN PERVERSITY: FROM ASS TO Z-LIST

Three irresistible (but not necessarily fetishistic) press stories that caught my eye in the last week…

THE LAW IS AN ASS  Local councillors in Dallas, Texas are proposing a ban on the wearing of low-slung trousers that expose underwear. One of them, Ron Price, has called the fashion “embarrassing and disgusting” and says he’s “against people walking around with their pants below their buttocks”. How often he’s against them is not revealed. Nor is whether he’s just against men doing it, or whether he is also pressing for women to drop their pants-parading habits. Funny isn’t it, when you think of all the other fashion crimes that the word ‘Dallas’ evokes, flaunting your Calvins really doesn’t seem worthy of that much fuss.

GETTING AHEAD OF THE PACK  A British mum who bought a pack of hot and spicy chicken wings from the supermarket found it contained an unexpected bonus — a chicken head, complete with beak, eyes and a bit of neck. “I just feel sick every time I think about it,” said Anika Cummings of Cardiff. “I won’t buy another chicken in my life.” Too right — who would ever have guessed the little f***ers once had heads, eh? Anyway, my advice to her is to pop along with a freezer bag to Downing Street, where a whole cabinet full of headless chickens will soon be going cheap. Meanwhile, another supermarket shopper has just discovered a three-legged frog — alive — in a packet of watercress. Efforts by the store to persuade the customer that this was considered as lucky as finding a four-leaf clover have so far proved unsuccessful.

THERE’S GOTH TO BE AN ALTERNATIVE  As the autumn arrives and brings the goth look to a high street near you, we’ll be faced with the prospect of a lot of extremely ungothly Z-list celebs undergoing moody makeovers that their personal stylists assure them are necessary if they are not to fall behind in the fashion stakes. So it was predictable that after Victoria Beckham ‘went goth’ with black-painted fingernails a couple of weeks ago, that other shopaholic WAG Coleen McLoughlin (aka Mrs Wayne Rooney) would want to go further. Colleen duly appeared done up in black from the tip of her lace-up stiletto kneeboots to the top of her top hat in a photo shoot for celebrity rag Closer, who tagged her story ‘I’m a secret vamp’. Yes, of course you are dear.  Please, make it stop now.

LOS ANGELES TURNS OVER A NEW LEAF

People have often complained that Los Angeles is surprisingly lacking in quality fetish events given that it plays home these days to such a vibrant community of creative pervs. But that could all be about to change, thanks to the efforts of two local promoting talents who, in different ways, are both making fresh starts in LA with two very different kinds of fetish event this very month.

James J, who was until recently involved in promoting the Los Angeles Bondage Balls and other LA fetish events, has severed his ties with former partner DJ Courtney in order to spread his wings and run his own promotions.

And his first event is no small coup. It’s the launch party for O — The Power of Submission, Ernest Greene’s adult video remake of legendary SM novel Story of O for the Adam & Eve label.

The Surrender of O party on Thursday September 14 at Boardners will feature performances from the cast, which includes Carmen Luvana in the title role and Greene’s missus Nina Hartley (both seen right) as well as bondage/SM queen Claire Adams. There’ll also be rubber fashion, dancing, BDSM play and numerous giveaways.

The following Friday, September 22, sees the debut of an entirely new kind of perv event for LA — a fetish dinner and cabaret night called Masque. The brainchild of Kink In the Caribbean promoter Robert Fluty who recently moved to Los Angeles from New York, Masque has been inspired by the success of the Twisted City fetish dinner cabaret Fluty organised as part of the Absolute Kink Amsterdam perv-fest back in April.

The venue for this event, The Entertainium, has been described as one of LA’s best-kept secrets. It’s a fully licensed downtown movie studio with numerous theatrical sets and themed rooms — including a jail cell set (below) that will surely have special appeal to Masque’s target audience.

The evening’s entertainment reprises that winning teaming from the Amsterdam event — MC Paul Nathan and the Porcelain Twinz — plus top fetish model Emily Marilyn, hot new LA contender Natalie Minx and others. At midnight, the Entertainium floors will be cleared and the play equipment brought on for the Eyes Wide Shut after-party. Unlike most LA events which close at 2am, this will go through until 5am, with a complimentary breakfast served at 3am.

Knowing the Los Angeles scene and both promoters as I do, I reckon both events will be well worth attending if you’re in the locality. If you are, but can’t make either of those dates, you might want to circle President’s Day Weekend 2007 (February 16-18) in your diary, because I hear that’s when these two talents will be teaming up to promote an event together for the first time. Not just any event, either, but Los Angeles’ first full-on fetish weekend, headlined by a big party called the Kink Ball.

If these guys deliver together in the way they have individually in the past, then mark my words — we could be seeing the start of a significant shift in the West Coast’s ‘must do’ pervy partying habits.

www.surrenderofo.com
www.othepowerofsubmission.com
www.whatismasque.com
www.myspace.com/surrenderofo
www.myspace.com/whatismasque
www.kinkball.com