Fetish Dayz

Ugly Betty poses some interesting questions for Brits

I don’t know what it was like when Ugly Betty first made it onto US TV screens. But anticipation levels for her New Year debut here in the UK were extremely high, with television pundits falling over themselves to tip the show as the new hottie for Friday nights, and Betty herself (actress America Ferrera, above) as the coolest anti-heroine since Roseanne.

I wondered if the programme (shown here on Channel 4 and E4) would provide any legitimate fetish angles for this column. Fortunately the very first episode did just that when Betty, the newly-appointed, less-than-fashionable assistant to a New York fashion magazine publisher, was humiliated in fetish attire while performing model stand-in duties on a magazine photo shoot.

Betty makes her entrance as magazine photo-shoot stand-in for absent model

Now, allegedly, Ugly Betty is full of irony, or at least what passes for irony in American television. ‘Not especially beautiful girl gets job on fashion magazine and is good at it’ may be just about as ironic as things can get in a country often considered an irony-free zone. This being the case, it was hard for me to decide whether the tacky, plasticky dominatrix gear that Betty and the ‘real’ models were forced to wear for the photo shoot was part of the show’s conscious irony or not.

I wondered where they’d got this stuff from, and the end credits suggested an answer. The programme’s costume designer is none other than Patricia Field, who earned her television wings providing outfits for that earlier New York ‘fashion television’ confection, Sex And The City, and more recently had designs featured in movie The Devil Wears Prada. I suppose Field’s style (which, as a result of encounters with her downtown Manhattan store in the early 1980s, I always think of as having its roots in TV of a rather different kind) is not entirely inappropriate to this sort of lightweight fairy story fodder. I can’t help wondering, though, what kind of a look the show might have, overall, if its producers involved a designer with less of a ‘Hollywood glamour’ take on fashion.

 

Betty, dwarfed by ‘real’ models, is obliged to pose in tacky fetish gear

But will Betty be a big hit over here, and does it deserve to be? Well, given its stylistic similarities to Sex And The City and Desperate Housewives, it could easily enjoy the same kind of popularity as they have. We’ll probably all watch the first series because there’ll probably be enough originality in it to keep things fresh, but as the novelty wears off, and the fund of simple morality tales dries up, our interest might not be sustained.

But I could be wrong. I actually do like the Betty character, so I want to see what they do with her. And unlike esteemed British TV critic AA Gill, I don’t find the ‘real’ irony in this programme to be the fact that Americans think that placing an ‘ordinary’ person in a ‘glamorous’ setting is in itself so inventive as to be revolutionary. AA may have forgotten that Ugly Betty is not an American creation at all; she started out as Colombian TV soap character Betty La Fea, and from there the concept has been appropriated and adapted for television in about a dozen other countries including America — everywhere, in fact, from Germany to India. So the Ugly Betty we’re seeing here in the UK is not a Hollywood original but an example of US studios doing what they do all the time — remaking someone else’s ideas.

Humiliated, Betty flees the photo studio pursued by her boss

But I do find it interesting that in all of these remakes, the actress chosen to play Betty is in reality (just as America Ferrera is in the US version) somewhere between very attractive and stunningly beautiful, and has to be ‘made ugly’ to play the part. Why? Why couldn’t any of these programme makers have had the guts to cast a genuinely plain Jane in the lead role? Why has it become the rule with this show, wherever it is remade, that the only way to create an ‘ordinary’ woman suitable for the rôle is to de-beautify a beautiful one? That, I think, is a far more telling indictment of the mindset behind the whole conceit.

Ironically the best chance of a plain Jane playing Betty would be if we made our own version of the show right here in the UK. British television is renowned for featuring, in starring roles and especially in soaps, plenty of ordinary-looking people, not to mention a fair smattering of genuine baby-frighteners. But that is also why a British remake of this show was probably never on the cards. Precisely because British television has been embracing ‘ordinariness’ (or what we like to call ‘realism’) with enthusiasm since the 1960s, today’s UK audiences would just not see anything remarkable in a short, slightly chubby girl with braces on her teeth getting a job on a British magazine.

