Female

Directors: Michael Curtiz, William A. Wellman, William Dieterle  

Starring:  Ruth Chatterton,

George Brent,

Lois Wilson,

Johnny Mack Brown,

Ruth Donnelly 

Released: 1933 

Length: 60 minutes

Before there was the Motion Picture Association of America's (MPAA) film-rating system, there was the Motion Picture Production Code, better known as the Morality Code, or simply “The Code”. Many of the Black and White films that us movie buffs love were produced during “The Code” years. That was approximately 1934 up until it weakened in the 1960’s and was abandoned in favor of the MPAA rating system in 1968.  

Films in the late 1920s and early 30s reflected the liberal attitudes of the day and could include sexual innuendos, references to homosexuality, miscegenation, illegal drug use, infidelity, and profane language, as well as women in their undergarments. Such behavior was common in the liberal climate of cities at that time, although it often shocked audiences in rural areas. 

By 1934, theatre revenues were slumping (likely, in part, due to the Depression) and those in the film industry were unhappy with the prospect of losing even more of their audience, particularly in heavily Catholic cities (New York, Boston, Chicago, etc). 

Thus, was born “The Code” with the establishment of a special bureau (eventually christened The Breen Office, after Joseph Ignatius Breen, a former public relations executive), whose purpose was to review scripts and finished prints in order to ensure that they adhered to the new Code. 

Many fans of Classical Hollywood cinema today prefer pre-Code films for their audacious attitude toward conventional morality, and their presentation of more "mature" or risqué themes generally not seen again in film until the collapse of the code system. 

Popular character roles during what is now known as “Pre-Code” Hollywood, include tough-talking, assertive women, and prostitutes. 

Recently on Turner Classic Movies, they honored “Pre-Code” Hollywood, showing some of Warner Brother’s “Forbidden Treasures” movies. One movie that caught my attention was “Female”. 

The movie trailer was most enticing. It beings with these words boldly printed across the screen; 

Most women hide their desires.

Here’s the story of one who openly flaunts them.

Ruth Chatteron stars in “Female” 

As a girl who made a career out of bossing men.

“Female” shows how modern women hunt men.

And what they do after they capture them.  

“Female” is a short film, a mere 60 minutes, but Ruth Chatteron is tremendous portraying a powerful women who likes to use men for her sexual pleasure, then discard them.  

The first 40 minutes are the best when it celebrates female empowerment. However, the prevailing social order of the 1930’s is restored by the film's end; as this dominant woman is finally tamed by a man, or at least her love for a man. Nevertheless, the plot and the fast-paced dialogue make “Female” a ground-breaking film when it comes to the portrayal of a dominant and powerful woman. As you watch this film, you must remember that this film was released in 1933. Such a female character today would not raise an eyebrow because we have become accustomed to seeing powerful female executives and assertive women, both in real life and in movies. But “Female” is about a powerful woman who likes to sleep around and she uses her position of power to facilitate her sexual conquests.

 

 

 

 

Ruth Chatterton stars as Alison Drake, known to her employees as “Miss D.” Having inherited an automobile factory from her father, she runs it brilliantly. In charge of her secretarial pool, “Pett” Pettigrew (Ferdinand Gottschalk), describes her as “a superwoman. She’s never found a man worthy of her and she never will!” 
 

She admits, “I treat men the way they’ve always treated women.” 
 

When it comes to men, she may not always buy, but she certainly does a lot of shopping. This was the element of the script that raised a red flag over at the Studio Relations Committee (SRC), the practically toothless enforcers of the Production Code at that time. Mark A. Vieira, in his excellent book “Sin in Soft Focus: Pre-Code Hollywood”, reprints a letter sent from the head of the SRC to Warner Brothers objecting to the plot of Female:  
 

“...It is made very plain that she has been in the habit of sustaining her freedom from marriage, and at the same time satisfying a too definitely indicated sex hunger, by frequently inviting any young man who may appeal to her to her home and there bringing about a seduction. After having satisfied her desires with these various males, she pays no further attention to them other than to reward them with bonuses. And in the event that they become importunate, she has them transferred...”
 

Wingate insisted Warner Brothers eliminate this material from the film. Warner Brothers agreed and then, as most studios did at this time, completely ignored his request. The film was released with all its salaciousness intact. After Joseph Breen instituted a Production Code crackdown in mid-1934, "Female" was placed on his list of films never to be re-released under any circumstances. The film sat untouched in the vaults until the Breen Office ended in the 1950’s.  
 

