Screen captures from Scorpio Rising, 1964 directed by Kenneth Anger. Top, Via. Middle, Google Video (which streams the film in its entirety!). Bottom, Via. And super large.

—

Sadomasochism has always been the furthest reach of the sexual experience: when sex becomes most purely sexual, that is, severed from personhood, from relationships, from love. It should not be surprising that it has become attached to Nazi symbolism in recent years. Never before was the relation of masters and slaves so consciously aestheticized. Sade had to make up his theater of punishment and delight from scratch, improvising the decor and costumes and blasphemous rites. Now there is a master scenario available to everyone. The color is black, the material is leather, the seduction is beauty, the justification is honesty, the aim is ecstasy, the fantasy is death.

Susan Sontag, in Fascinating Fascism, 1974. Read the whole essay.

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5. transartorialism reblogged this from karaj and added:

   viciousness? more like vicissitudinous, amirite?

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   holy. alternative. forms....knowledge. batqueer.

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    “streak of emotional fanaticism,” exactly. “viciousness”?

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    fuckyeahexperimentalcinema:fette:...Sadomasochism has always been the furthest reach of...

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