Fortunately for Betty, though, we are still willing to suspend disbelief if she appears on our screens in a more appropriate cultural context — to wit, one where (we are led to believe) perfect teeth really can get you further than a perfect mind.

www.channel4.com/entertainment/tv/microsites/U/ugly_betty/   

How Fetish Conquered The World

The holiday period TV repeats gave me the opportunity, finally, to watch the (UK) Channel 5 documentary How Fetish Conquered The World, which I’d missed on its first screening earlier in the year.

Although I didn’t appear in this programme, it looked suspiciously, from the general tone and content, like the one that I was interviewed for towards the end of 2005. And sure enough, when the credits rolled at the end, there I was, wrongly spelt as Tony Michell but nevertheless acknowledged for my (invisible) contribution. But believe me, I’m not just trying to put a brave face on things when I say I’m grateful for my non-appearance. I had plugged my old firm Skin Two throughout the interview and was not looking forward to seeing myself promoting an organisation that had subsequently dispensed  with my services.

Anyway, even without any soundbites from moi in it, How Fetish Conquered The World has to rank as one of the best documentaries I’ve ever seen on fetishism and BDSM. It was authoritative, non-judgemental, non-sensationalist, full of interesting opinion and analysis, and packed with hot visuals, a few of which I’ve included here.

L-R: Mistress Margo & slave; Mistress Miyabe; ropemaster Akira Naka & model

Expertise was provided by some pretty heavyweight commentators from both sides of the Atlantic, including editor Diane Hanson, author Katherine Gates and photographer Eric Kroll from the US, and Wellcome Library archivist Dr Lesley Hall, film critic Derek Malcolm and the inimitable Germaine Greer from the UK. There were interviews with American and Japanese dominatrixes and slaves, British pony racing enthusiasts and inflatable latex lovers, and Japanese bondage practitioners. Clips were included from such seminal SM movies as Barbette Schroeder’s Maitresse, Just Jaeckin’s Story Of O and Masaru Konuma’s ground-breaking Wife To Be Sacrificed (Ikenie fujin).

L-R: Maitresse (1976); Story Of O (1975); Wife To Be Sacrificed (1974)

Never as far as I know released in the UK, but available on DVD from Kino.com in the US, the visually stunning Wife To Be Sacrificed, a product of the ailing 1970s Japanese movie industry’s move into so-called ‘pink film’, was one of several revelations delivered by this hour-long documentary.

Another came in the guise of latex-hooded-and-catsuited New York dominatrix Mistress Ayla (aka Ayla Alya) — see top picture and below. Her extreme medical scenes with a male slave and her interview pieces direct to camera had two very different tones, but were conducted with equally impressive panache. Definitely someone worth talking to for my upcoming webzine The Fetishistas. Unfortunately though, the lady seems, at least for the moment, to have disappeared off the face of the earth. If you’re out there somewhere Ayla, please get in touch!

L-R: Mistress Ayla and slave; The Other Pony Club; Mr Blow-Up

How Fetish Conquered The World was written and directed by Jim Funnell for independent London production company Illuminations, who were commissioned by Channel 5. At this point the show is not obtainable as a commercial DVD, but if it ever becomes available, it would be one for every perv to add to their collection. In the meantime, it’s certainly worth keeping an eye out for any re-appearances on TV.

www.channel5.com
www.illuminationsmedia.co.uk
www.kino.com
www.thefetishistas.com
 

Doctor Who Christmas Day special is a runaway success

The Christmas Day Doctor Who special The Runaway Bride, with Catherine Tate playing a mouthy wife-to-be who finds herself transported from the altar to the Tardis before getting to say ‘I do’, was a brilliant way to kick off the evening’s TV. With its arachnoid alien villainess played by Sarah Parish (below) in a prosthetic outfit reminiscent of one of Midori’s wilder creations, this one-off episode was a welcome return to form by writer Russell T Davies after the disappointments (for me at least) of the spin-off Torchwood series.

Despite John ‘Tom Cruise’ Barrowman’s best efforts, Torchwood has never achieved the kind of chemistry between its lead characters that was established in an instant between David Tennant’s Doctor and Tate’s bride, an unlikely but totally inspired pairing (above).

