A Blast From The Past

I posted the following way back in June 6, 2012 at the old GIMP forum. I titled it:

A post that it’s not sure about its length. (When size matters)

I’m posting it again because I liked what I wrote and I’m updating it with pictures I didn’t have back then. A couple of them. BTW, the picture above is from the TV miniseries The Man From The Moon, that’s Margot, Jac and Carmen in a scene.

So… here is the old post. Enjoy!

I have to say that this forum is very, very active which gives meaning to the concept of the 15 seconds life span for a post. So I compel you all to read this one before it’s buried under a ton of posts. You can always scroll back down to linger at the pictures.

I’m enjoying reading the discussion about sadism and masochism. It brings memories of discussions we had in our little world here for years and years. There was a talk between Jac and one of his past actors who is, by her own definition, a masochist. She said that masochists are in control by giving control to their partners; something that made me think because I have to admit that there’s something of a masochist in me. She believes that a true masochist is a provocateur. I tend to agree for the same reason.

An anecdote.

A couple in a hotel room in Budapest, in the Buda side, on top of the hill, a bottle of Unicum, a Hungarian herbal liqueur or bitters the man bought with the intention of taking it back to the U.S. She’s 22, he’s 36. She plays hard to get to the point of obnoxiousness, he tries to stay cool and unaffected, however he’s at that age when he wants to fuck everything that moves. A few more drinks and he’s getting upset, which is not normal in him, she must be pulling some deep strings. Finally he can’t take it anymore and proceeds to push her around. The Unicum is half way down, it will no longer be an aperitif on the table at his New York Loft.

At one point she’s on the carpeted floor, rolling around while he pushes her with his bare foot. She’s in her underwear, so is he. The more he humiliates her the more excited she gets. He’s not sure of what’s happening, he wishes he could read her mind, but it becomes obvious at one point that she had enough and jumps on him and they fuck like crazy.

By provoking his anger and submitting to his humiliations she manipulated the situation to where she wanted it to go. True story… I was there.

That concept, the masochist in control, is in Jac’s film Martyr, where Camille manipulates everyone to make them participate in her staged martyrdom, a theme which in turn is very much at the root of the gospels. This begs the question, are masochists extreme narcissists? The way Jac wrote the character of Camille in Martyr basically states that.

Someone wrote that exact thing in these terms:

Jac Vermeer cast himself in the “pagan” role, but the narrative positions him as a pretend pagan. The saint simulator is in control, and he must pretend to torture her. She is the only character who does not suffer—in fact, she makes everyone around her suffer (in ways that I cannot fully reveal). They are the victims of her nostalgia.”

(Jac’s family name is Avila-Vermeer, yes he’s a direct descendant of the dutch painter. Jac’s father is Dutch. That’s why he’s Orange these Eurocup days.)

I read somewhere here that one person started as a masochist and went into being a sadist. Jac told me something like that. His early recollections are that he placed himself in the role of the martyr, like Camille does in the movie. Are sadists projecting their own feelings on their game partners?

That subject is coming up in another movie, but of that I will talk later. I have to say that the subject is not only of interest to us, as it is to all of you, but it’s the subject we’re dedicating our work to. From Red Feline on the Cross to Maleficarum we’re exploring the subject from all angles and it is very rewarding. At one point Jac started calling this work “the exploration of the body in pain“.

Amy Hesketh: It’s wonderful to have you stop by and give us another amazing tour of your mind and the art of your work. You wrote of making and watching Maleficarum:

It was a cerebral and physical enjoyment, and I had used my mind and body as instruments in order to fulfill that cerebral/physical fantasy. I hope I’m making sense here.

Absolutely. Knowing that you go through a very exhaustive editing process as well, I wonder if you could tell us something about how you feel when assembling the final product vs. your feelings when watching it on the big screen with a live audience? You also wrote:

In theory, we want men to understand us. What we actually want is for men to read our minds.

Yeah, I work for someone who’s like that.

