50 shades of Grey despite is humble beginnings as Twilight fan-fiction might be on the far outskirts of what I would cover here, but BDSM has thematic relevance in horror, I find the Hammer Horror Spanish Inquisition themed movies to be more my flavor of BDSM, than the Sweet Valley High version of it in the current New York Times bestseller. From Twilight I would think a girl would graduate in Laurell K Hamilton's Anita Blake series, we have angst ridden paranormal romance with a bite and some do though they tend to be girls more entrenched in geek subculture, who also grew up with Buffy.
Vampires are depicted as the forbidden fruit in paranormal romance, a sub genre which sprung from vampire themed romance, even pre- Twilight, the ground where the Sookie Stackhouses sprung from. Beauty and the beast is a common concept in Horror ...King Kong, Hunchback of Notre dame and Creature of the Black Lagoon all have this element to varying degrees. Sexuality has been demonized since man needed religions to provide security, so fiction has had its monsters to embody them. Over the years the aesthetic of the beast has been more keenly preened. The monster now sparkle and the vampires appear more like bodice ripping hunks, something Bela Lugosi was not.
The Male lead in 50 Shades, shares most of Edward Cullen's qualities, an enigmatic past and while seductive is the forbidden fruit as a Millionaire who is only willing to have contractually bound BDSM relationships rather than the fairy tale romance the female lead wants. I'm not sure how this is a conflict as his ideas seem like a good plan to me and like Bella, this Anna girl is a drama queen who gets scared away by a big climatic spanking she asked for so Anne Rice your Sleeping Beauty books have nothing to fear, nor does any of the Post-Obsidian Butterfly Anita book. In fact the sex is pretty vanilla the same thing it just moves from a bed to bathroom and other domestic locales. Anna could be paranormal a fey or succubus because she has the power to make a guy cum the first time she ever attempts a blow job, so I guess more is revealed in the later two books which I have no intent in reading.
I prefer my torture porn.It's more honest. The control is the factor where this fanged chick lit is more the fantasy of being controlled. It all comes from the very pulpy source called the damsel in distress. This goes back to ancient mythology where Perseus saves the princes who is chained to a rock to be sacrificed to the Kraken , you know it got horribly re-made a couple years ago. In the Middle ages after St George and the Dragon, we got Rapunzel, Sleeping Beauty and Snow white, Disney made these iconic to little girls everywhere. Then 1001 Abrabian Nights featured many of these damsel in distress themes, which Ray Harryhausen would give these proper treatment well before he got around to the Kraken.
It wasn't until Marquis Desade's 1791 story Justine, that the repressed sexual element of this was explored and if any of you ladies out in the inner webs found yourselves fapping to 50 Shades then you need to look into Desade's work to get a better point of reference after all sadism is named after him and it's safe to say the author of the chick lit you think is so kinky isn't going to face the last 13 years of their lives in prison for writing it.
Then the slew of silent films featuring in the "Perils of Pauline" mustache twirling villains tying the helpless female to railroad tracks, leading to King Kong and Nosferatu. King Kong made the woman tied up in a loin cloth whisked away by the ape popular and theme of pulp for years, though this to some extent was racially based metaphor for black men and white women, it still played on a fear and spear chucking natives more often than not sacrificed a blonde woman to the beast.
Nosferatu is as ugly as a vampire could get yet there was more sexuality in his feeding than all the Twilight books combined. This served as a metaphor for venereal diseases running rampant during this time period and no surprise the resurgence of the sexy vampires in Anne Rice's homo-erotic tomes became popular at the height of a.i.d.s awareness.
From here as sexuality became more explored in western culture, these iconic themes remained in horror and sci-fi to the masturbatory glee of erections everywhere. Universal monsters marched back to their castles and swamps with buxom beauties draped over their arms in mass.
Then Psycho came out and every thing changed, women were naked in showers and getting slice and diced everywhere. It was a very Freudian study in mother issues being displaced onto victims and one of the best movies ever made. Marion Crane wants to break away from being an office drone and runaway with her lover, tries to steal money and is punished by taking a shower in the Bates motel. It was 1960 so slut shaming was at it's peak.
Putting an end to the summer of free love the more debasing element of rape came from the grind house films of the late 60's and early 70's in some way as a call and response to the booming feminist movement. Interestingly to feminist who get up in arms about this sort of thing some of the hottest movies of this time period like Ilsa She-Wolf of the S.S and any of the women in prison films feature more Woman on Woman debasement, granted geared towards a male audience. As a student of this sub-genre I own a file of the 120 greatest grind house rape scenes which i pause and rewind to get a better comprehension of the art form. My studies show most of these films are about the forced stripping of the victim as the primary mode of debasement. By the late 70's the slasher genre took this and ran with it in a way still emulated by those movies today. From there we have the Devil's Rejects.
Rumor has it Damsel in Distress has become a popular sub-genre of fetish related porn known as did, of course my exploration into this would be for research purposes only as I am an avid church burner...I mean church goer.
So what are the chances any of the Twilighters or Grey Shadeys willing come over to the dark side and start watching Visitor q or a Serbian film styled sadism, well that is largely in the hands of film makers, if things like the straw dogs re-make, where the rape is apologetically filmed like a sex scene from 500 days of Summer rather than a 120 days in Sodom, then it looks grim, but the closet sadists in Hollywood need to unite and take over, reclaim their balls and say we are making this for our inner 15 year old, then things might be looking but I think foreign film is more likely to make this happen i'M looking at you Korea...come on Norway put the trolls away I know you got this in you lets see some Nazi themed slashers I know you have been repressing as you try to put all out that behind you. Submissives have the victim power on their side and it will always be catered to as it requires only estrogen to fuel it, yes male subs you are emasculated, but not to worry there's still another Twilight movie on the way.
Despite the popularity of the Rubber-man in American Horror story , where rape was the key plot point and side from Nurse 3-d, there's not a lot of horror coming out at all Zombie wouldn't surprise me if he included some naked bound chicks getting sacrificed in Lords of Salem. So let the gimps go hungry and and here's hoping for some real sadism in print or film. I won't start plugging my book "Obsidian Rex" xoming out this fall yet, but there could be ugly vampires into bdsm in it just saying.