In “Female”, Alison is cynical about love and casually seduces the attractive men in her company, but her meaningless affairs only add to her boredom and confirm her belief that men, like women, can be bought with money and power. In her private life, she is passionate and bold in her pursuit of male companionship, which she frequently finds among the ranks of her own employees and executives; the problem is that these men can't abide the fact that back at work, she's all business.  
 

One night, in search of excitement, Alison goes to a shooting gallery and meets Jim Thorne, who declines her sexual advances. The next day, when Jim shows up at her office, Alison learns that he is the renowned engineer she is expecting. She coolly discusses business with him and then invites him to her home. Expecting another conquest, Alison is surprised when Jim rebuffs her again.  
 

I love it when he tells her, “I suppose you think you’re too superior for love and marriage.”
 

Determined to break him, Alison successfully gets Jim alone on a country picnic, and this time, he succumbs to her charms. When he asks her to marry him, though, it is she who turns him down. Furious, he quits his job with her and leaves town.
  

Alison, realizing that she is truly in love, follows him, but misses a very critical business meeting. When she finally catches up with Jim, she tearfully admits that she was willing to risk bankruptcy to find him. This time, he willingly accepts her.
 

In addition to seeing a 70 year-old film deal with a sexually-strong female character, “Female” has a number of interesting background details. The exterior of Miss D’s home and love nest is Frank Lloyd Wright’s Ennis House, located in the Hollywood Hills. Chatterton and the man who plays the one guy who says no without a ring, George Brent, were married at the time this film was made. There was a veritable merry-go-round of directors who worked on this film. William Dieterle began the film with cameraman Sid Hickox. When Dieterle fell ill, the film was taken over and completed by William Wellman using cameraman Ernest Haller. At that point Warner Brothers decided the lead “boy toy,” George Blackwood, was not up to the job. They replaced him with Johnny Mack Brown and brought in Michael Curtiz who ended up re-shooting half the movie and gaining the final directorial credit. 
 

What I love most about it is the sassy Ruth Chatteron walking in Female Authority and Female Power, portraying female sexual liberation thirty years before the Women’s Liberation movement. I also like the fact the title says it all. “Female”, meaning that it is the female nature to be strong, assertive, powerful and liberated, even as she seeks a male partner.
 

 

 

 

 

The ending is 1930 morality still steeped in patriarchy, after all, the Tigress can be wild and free as long as she is tamed in the end by a so-called ‘Real Man’. But I doubt if the audience bought it in 1930 and I know audiences today will identify with the Alison of the first 40 minutes of the film.  
 

So check your programming guide and if you ever see “Female” being shown again on Turner Classic Movies, you might want to record it and watch it. You may not find it physically erotic when compared to today’s Hollywood portrayals of dominant and powerful woman, but I think you will appreciate the intellectual eroticism of “Female”.

 

 

Rating: 5 out of 5 stars

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Notorious Bettie Page

Directed by: Mary Harron 

Starring:  Gretchen Mol,

Chris Bauer,

Jared Harris,

Sarah Paulson,

Cara Seymore 

Released: 2006 

HBO Films 

Length: 90 minutes

“The Notorious Bettie Page” begins with a publicity-seeking smut hunt conducted by Senator Estes Kefauver (David Strathairn). As Bettie waits to testify before a Senate subcommittee, we get a backward glance at her life. Born in the early twenties, she had a strict, religious mother and a father who the film hints may have abused her.  

The film stars Gretchen Mol (“Boardwalk Empire”) as Bettie, and focuses primarily on the 1950's and Bettie's quick ascension in the modeling world. There are plenty of interesting facts about Bettie the film sets forth, including her discovery in 1950 by an African-American New York cop (Kevin Carroll) who dabbles in photography, as we learn that he's the one who suggests Bettie give herself the haircut, complete with the very distinctive bangs, that would become her trademark.

 

 

 

From there, Bettie has some success as a model, but earns additional money on the side doing suggestive photography for "private clubs," which ultimately leads to her first nude work. Bettie Page's allure is often attributed to the ultimate "girl next door" aspect of her pictures, which managed to almost always mix in a feeling of innocence, even when the photos were revealing. Mol does a wonderful job of portraying these differing aspects of Bettie; we see her as the one who initiates taking her top off in a photo for the first time, but instead of coming off as a suggestive comment, she seems like someone who simply feels very natural when naked and doesn't see it as having directly sexual connotations. 