However, I’m not sure that I believe all that stuff in the press about everyone being really disappointed that Catherine wasn’t offered the job of Billy Piper replacement when the new Doctor Who series arrives in 2007. Tate is already established as one of Britain’s top comic talents through her own TV series, and frankly she’s too versatile to be locked into playing one character in a long-running drama, and too good to be playing sidekick even to someone as charismatic as David Tennant.

Me, I’m more than happy to give the Doc’s impending new assistant Martha Jones (far left) a fair chance. She looks like she might turn out to be quite a spunky chick.
www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho

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

POSTSCRIPT ON PETE: A PERV TO BE PROUD OF

There’s not a Brit who won’t already know this. But readers outside the UK may not be so aware that Pete Bennett, the subject (along with his mum Anne Stephenson) of an earlier Fetish Dayz item One Mother Of A Ding Dong did (as widely predicted) win Channel 4’s latest Big Brother reality TV contest.

Pete, from Brighton, is open about being a regular participant in the South Coast resort’s fetish scene. So the reality for the rest of us is that the British edition of this massively popular TV show has been won by a genuine perv. What’s more, he’s a perv who suffers from Tourettes syndrome, and he still managed to come out on top.

No doubt there will be members of the British fetish scene old guard — not to mention the country’s entire contingent of fetish crusties (aka the scene’s foremost whingers and moaners) — who will not welcome the idea of someone like Pete Bennett as a fetish ambassador to the world at large. But I’m willing to wager, even though I hate reality TV shows, that a self-confessed perv winning a big popular vote like this is likely to do the rest of the perv community no harm at all. It has the potential, at the very least, to make fetish look cooler than it has looked for some time.

Of course, Pete didn’t just win the contest. He won £100,000 in prize money too. And what did he do with the cheque? He gave it straight to his mum. Diamond geezer! 

ONE MOTHER OF A DING-DONG

Though I loathe reality TV and especially Big Brother (Channel 4’s flagship show ever since the station misunderstood Government calls for ‘more on television’), it’s impossible to isolate oneself completely  from what’s going on in and around BB when there’s such saturation coverage by the popular news media.

So unfortunately I failed to miss the tabloid revelations in mid July that colourful contestant Pete ‘Tourettes Syndrome’ Bennett (above) is allegedly a regular at Brighton’s Vice Party fetish dance club and other fetish and BDSM clubs in the South Coast resort where he lives.

Statistically of course it would be surprising if there weren’t a genuine perv or two among the fakes, misfits and wannabees who constitute Big Brother’s human fodder. What intrigued me more was the subsequent revelation that Pete is the son of Anne Stephenson, who was a violinist in early ’80s pop string quartet The Venomettes and in Marc Almond’s ‘other’ group Marc and the Mambas.

Anne imprinted herself very forcefully on my consciousness one night at a Soft Cell party held  at London’s Columbia Hotel, which had a reputation in the ’80s as the city’s ‘alternative’ rock ’n’ roll hotel owing to its relaxed attitude towards bands whose budgets didn’t stretch to The Dorchester. I was a journo on Sounds at that time, and Anne, who didn’t know me, and didn’t know that I was an old friend of Soft Cell and their larger-than-life manager Stevo, interpreted a typically sarky but good-natured exchange between me and Stevo as a vicious and unwarranted attack on him by a member of that criminal fraternity known as the gutter press.

For the next half hour or more, she subjected me to a tongue-lashing of unmitigated ferocity, which other members of the party either didn’t notice or were just enjoying too much to try to stop. I kept expecting the nearest witness, Soft Cell’s Dave Ball (who was with Gini, the Venomettes/Mambas violinist who later became his wife) to put in a good word with Anne for me. But this was during the band’s notorious ecstasy period, and Dave just sat there motionless with eyes like dinnerplates, taking in the free non-stop ecstatic cabaret and not saying a word.