YikYakker

Amy can and will respond to the direct question, I’d like to address two points. Watching the movie with an audience. It can be nerve wracking, at least for some of us who might be critical of our own work. After seeing a movie a thousand times, when editing, one losses objectivity and the movie might, in fact, seem boring. One knows all of the scenes by heart and the editor within would love to take the film back to the editing room and perfect it. But there has to be a moment when we let go as hard as it may be. So, when watching the movie with an audience of a few dozen or hundreds of people, the feeling of dread is there until the very end when the audience reacts one way or another. Then the work is done.

Of course some of us might actually enjoy the suffering, but that’s just some of us. And yes, Amy is correct when she says that women want guys to read their minds, at least some women want that.

It remains my belief that all interested in this site are sadists (by definition!). (…) It has consequences in the contexts of civil and legal rights, social acceptability, censorship. If example were needed the events surrounding the screenings of Mal. and Sir. demonstrate the point.

Richard

The term Sadism is overused, specially in the media. A common description in a crime scene of a TV show is “he’s a sexual sadist” when referring to some psycho who tortured and killed his victim, often a pretty woman. I’m uncomfortable with that. Reading De Sade, one finds what he writes a bit horrifying at best because the characters that fill his stories justify everything they do with the argument that there are no morals.

However, I think that there’s more a feeling of empathy when watching a movie such as Maleficarum. Fear, empathy, identification, it all brings certain kind of pleasure to the viewer and the more extreme the situation, the most pleasure one gets. Well, not everyone, but many, many… many people. In fact, I believe the term sadomasochist is perhaps more apropos. It is our theory that all humans and some non humans are sadomasochists, they just express it in different ways.

My Dear Margot. Here I am, having dragged myself away from drooling over images of naked women, tortured or not. (Now, who do you think are the images over which I have drooled most copiously? But, I beseech you not to reveal this secret of my soul, to which you are privy, to the harsh world or, at least, that part of it that frequents this site!). I shall respond and continue our exchange but several issues of greater urgency have supervened. (…) My observation that some crucial issues are not black and white referenced an exchange that I had begun with Margot about the spectrum of reality from acting, responding to that acting, to real emotions, to the total dramatic experience; both for the actors and the audience. All this, given the nature of the films under discussion, in the immediate context of pain, cruelty, torture and abuse.

Richard

In our World of Red Feline we’ve been making a study that has two main parts. The act of framing the body in pain and the response to that body in pain. In the first part we have two basic actors, the victim and the torturer, in the second we have the audience. So far so good. Sometimes a third party participates in that passion play, the observer within the work.

We believe there’s a process of identification in the part of the audience with the basic three actors and to different degrees. The response of said audience will tell us more about the audience themselves than about the work. That’s our experience. That’s our experience here, in this forum, as well.

We can also see that one individual will have a complex range of identifying feelings and all at once. That same individual may in fact identify with the victim and the torturer, but he may also identify with the third party, the observer and to complicate matters, there are a good number of different observers, from the compasionate one to the virulent hater.

It’s very interesting to see how the comments and criticisms we receive for our work cover that wide range.

Richard said: “It remains my belief that all interested in this site are sadists (by definition!).”
Aw hell. Now it’s my turn to be pedantic. Would it not be more reasonable to say that we are all either sadists, masochists, or somewhere in between (perhaps identifying as both)? Plenty of people enjoy reading GIMP stories and watching GIMP scenes in movies, etc., largely because it excites them to imagine themselves as the humiliated and tortured victim. Ms. Hesketh is an obvious example, and she’s not alone. Is Ms. Hesketh a “sadist?”
Similarly, I’m a male who enjoys imagining he’s the lovely suffering female in such scenes. I’m not particularly comfortable with labelling myself in general, but if you forced me to choose a label, one that describes my interests here as precisely as possible, I’d have to say I’m a “cross-sexual masochist.”
So don’t stick that “sadist” label on me, thank you very much. “Perv” is acceptable, however. And so is “sick fuck.”

Santorum

Is there a radar to pinpoint masochists? How does JJ does it? Was it my total concentration/fascination with the blindfolded girl in Princes Bride that gave me away? And what about Mila? Amy was not difficult, she spell it out the very first day she stepped in Jac’s house responding to a casting call for the NGO doc. Her male friend, who was answering to the casting call, said something like “she makes me do sick things to take pictures of…” not his exact words. She then said, in passing, something about putting pain into her work. Jac set his radar on her from that moment on.

