Look Ma, No Hands!

Wholesome, life-affirming bondage was also a principal theme of Bull Durham, Ron Shelton's moving 1988 paean to minor-league baseball. Here, Susan Sarandon, a sex-crazed baseball junkie, uses bondage not so much for its crazed aphrodisiac powers as for its aesthetic ones: the only way she can get 19-year-old flamethrowers in the Carolina League to shut up and pay attention while she reads them Walt Whitman is to tie them to her bed. Actually, this is the only way anyone can get anyone to shut up and pay attention to Walt Whitman these days.

Alas, in the past couple of years, the whimsical, cheerful side of bondage has gone out of motion pictures and been supplanted by something sinister and atavistic. In Basic Instinct, bondage plays a crucial role in several murders. In Body of Evidence, the murder victim is found bound, with nipple clamps beside his bed, clearly indicating that Madonna has been in the neighborhood recently. Bondage and murder are the crucial ingredients in Whispers in the Dark, as they are in Love Crimes and Cape Fear. Only Pedro Almodovar in Tie Me Up! Tie Me Down! has dared to challenge the party line, adopting the politically incorrect stance that bondage, when used discreetly and tastefully, can be a very effective courting mechanism, and can even serve as an occasional stimulus to keep the pizazz in one's marriage.

Where does Movieline stand on the issue of bondage in the cinema? Although it is a magazine published in Los Angeles, and although this article is being written by someone who spends a lot of time in Greenwich Village, our feelings about bondage are pretty much the same as those of people in Oklahoma City or Dubuque: whatever gets you through the night, be it branding irons, accommodating steers or leather masks, is fine with us. Hey, we're not here to make value judgments. Besides, Hollywood wouldn't be making all these rope-'em-and-ream-'em blockbusters if the public weren't interested in the subject matter, and in this sense we tend to look at these films not so much as diversions as instructional manuals for the uninitiated. Never been chained to a tow truck while a female talk-show host goes down on you? Rent Body Chemistry II and see if this automotive bondage stuff gets you off. Ever wonder what it would be like to have candle wax sprinkled all over your nuts? Rent Body of Evidence and see for yourself whether this is your scene. Never been chained and held down by a bunch of guys dressed like the Gestapo while a complete stranger fist-fucks you in the middle of a crowded Greenwich Village bar? We cannot recommend Cruising too highly.

We issue only one warning before passing along our capsule summaries of must-sees in the Home Video Bondage Library. If you're a conflicted female who is seriously considering the possibility of having your lover tie you to a chair and rip off your clothes with a pair of scissors the way Patrick Bergin does to Sean Young in Love Crimes, remember: proceed with extreme caution when using Sean Young, or characters played by Sean Young, as role models. And for the guys, let's just leave it at this: A society where men have to be warned about letting women like Madonna tie them up is a society that is in deep, deep trouble.

We earnestly hope that this is not that society.

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