Bettie Page appeared in coy nudie-cutie magazines like ‘Bachelor’ and ‘Wink’ and in highly unconvincing lesbian bondage movies with titles like “Sally’s Punishment.” As the naughty girl next door, in black lace and stiletto heels, she domesticated fetishism. Bettie was quite a celebrity in her day and today she has become a cult icon.  

 

 

The look of “The Notorious Bettie Page” is great, with most of the picture shot in black and white to evoke the feeling of a 1950's era film. The black and white also allows for a lot of stock footage from the era to be inserted. There are also a handful of scenes shot in color, as Bettie makes several trips to Florida, where she meets photographer Bunny Yeager, who would take some of Bettie's most famous photos, including her Playboy pictorial. These sequences are in a vibrant Technicolor that also seems fitting and help accentuate how much Gretchen Mol resembles Bettie Page during the photo sequences.

 

Mol does a beautiful job of capturing Page’s unrelenting and anachronistic cheeriness. Today her photos look like nothing wilder than what you would see on the cover of a men’s magazine and the bondage sequences seem very tame, more like girl's playing around. Perhaps Page’s powerful erotic pull has to do with the sheer goody willingness that emanates from every photo she takes. “Even when she has no clothes on she doesn’t look naked,” says one photographer.  

Bettie Page has been a cult figure for years, the subject of quasi-scholarly books and grainy videos. Director Russ Meyer (“Faster Pussycat! Kill! Kill!”) described her once as "the nicest girl you'd ever want to meet."   

For the readers of my blog, the most interesting aspect of “The Notorious Bettie Page” is that we get to meet Irving Klaw through the film’s portrayal of the legendary fetish photographer.
 

 

 

Klaw makes Bettie Page notorious because it was her fetish photos and her bondage films that separated her from the many other models that appeared nude in ‘Playboy’ and other men’s magazines. When her New York actor boyfriend, Marvin (Jonathan Woodward), registers his disgust at some photos of Bettie as a Dominatrix in a Fetish magazine, she can’t understand what he’s riled about. The pictures, she thought, were just for fun. No one actually got hurt—she and the other girls were just horsing around.

 

  

It is her innocence that makes Bettie Page such a fascinating character. The film examines her religious faith and how she reconciles that with her naughty profession. One gets the feeling watching this film that Bettie never viewed sex as being ‘dirty’ and she never viewed posing with whips while wearing leather boots and corsets as being ‘perverted’. She only began to feel guilty when other people judged her. Other people considered sex to be ‘dirty’, the naked female form to be ‘immoral’ and domination and submission to be ‘decadent’. Bettie had the faith of a child and she was able to see the world with innocence.  

All of that innocence disappeared when the government put the clamps on Irving Klaw and summoned Bettie to testify before the United States Senate during the juvenile delinquency hearings. Bettie begins to feel guilty and she seeks and finds redemption by embracing her roots, returning to church and giving her life over to Christ.   

The film doesn't defend Bettie or Klaw or the men that bought his photos, but rather it presents them as mundane laborers in the world of sex, finding a market and supplying it. Irving Klaw worked with his sister Paula. "Boots and shoes, shoes and boots," Paula muses to Bettie. "They can't get enough of them. Why? I guess it takes all kinds to make a world."
  

The tone of the movie is subdued and reflective. It does not defend pornography, but regards it with subdued nostalgia for a more innocent time. In the Senate hearings, a father testifies that his son died while attempting to tie himself up in a manner he saw in one of Klaw's bondage films.  The movie feels sympathy for the father. The movie also lets us see that Irving and Paula Klaw were not evil. In fact, they treated Bettie and the other models like family. The film presents their photo sessions as light hearted and fun. And their clients, such as pioneering fetish photographer and bondage artist John Willie, were so awed by the opportunity to photograph beautiful women like Bettie Page, that they treat the models as Goddesses.
 

 

Bettie abruptly disappeared into a life devoted to Jesus and was resolutely private about her life until her passing in December 2008. But she was never apologetic about her career choices. Harron respects this; “It was only after Adam and Eve sinned that they had to put clothes on,” is Page’s attitude at the end of the film when she is passing out church pamphlets in the park.  
 