I admire a man that dares to say that he identifies with the female victim, it’s something that many of our fans do but few, very few, are going to admit it. I often wonder what sort of power Amy or Camille have over their fans, how many of them identify with the victim rather than JJ, who tortures them. When watching Martyr I have to ask myself how much of Camille, the character, is Carmen the actress and how much of her is Jac himself.

A lot of that story is based on Camille, of course, but it’s also based on Jac. It’s between the lines. In that film we have the three cases of our study of The Body in Pain. The victim, the torturer and the observers. They all participate of that passion play and they are all manipulated by the central character, Camille, while all the actors are manipulated into their roles by Jac.

But I have to ask myself, at times, who created Camille. Was it Jac? Was it Carmen?

Who molded who?

Reading my Webster New World Dictionary it says that sadism: n. (Fr., after Marquis de Sade)

1 – the getting of sexual pleasure from dominating, mistreating, or hurting one’s partner

2 – the getting of pleasure from inflicting physical or psychological pain on another or others
The word sadism come from a famous torturer of women the Marquis de Sade I believe it’s saying.
It doesn’t mention getting sexual pleasure from ONLY watching live, film or pictures of (Gimp) physical or psychological pain on others or your partner which I am and believe some of us Gimpers are.
So base on that you are only a sadist if you take physical part in the torture which then makes us ?? What???
The sadist muddying of the waters: Bill K.

Bill K

Sadism is De Sade’s contribution to our language, just as Masochism is a contribution of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch. That much is factual. Both terms have been used and abused and now are the accepted labels to describe people with such inclinations as enjoying some whipping, spanking, torturing, just like those who are now reading this.

But the terminology doesn’t explain the phenomenon. And as Amy said, there will be psychologists and theorists who will try forever to explain this to themselves and the world but what make us tick in one way or another will remain a mystery and I prefer it to be that way.

All we know is that at one point in our lives we became aware of somethings that didn’t seem normal to us. Some at earlier times than others.

The impact of one scene in a war movie was the beginning of an awareness for Jac. His maid, yes, his family had maids, sneaked him into a movie theatre, he wasn’t even in grammar school yet. A WWII movie was playing, in one scene a nazi officer takes a young woman to a big barrel full of water and proceeds to dunk her head into it several times, holding her under the water for longer and longer periods of time while screaming at her in German. Jac couldn’t read the subtitles. Finally the girl dies. Jac described the feelings he had when watching the scene. He fell in love with that girl and could never get her out of his head. He identified with the girl, not the Nazi officer.

And now I must ask, what’s the impact of the photograph below? A simple picture taken after the shooting of The Via Crucis of Camille. Taken with a Fuji camera, the negative developed at a local photo lab in La Paz, back in 97. The photograph was scanned years later. This picture was seen by a lot of people at different times. Some of those people were the workers at the Laboratory where Jac ordered a few copies and an enlargement that graced a wall in his house. I’ll wait for answers but not for too long.

I referred to the past in this post, to our origins, to the times when our work was part daring, part struggle, part exploration, part exploitation, part fun, part love. We still feel daring and we’re still struggling and we are still exploring and we still have fun and we love and we exploit each other but we have a lot of company now. We’re no longer alone. That third element, the observer that participates, is growing daily.

In closing I have to say that Martyr is a very important movie for us and for those who follow our work, perhaps more important than Maleficarum. While Maleficarum is more about what holds a strong attraction to our fans… torture, the burning stake, the rack and all of that, Martyr is about what’s behind all this. It’s a movie that deals with both the psychology and the romance of what makes us tick. We feel reflected, portrayed, in it. Amy was seduced by it. She made up her mind about what she wanted to do for the rest of her life after seeing Martyr. It’s that strong and important in our lives.

We would love to have a discussion about this movie here but for that you must see it. And to those who did see it, we’d like to hear their comments. I understand that this forum stands for non-consensual situations of girls in merciless peril, but the discussions are not limited to that, as I can see, and that is very, very interesting, stimulating and healthy. For each movie like Martyr that you get, we’ll make two like Maleficarum. How about that?

If you knew what we’re preparing now you would not stop panting.

Later people.. Margot.