It's Memorial Day, the day we get to stay home from work and remember the sacrifices made by the brave men and women of the US military to preserve our freedoms. Our freedom to choose which dumb religion to which we'd like to adhere! Our freedom to squeeze as many illegitimate children out of our birth canals as we want! Our freedom to order a half-pound double cheeseburger combo and Wendy's and large size it! And our freedom to pay a leather-clad woman to beat and humiliate us for sexual gratification! God bless this mess and God bless America.Nick Broomfield's 1996 documentary Fetishes showcases the weird sexual kinks that get some people off and introduces us to some of the friendly, whip-cracking ladies who assist in the "getting off" process. The standard fetishes are discussed (foot and leg worship, spanking, S & M, verbal humiliation), as well as a few not so standard ones (infantilism, African slave role play, puppy training). Then there's the really weird stuff. For instance, during an interview with one of the dominatrixes at Pandora's Box, a creepy sexual playground for the kinkiest of schlubs, a subordinate kneels patiently before his mistress accepting the ashes of her smoldering cigarette into his mouth. When she has finished smoking, she deposits the spent butt into the slave's mouth and he dutifully swallows it. Mistress Raven herself seems a bit taken aback. "This one's weird," she says as the leather-masked slave chews her Camel light.
"...and a leather admiral's hat. What are you wearing?"
Another man spends his time at Pandora's Box being dressed in a variety of women's clothes and taught by Mistress Natasha, my favorite dominatrix featured in the film, about the changes that his body will undergo as a maturing women. You might want to turn away when she gets the hairbrush out. Just a warning.
We also meet: a guy with uncontrollable thoughts of genocide and various other war crimes whose only relief comes from cleaning toilets with this tongue (Broomfield interviews him while his head is stuffed in a toilet bowl); a woman who enjoys having the crap caned out of her and admiring the welts in a mirror; a Jewish businessman who asks to be verbally humiliated by a woman dressed as a Nazi; and an elderly British gentleman who wants nothing more than to be zipped up in a rubber suit and have his breathing obstructed for short bursts of time.
If this all sounds both traumatic and tiring, it is. You tend to feel just as spent by each session as the slaves do. The only thing that keeps Fetishes from becoming a creepy, depressing slog (with flaccid penises galore!) is Broomfield's visits to some of the dominatrixes apartments, in which we get to know the women behind the abuse a little bit better. Fun Fact: Mistress Natasha shares her home with two free-roaming iguanas. She shares her bed with one. His name is Spike. Broomfield and his crew leave abruptly after Spike bites the cameraman.
GEP says: WATCH IT...but remember, YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!