And that in a nutshell was the fascinating life of Bettie Page. She did not know she was involved in what society and religion considered to be sin until society and religion placed their guilt and their sinful thoughts over on to her. People who campaign against ‘smut’ usually do so because of their own sinful thoughts. It is so much easier to point the finger at others and to place the blame on the ills of society than it is to come to terms with one's own sexuality.  
 

The government succeeded in closing down Irving Klaw. They won the battle but lost the war when it comes to fetish-oriented erotica. Klaw burned most of his photos but his sister saved about twenty percent and those pictures have been viewed by millions of people over the Internet.

 

 

And Bettie Page is more notorious than ever.

 

 

 

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

James rewarded for being a wonderful husband

Happy New Year everyone! Last night James and I went out with some vanilla friends. I couldn’t arrange any kind of D&S night so I decided to have a more traditional New Years. We had a great time. We drove into the western mountains of PA and went to a resort. Very fancy place. Our vanilla friends knew someone who worked there and they got us dinner reservations and afterward we went to a private party there complete with band, party favors and a champagne toast. At midnight they shot off fireworks.

James “volunteered” to be the designated driver so other than one small glass of champagne, he didn’t drink. As far as domination goes, he wore his CB3000 but the DL 2000 does not work outside our home, so I could not use that. But he did wear a pair of my panties underneath his dress pants. James was very well dressed and he looked quite handsome. I noticed quite a lot of women checking him out and that made me smile. If only they knew how I keep this handsome man sexually denied and under my control.

After the fireworks we headed back and didn’t get home until 2:00am. I was still a bit tipsy and I allowed James to undress me and plant kisses all over my body. That’s when I made my decision about ending his denial period. James has been such a wonderful husband in 2013. I know he likes to be dominated and humiliated but I felt he deserved some physical pleasure. I wanted to give him a special treat.

I removed his CB3000 and told him to lie on the bed. I removed my bra and I rubbed my breasts over his body. James’ absolute favorite way to have an orgasm is against my breasts. Even before we ever got involved with femdom, when we had intercourse and regular sex, he would often request if he could climax against my soft breasts. So last night I gave him this special treat. I rubbed my breasts against his erection and I gave him permission to have a pleasurable orgasm. He came very quickly and in buckets. I wiped my breasts clean with a towel and then I asked him if he could have another one. So I trapped his cock against my breasts again and told him he had two minutes to try to have another one. He did.

I reminded him it was a special treat and not to expect it again anytime soon. I told him to reinstall the CB300 complete with the Dream Lover. I haven’t set his new denial goal yet but I am thinking not until early March. And more than likely I will go back to giving him only humiliating orgasms. But last night I felt it important to bring in the New Year showing my hubby how much I appreciate his submission.

Having fun with the Dream Lover 2000

Oh yeah, I am definitely loving this device. It might be one of the best Christmas gifts I’ve received in years. But I don’t think hubby feels the same way. I can see how in the wrong hands (wink, wink) the DL 2000 could be most cruel.

Now that we got the darn thing working right, I don’t know how I lived without it. I love the “pager” button to summons hubby whenever I need him. It works inside our entire house. Over the Christmas holiday, as I was relaxing on the couch watching my favorite Christmas movies, all I had to do was “summons” James with a push of a button and he came running to re-fill my drink or prepare me a snack. With the pager button he gets a quick, short intense pulse to his genitals. When I summons him, if he doesn’t get to me within 10 seconds, I push the “high” (severe) button to discipline him. He hates that one so James has caught on rather quickly that its best not to procrastinate when I need him.

And now that hubby has finally figured out how I can use it with my iPhone, he is never out of my reach as long as he is home. For example, the other day as I was in my car, parked at the store, I called him to check to see if he had finished one of his chores. He had not, so using my DL 2000 iPhone app, I was able to discipline him, right there from my car. The possibilities are endless. Like I said, this can be a most wicked invention in the wrong hands.

It didn’t start out very good. We couldn’t get the DL 2000 to work with hubby’s CB6000 chastity device. So I had to put him back in the CB3000. He likes the CB6000 better but until he can figure out how to get the Dream Lover to work with the CB6000, he will have to sacrifice for me and wear the CB3000.

James also had trouble figuring out how I could use it with my laptop and iPhone. It didn’t work at first but to his credit, he finally figured it out. James is tech savvy so I knew he could resolve it.

