Translated by Joachim Neugroschel
156 pages
Published 1870 (English translation published 2000)
Read December 10
Rating: 2 out of 5
Sure, later psychologists named masochism after this author, adducing a diagnosis from his unconventional tastes, but the bigger pathology I find in these pages is cultural: Western culture’s conceit that woman and man are “hereditary enemies” locked in a ceaseless struggle for dominance. Like, that’s precisely what you get when you corner half of humanity into the boudoir and force them into subservience in order to survive the world you made. Power play and animosity, the “cruelty” and “despotism” that Sacher-Masoch so tenderly documents, are only to be expected. As my partner R joked, “[Patriarchal toxicity] invented primal play without realizing it.”
Like basically any of his European or American contemporaries, Sacher-Masoch is adamant that his particular kink is “consistent with universal and natural laws,” pulling elaborate pseudoscientific exposition about electricity and heat and passion out of his ass, because such was the philosophy of the time. “‘So a woman wearing fur,’ cried Wanda, ‘is nothing but a big cat, a charger electric battery?’” Instead of, I don’t know, fur being a classic symbol of wealth, power, and unapproachability. Sure.
I have to admit that the eponymous song by The Velvet Underground is way sexier than the book turned out to be. There are glimpses here of sensuality and eroticism that still work today; Wanda’s first “scene” wielding a whip is instantly relatable, in all its solicitous awkwardness. But such moments are overbalanced by the gender norms and philosophy of the times — in other words, page after page of rancid misogyny disguised as philosophy. And, of course, Venus couldn’t be fully of its time without some weird, gross racial stuff.
No comments:
Post a Comment