Outsider Asylum: GRAPHIC SEXUAL HORROR
15/05/2010
Big Smash! presents the Outsider Asylum Documentary Series:Before launching his infamous extreme bondage and SM website insex.com
in 1997, Brent Scott was a University professor with a history of
challenging, controversial performance art, often involving the
bondage, caging or cocooning of his subjects (or himself). But he left
behind a life of academia to pursue BDSM full time, sharing his
obsession online with the eventual 35,000 members that signed up to
insex.com to see videos and live streaming of models being put through
extremely torturous BDSM scenarios. Directors Barbara Bell (also a
novelist) and Anna Lorentzon are former insex.com contributors behind
the scenes, and their first feature is an exploration of the sometimes
titillating, often frightening world they inhabited for that time.
Bell and Lorentzon let the subjects (site founder Brent Scott [aka
'pd'], camera operators, models and model handlers) speak for
themselves and remain ambiguous as to their personal take on the goings
on behind the scenes at insex.com. Although many of the women appear to
be well-rounded individuals who turned to insex.com's secret pleasures
and hefty paychecks as a means of getting through school, others are
not able to articulate their experiences with as much detachment. But
bear in mind, these are no ordinary glamour shots of phony BDSM
scenarios - these women have signed up not only to look like they're in pain, but to actually be in pain, to actually be frightened
and in fear for their lives. They are put into dangerous contraptions
that have likely not been properly tested, and made helpless: their
limbs tied, their mouths gagged, their airway passages restricted with
rubber or water. And yet all women claim to be there voluntarily.
The issue of personal safety is a major one in the film - after all,
one cannot be in another's shoes in terms of what they actually get out
of the experience. But as the models decide on their 'hard limits'
(meaning a limit the 'master' must always respect) and their 'safe
words', we watch as their safe words are ignored, and the pressure of
losing a job keeps them submitting to out-of-control scenarios they do
not enjoy. The problem is, when Brent Scott left the realm of academia
to hole up in his BDSM bubble, he stopped being critical - he stopped
questioning the power dynamic (which is the most integral, interesting
aspect of BDSM) and acted like a king in a castle, allowing his
fantasies to run free at the expense of his models' safety.