Last night was a real blast. After a wonderful massage, we retired to the bedroom and I had hubby go down on me. With remote in hand, I used the DL 2000 to correct his performance as he was pleasuring me. When I hit the ‘mild’ button that meant I wanted him to go slower. When I hit the ‘moderate’ button that meant I wanted him to go faster. And when I hit the ‘severe’ button that just meant I wanted to keep him off balance, torture him a little to add to my pleasure. It was a lot of fun, at least for me anyways.

One positive side-effect of the DL 2000 is that it seems to have cured James from leaking so much pre-cum. He has been on the edge of having an accident several times in recent weeks, but when I was using the Dream Lover last night, he was fairly limp the whole time he was pleasuring me. The anticipation of my ‘love pulses’ limited his arousal and kept him under control.

Tomorrow night is the big night. The question is, do I allow hubby an orgasm to bring in the new year or do I make him wait until January 6? I haven’t decided yet.

Ginger’s most generous Christmas gift

I received a package yesterday from my dominant girlfriend Ginger. To my surprise, it was her Dream Lover 2000 device along with the remote and accessories to be able to use it with a computer. For those not familiar with the Dream Lover 2000, here is the website. Ginger has used it the past two years in training her husband.

I called her up and thanked her for the gift but I was also curious as to why she no longer needed it. Ginger feels her hubby has been properly trained by the device and she is ready to take things to a new level. She plans on getting her husband pierced the week between Christmas and New Years and will be installing a more permanent chastity device for long-term wear on him. Her hubby is off that week which will give him time to adjust to the new device before he has to go back to work.

As of yesterday Ginger has not made a final decision on the device. She has narrowed it down to 2. It will be either a Lori’s chastity device or one from Mature Metal. From our conversation she seemed to be leaning toward the Queen’s Keep from Mature Metal as she likes the idea of adding the spike strip for c/b play.

Ginger’s lifestyle has taken on a new direction lately. Ginger pretty much played the field, especially on her business travels, but recently she and her lover Dante have become more serious with each other. Dante is the stud she met at the CFNM party we attended back in April of 2012. Dante has recently gotten an apartment that is closer to Ginger’s house so they can spend more time together. Ginger’s hubby cooks dinner for them and is now required to clean Dante’s apartment as well as Ginger’s house.

I must confess that I am a little envious of Ginger as her femdom marriage seems to keep evolving. I sometimes feel that James and I are stagnant but I am excited about the idea of playing around with the Dream Lover 2000. It works in accordance with a CB 3000 and CB 6000. We have both so we can start using it right away.

Movie Review: "Holy Smoke"

Directed by: Jane Campion 

Starring:  Kate Winslet,

Harvey Keitel,

Pam Grier,

Julie Hamilton,

Sophie Lee,

Daniel Wyllie,

Paul Goddard,

Tim Robertson 

Released: 1999 

Language: English 

Length: 114 minutes

It has been said that Femdom is a battle of the minds where the woman enforces her will on her eager male partner. In this battle of wills, often the weapons that the female incorporates are sexual in nature. As much as a man may fantasize about a woman forcing him into submission via physical domination, the reality is that the battle for control between a woman and a man is rarely about the physical. The dominant female wins control in the mental and spiritual by capitalizing on the male’s weakness in the sexual. To put it candidly, sex gives the female the power.

“Holy Smoke” is a film about the battle of wills between a macho male and a young, free-spirited woman. In the end, the physically stronger macho male is reduced to a pathetic shell of his former self by the sexuality of a strong-willed woman.  

In the film, Ruth (Kate Winslet) is a young girl from Australia on holiday with her friends in India. Here she is free from family and social constraint and is attracted to the exoticism of this foreign country. She did not set out on the trip to find enlightenment, but Ruth is obviously in search of something more, because in due time she is mesmerized by a guru of some exotic religion in a tent gathering. Ruth is fascinated with the ritual and falls into a sort of trance when touched by the guru.  

This early scene is depicted satirically in the film by director Jane Campion. A medium close-up of a stupefied Ruth staring blankly forward with a backdrop of brightly glowing yellow light with pulsating graphics floating around her head gives the impression of a stereotypical New Age experience. The movie is part drama and part comedy therefore it does venture into the realm of silliness at times but while, in my opinion, the comedy is weak, the drama between Kate Winslet and Harvey Keitel is really good. Winslet brings just the right tone in portraying a naïve and vulnerable girl who is also independent, confident and wise beyond her years.  