Anne, who also toured the world with the Communards and played in the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, is now the leader of Brilliant Strings and according to her website is once again working with Marc Almond. Apparently her son’s new-found celebrity has made life better for her, and In the demure portrait in her web biography, she doesn’t look much like a girl who’d tear your ears off before being properly introduced. But I won’t be taking any chances if we do happen to bump into each other again.

www.channel4.com/bigbrother/
www.viceparty.com
www.brilliantstrings.co.uk/html/anne.html
www.marcalmond.co.uk 

THE PERVERT’S GUIDE TO CINEMA

Well what self-respecting kinkster spotting this title nestling in the post-watershed TV listings wouldn’t be tempted to check it out?

And actually, after watching the first hour-long programme in this Channel 4 series shown on More4 in early July, I couldn’t decide which was more fascinating: the content itself, which is such a weighty analysis of memorable movie moments that it could have been made for the Open University. Or the fact that the programme’s presenter, philosopher and psychoanalyst Slavoj Zizek (right), not only looks like an actor who’s spent four hours being made-up to appear really ill for a part in Casualty, but delivers his searingly insightful observations in an accent so thick and salivary that the camera probably needed windscreen wipers.

Where did they find him? He couldn’t be more of a pastiche of a shrink if he tried (and I don’t think he was trying). But if you ignored the heavy lisp and concentrated on what he was saying about classic movies like Hitchcock’s Psycho (where he likened the three floors of Bates Motel to the Ego, the Super Ego and the Id) and that gripping Gene Hackman thriller The Conversation, then you might just have found yourself seeing some of the world’s greatest films and film-makers in an entirely new light.

As for perversion itself, well Zizek did manage to slip in one sly reference to sadomasochism in this first episode, but those hoping for actual celluloid kink will have found more to tickle their tastebuds in programme 2. Here, Zizek examines the relationship between fantasy and reality, illustrating it with scenes from David Lynch films including Blue Velvet, Mulholland Drive and Lost Highway, Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Tarkovski’s sci-fi classic Solaris  and last but not least, Michael Haneke’s grimly compelling 2001 story of doomed sadomasochistic lust, La Pianiste (The Piano Teacher).

Zizek uses these movies to demonstrate most eloquently the key role fantasy plays in our lives and especially in human sexuality. But from a perv’s point of view, perhaps his most refreshing assertion is that fantasy is actually essential to any kind of sexual engagement — rather than, as some of our vanilla brethren might contest, an optional extra. So next time your partner says you don’t love them because you admitted to fantasising about someone else during sex, just say to them, “I’m shorry, but Shlavosh Shishik shesh that fantashishing during sheksh ish eshenshial.” Probably best to have a box of tissues handy to wipe their face off afterwards.

The third and final episode of this masterful series deals with the relationship between reality and fiction, and how willling we are to become completely involved in the ‘internal truth’ of fictitious events even though objectively we know them to be fictitious. An example the philosopher uses to illustrate this is the tension Hitchcock builds in an audience watching the detective character in Psycho proceeding towards his own doom. We know what is going to befall him, and we know this is just a movie, and yet we are as affected by it as if it is really taking place.

It’s very easy to see how this also works with rôle-playing in BDSM, where players can become completely absorbed in their respective rôles as dominant and submissive despite on some level remaining objectively aware that it is only rôle play. However, Zizek more controversially suggests that the rôles we play on these occasions might actually be closer to the ‘real’ us than the personalities we occupy in the everyday world.

This of course is a rather scary notion for pervs to consider. We think we’re cool because unlike our vanilla brethren we’ve found a safe playspace in which to give vent to, well, let’s call them violent urges for the sake of argument. Instead of going out and getting drunk and beating random strangers up for real, we negotiate games with fellow pervs in order to ‘play at violence’ consensually, within mutually agreed rules. But what if the true reason pervs do this is that they are actually turned on by violence for real, and it is their everyday selves that are the played rôles? This seems to be the big question Zizek is posing.

Apart from planting this disturbing thought in my head, his trio of programmes has persuaded me that I need to watch afresh every one of the films he discusses, in the light of what he contends they’re really saying. How many times does a TV show make you feel that way about its subject matter? Utterly rivetting!

www.channel4.com/more4/
www.ff.uni-lj.si/oddelki/filo/english/staff/zizeka.htm