Sexual fantasies are still in the realm of the unspoken, forbidden. While we are much more open discussing healthy sexual behaviour, kinks and fetishes are usually out of the question. For the mass, at least. But they exist, probably in the majority of us. Whether this hide and seek is progressive for society or not—I do not care for it. For the most part, these fantasies are just that, hardly anyone ever commences to enact them. However, If someone wants to exercise their fantasies within the legal boundaries, they should be alright in my book.
In Belle De Jour (1967), a high class woman fantasizes about being sexually abused, dominated. She secretly starts to go to work at brothel when her husband is at work. Before going down that path, she constantly felt distant from her husband. Ironically, her secret unfaithful life brings her closer to her husband. Since she only works in the brothel in the daytime, she takes the name Belle De Jour. It means "Beauty of the day".
The subject might seem abhorrent to the many eyes, but it does explore that hidden corner in us. In Belle De Jour, the protagonist is not the only one with such fantasies. There's a regular customer at the brothel, a professor. He comes to the house, asks the attending woman to act as his master and to deliver "punishment". A rich man hires young women to act his dead relative. Sobbing, he begs to her and gets off from that.
These self afflicted humiliations ring close to masochism. Desiring sexual pleasures through humiliation and/or physical and emotional pain. No one is probably going to admit they are one but they do exist. Just do a search, they are one click away under pseudonyms.
Once I was looking through a forum and reading the different spectrum of experiences people with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder faces. One girl was saying she had abnormal sexual fantasies where she gets raped, and she feels extremely bad imagining such abhorrent scenario. Yet, she couldn't stop the thoughts from invading. Hence, the 'compulsion' part.
Why do people have such thoughts in the first place? What would drive them to inflict such experience upon their very own body and mind? Schopenhauer imagined the world as will. Will makes the character, not the intellect and our actions are ruled by will. Will to live, will to reproduce. Will exists also in inanimate objects, which is probably a far cry. Perhaps he meant by will consciousness. Would consciousness want us to fantasize such a scenario in where we are the victim in order to seek some sort of pleasure? I doubt it. Perhaps, by will he meant instinct. But instinct would rather try to save us from the said experiences and plot to seek retribution or take preventive measures to eradicate future possibilities.
Modern science would explain this in a mechanical way, i.e. hormonal imbalance. And psychology would tag this as a mental disorder and possibly go look for childhood traumatic experiences. This is understandable and logical, the film also walks that path. But consciousness is still a metaphysical concept and I wonder what changes such a trauma does to a person's brain to mold him/her in this way.
The film was created by the master of surrealism, Luis Bunuel. For such a subject matter, disturbing explicitness could logically be incorporated for the sake of art, but Bunuel did the most of it through insinuation. The film therefore stayed on course without losing focus or delving into unwarranted distractions.
A masterpiece of a cinema by a master filmmaker.
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