The plot is really a feminist parable. Written with Jane Campion's filmmaker sister Anna, "Holy Smoke" begins as a satire of the whole guru trip but moves swiftly to a bold struggle between a macho man and a strong-willed woman. The moment Ruth and P.J. face off against each other, their struggle is not over cult beliefs, but about the battle between men and women. And P.J. is no match for Ruth. 

Entering wearing all black from head to toe, the self-confident P.J. boasts of the 189 successful de-programmings. Ruth’s parents have hired him to deprogram Ruth. She is in effect taken prisoner by her own kin to be transported to an isolated cabin in the outback where P.J. is to do his stuff. However, P.J. has his work cut out for him with Ruth.

 

 

 

 

Ruth is smart and forthright, quite up to sparring with P.J. on intellectual and spiritual levels. Ruth is also young, radiantly beautiful, statuesque in her glowing abundance; the cumulative impact of all these qualities upon P.J. is understandably and, not surprisingly, ultimately and profoundly seductive. Ruth's war on P.J.'s machismo, much to his surprise, stirs within him the curiosity to go wherever she wants to take him.

 

Left alone with Ruth, things for P.J. quickly deteriorate. His weakness is his sexual desire and how that feeds his ego and machismo. The process of 'breaking' young women like Ruth (his job supplies him with many opportunities) gives him a great sense of power. Usually it is only psychological, but in the case of Ruth his desire gets the better of him. 
 

At first, Ruth despises P.J. and resists him tooth and nail. However, the self-confident P.J. succeeds in getting Ruth to question her blind-faith in following the teachings of the guru. After watching a video about the dangers of blind allegiance to a cult, Ruth burns her cult clothing and stands naked in the desert outside the cabin. When P.J. investigates the source of the fire, he is taken by Ruth’s beauty but he resists her attempt to kiss him. P.J. knows from his past experiences that a ‘client’ is emotionally vulnerable once their belief system is shattered. That is why P.J. usually works with a partner in order to eliminate temptations when working with a female client, however in Ruth’s case, P.J. throws caution to the wind, a sign of his arrogance that he is above giving into temptation.  
 

P.J. likes to think he is ethical but his ethics are put to the test when the naked Ruth attempts to embrace him. At first, he successfully resists her advances, but Ruth uses a psychological ploy to throw P.J. off his game. Ruth urinates in front of P.J, standing upright in a manner which a woman might administer a golden shower. P.J. is shocked at this display but when Ruth tries to kiss him again, her legs wet with urine, P.J. loses the will to resist and he gives into his sexual desires. We next see P.J. fucking Ruth with Ruth admonishing the macho male “don’t cum”. And with that, Ruth begins to play on the aging macho male’s sexual insecurities. 
 

Ruth casts an equally powerful spell on P.J. as her guru did on her. This is clearly illustrated in the seduction sequence where the old blues tune "I Put a Spell on You" plays in the background in a bar they are at. Ruth is dancing and playing mind games with P.J. After having sex with her, P.J. is smitten with Ruth but she dances with other men and women at the bar. P.J. plays the father-figure in lecturing Ruth about getting drunk, but Ruth ignores him and orders him to get her another drink. Ruth dances provocatively with one of her female friends, embracing her and passionately kissing her. P.J. looks on with jealousy in his eyes.
 

 

 

Ruth also allows a group of males to fondle her in the back of the bar. P.J. flexes his machismo by forcefully removing her from the situation.
 

Back at the cabin, P.J.'s self-assured façade completely disintegrates. He wants to make love to Ruth again but Ruth toys with him. She tells him that his performance in bed was sub par and she offers to teach him how to properly kiss a woman. P.J. tries to regain the upper hand by bragging to Ruth how he was once married to an attractive supermodel and has lots of experience with women. But Ruth continues to attack his sexual insecurities and P.J. gives in and allows Ruth to teach him how to kiss as if he is a virgin male.

Then Ruth pushes P.J. to his knees and raises her skirt. She commands P.J. to go down on her, again instructing him how to do it, as if he were an inexperienced virgin and not a worldly man. Earlier in the movie we see Ruth’s sex-crazed and bored sister-in-law going down on P.J. We get the idea that P.J. is accustomed to getting sexual favors from women who are attracted to his macho demeanor. Yet Ruth turns the tables and has P.J. go down on her. Ruth, of course, does not return the favor.  
 

