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Fine artists throughout history have used their personal eroticism to spark their muse and create a world of their making. In the universe of Parisian artist and photographer, Romain Slocombe, medical fantasies of young, apparently injured Asian girls in plastercasts and bandages abound. In this world where innocense and purity are threatened, beautiful Japanese girls teeter on the edge of danger and safety and simultaneously experience pain and sexual ecstasy.
Airdate: Saturday, Feb. 08/03 @ 11:30pm
Repeats: Sunday, Feb. 09/03 @ 11:30pm
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Romaine Slocombe
When I first saw a Romain Slocombe photograph of a young, bandaged Japanese girl, I was quite disturbed. How could this possibly be erotic, I thought? It was impossible for me to see beyond the girl’s injuries, her pain, and inherent vulnerability. I instinctively wanted to protect her and was fearful of the external violence that had been inflicted on her. In short, it was hard for me – as a woman - to separate ‘the art’ from ‘the reality’ of women who are seriously injured (often by men).
But as I listened to Slocombe talk, I realized that this was no psychopath. This was a gentle, soft-spoken and intelligent man who was, for whatever reason, turned on by seeing young, innocent and beautiful Japanese girls who are injured and lie seductively on their hospital beds with bandaged legs and scant little panties. He explains that he is not attracted to the violence, or the injury itself, but to the idea that this girl is being rescued. She is in the process of healing. Her innocence and – and for that matter – the world’s innocence has been violated and damaged, but despite that, her beauty and sexual energy persevere. The girl is immobilized, may even be in pain, but she still yearns to be intimately touched. She invites the ‘viewer’ to carefully and tenderly unwrap her bandages and make sweet love to her. I guess it’s this kind of raw sexuality and attraction that is always both destructive and healing.
In Rome, there is a famous statue called the Ecstasy of St. Teresa di Avila. The statue depicts a remarkable mystic experience related by S. Teresa herself:
Beside me on the left appeared an angel in bodily form . . . He was not tall but short, and very beautiful; and his face was so aflame that he appeared to be one of the highest ranks of angels, who seem to be all on fire . . . In his hands I saw a great golden spear, and at the iron tip there appeared to be a point of fire. This he plunged into my heart several times so that it penetrated my entrails. When he pulled it out I felt that he took them with it, and left me utterly consumed by the great love of God. The pain was so severe that it made me utter several moans. The sweetness caused by this intense pain is so extreme that one cannot possibly wish it to cease…
Although St. Teresa has just been “penetrated” by a sword many times (symbolic of a penis?), she looks exactly like she has just had the most incredible orgasm of her life. She is consumed by and writhing in sexual ecstasy. And as Slocombe says, “pain and ecstasy have very similar facial expressions.”
Slocombe is attracted to this dynamic tension between pain and ecstasy, violence and unbridled sexual desire, between innocence, beauty and its potential destruction. The question is should we merely look at the girl, possibly help doctors tend to her wounds or do we really want to rip off her bandages and have sex with her?
Michelle Melles
Segment Producer |
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