fetishes (1996)

The work is of sympathetic magic: showing a thing being felt in front of the camera, and not acted, will run deeply into the mind of the audience – even when the we are completely disassociated from the act itself (after all, it's only a movie). The effect is one of an intensely energetic connection with the image, by pulling at the dormant senses (touch / taste / smell) by way of sight / sound. These senses are simply waiting to be engaged by one's private associations and built-in, biological empathies. The entire sensory realm is intimately reachable with the Cinema. Nick Broomfield is at peak form with this document of an upscale professional domination BDSM studio in Manhattan.

I don't understand why the urge is with me. it's very real, it's as real as the real world that I walked in from tonight, which is the business world. And then when I walk out of this world, I walk back into the real world again. It's somehow like the internal clock in your body. Almost like it's a drive. It's a drive that has to be satisfied. And it's an insatiable drive. It's insatiable like the fantasies are insatiable. You never fulfill the said fantasy, or you think you get the best one and then you do it, and then two weeks later you think of something better. It's an insatiable drive.

A note, however, regarding the emotional reaction(s) of the submissives themselves: despite the amount of precaution taken by the company, Pandora's Box (i.e.: the safety word "mercy," which guarantees the submissive complete control of the experience at its most elementary level), those who engage still become overwhelmingly reactive; intensifying their breathing, dramatic atmospheric shifts in the room, rushes of adrenaline, exhibiting genuine fear and / or pleasure. Yet all of these fantasies being played out are knowingly illusions: one could even say, regarding 'Fetishes' (1996) specifically, an illusion within an illusion (stage-plays within a film). I normally ask myself while watching any movie, "But why do I become swept-up emotionally at the sight of silly old people doing silly things in front of a camera?" 'Fetishes' is a perfect example of how existence is, primarily, an aesthetic experience. I become wrapped up in a narrative because the images make visible a reality invisible, entangling with the deepest of my psychic world as something equal to an externally fixed memory.