Ruth continues to play head games with P.J., telling him he is too old for her, that he was not very good in bed, that only weak women would succumb to his sexual advances, and she uses his desire to have sex with her in order to break him down to the point that he will do anything she says. The power role reversal becomes complete when Ruth begins to feminize P.J.  Ruth puts lipstick on P.J. and makes him wear a red cocktail dress, and the macho male gladly submits, losing his male pride and ego in the process.  
 

P.J. craves her attention, any attention, thus to him being feminized by Ruth is a pleasant experience because it involves a form of sexuality. The camera shows us what P.J. sees as Ruth applies the lipstick and he is awestruck by her beauty and her determination. 
 

P.J. is feminized, emasculated and humiliated by Ruth. She even apologizes to P.J. about being so cruel and heartless toward him. P.J. answers back that he loves being abused by her and would gladly submit to her cruel and heartless ways.

 

 

 

There is a lot of truth in this scene as most men would gladly submit to being abused by a woman because the abuse strips them of their machismo and at the end of the day, the macho ways of men like P.J. are nothing but a false façade. Jane Campion preaches a subtle point of truth here, and that point of truth is that most men would gladly submit to a little abuse and cruelty from a strong woman because there is something within the male gender that desires to be dominated by the female gender. Machismo is a defense mechanism to protect the fragile male ego.  
 

Be that as it may, Ruth is not far enough in her growth as a woman to understand the whys and the hows when it comes to female domination and male submission. Therefore, she is confused as to why she has acted so unkind toward P.J., and thus we get a glimpse into why Ruth was drawn to the guru. She mistook her strong personality with selfishness and her journey to India was her quest to find meaning. She wanted to be perceived as being a kind person and the cult fulfilled that need within her. However, the family intervention and isolation with P.J. made her confront the real truth about her nature, as well as the battle between the sexes. Ruth is indeed capable of kindness but she is also by nature a dominant woman and she takes the interaction with P.J. as a challenge. There is a scene when after P.J. is feminized, Ruth bounces around the bedroom proclaiming “I won, I won” and she essentially makes P.J. confess that she is superior to him.
 

The final scenes of a psychologically devastated P.J. in lipstick and red dress are meant to show him as pathetic and Ruth as victorious. Deep down Ruth likes P.J. but she knows she doesn’t want him to be a part of her future, yet P.J. cannot accept it. P.J. has to have Ruth in his life and when Ruth ultimately rejects him, he goes running after her across the desert as he can’t bear the thought of life without her. When Ruth slaps him away, P.J. loses control of his emotions and hits Ruth, blooding her nose. Finally in total exhaustion, P.J. is lying in the desert, dirty, bloody, having lost all of his dignity. In the horizon, he has a vision of Ruth as a Hindu God. The feeling we get is a depiction of feminist triumph over machismo. 

 

 

 

I believe the movie was meant to end with the scene of P.J.’s vision of Ruth. However, someone (I seriously doubt it was Campion or her sister) made the mistake of adding two additional final scenes. We see P.J. riding in the back of Ruth’s brother’s pick-up truck, totally defeated, and Ruth has her brother stop the truck so she can climb into the back with the broken man. Ruth comforts him, showing him (and more importantly her self) that she indeed is capable of kindness, demonstrating the dual female nature of dominance and nurturing. I could have accepted this alternate ending but the producers had to go for one final scene to soften the feminist imagery of the film and bring it down for a safe mainstream landing.  
 

The movie ends with one of those “one year later” scenes to show Ruth and P.J. as “pen-pal friends who love each other from a distance” as P.J. is happily married with newborn twins and Ruth is back in India with her mother doing charitable work. They should have left well enough alone and stayed with the original ending, in my opinion, but I guess the producers struggled to find an ending where both characters come across as winners in this unique portrayal of the battle of the sexes.  
 

Nonetheless, I enjoyed “Holy Smoke”. The psychological clash between Ruth and P.J. will appeal to those who read my blog because it accurately portrays the power a sexual woman has over a man, no matter how tough or rugged that man may seem on the outside. Yes, it is a feminist parable but I believe it is also a Femdom parable. While not perfect (the comedy didn’t work for me), overall I definitely recommend this film. I caught it on the IFC (Independent Film Channel). I’m sure it will be on again in the near future. 

 

Rating: 4 out of 5 stars