(YESTERDAY, our guest columnist began musing about the '90s revival of bondage fetishism in pop culture, and some of its possible sources. Her conclusion: A generation had come of age after growing up with Catwoman and Emma Peel.)
MY GENERATION was the first generation raised in front of the television.
Suddenly there were shows geared just towards us. Our moms bought us the new TV dinners, then set us in front of the tube while they went to their ESP development class.
And it wasn't just The Partridge Family and Leave It to Beaver reruns we ate with breakfast, lunch, and dinner too. We're talking some pretty heavy sexual-revolution morsels from the '60s. Things even too risque for today's TV.
I'm talking Catwoman, in full dominitrix gear, playfully torturing Batman. Sure, she was evil, but she was sort of doing Batman a favor by punishing him. I was five and I understood that.
Then there was I Dream of Jeannie, a scantily clad Barbara Eden dressed like a Turkish concubine who called a guy "Master." (Impossible on today's television.)
On Bewitched, Samantha was cheesily nice, but did you ever catch her evil twin sister Serena, the dominitrix? Between changing Darren into various livestock, she always had something vicious to say to her sister and just about anyone else around.
Emma Peel, in tight leather, karate-chopped men and always had the upper hand on Steed.
These were the women who raised me while my mom was at work. Me and my friends couldn't swear by oath because it was against our religion, so we would say, "Do you swear to Catwoman?" If you lied on that one, we all knew you would go straight to hell.
In the '70s, suddenly schools couldn't make us cut our hair, pray or even insist we pledge allegiance to the flag. Just when we wanted Catwoman for a teacher, gone was the enticing restraint of the '50s. All that work from the women's libbers paid off, too; they couldn't stop us from joining the army, cutting our hair, wearing pants and completely desexing ourselves.
We could do anything we wanted, and boy were we bored.
Our parents were all divorced and "finding themselves," repeating Stuart Smalley-type self-affirmation mantras in the bathroom mirror, or smoking a joint; so they were too busy to give us any discipline.
In rebellion, my classmates starting getting born-again all over the place, finding the rigid moral confines of the fundamentalist church comforting.
In comparison, punk rock and S&M were sane alternatives. Not only did S&M give us something to bounce off of for once, but it made sex illicit, exciting, unnatural, and deviant. We could finally get that disapproving look from our society that we had waited for all those years.
The end of S&M as we know it: Now, of course, it is not so risque to be a dominitrix. it's no longer considered deviant. In fact they even have advocacy groups and support groups.
In the '80s, as a sociology student, I watched a "sexual deviancy" film. There was the prostitute, the nymphomaniac, the transsexual etc., and of course, the dominatrix. She was pitifully tame. Nowadays they would have to take her out of the film.
And the '70s have come back into style--not only clothes-wise, but suddenly the 20-year-olds stopped wearing makeup and everyone thinks they have ESP or are a witch. N'Sync and the Backstreet Boys are singing some really sugary-sweet stuff that is as barfable as Barry Manilow. Madonna traded in her tight leather corsets for that flowy polyester look.
Sex looks boring again; or at least I wouldn't find it enticing to do the dirty with the anorexic, bell-bottom-wearing, self-loving, and self-affirming teenyboppers out there. I mean, do Ricky Martin and Matt Damon really look at all dangerous?
I guess I will just have to wait 20 years or so to have any fun.
Or maybe I'll just ignore that S&M is no longer chic.
That would be SO Catwoman of me!
TOMORROW: A blowhard gets his comeuppance and refuses to admit it.
REMEMBER: It's time to compile the highly awaited MISCmedia In/Out List for 2001. Make your nominations to clark@speakeasy.org or on our handy MISCtalk discussion boards.
IN OTHER NEWS: The three U.S. news magazines often share the same cover-story topic, but rarely have Time, Newsweek, and U.S. News & World Report all used the exact same cover image, with two of the three using the same banner headline.
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