Freud’s ideas of fetishism is that a fetish makes up for the woman’s lack of a penis. The essential idea is that if a woman has a penis, she cannot castrate him. Therefore, the fetish is typically rooted in castration anxiety. A woman without a penis is a treat to the man and is something to be feared. It is also noted that the woman’s body is not what is appealing or stimulating to the man, it is her penis, it is the fetish quality.
What I am curious about is that the man may look at only the fetish and almost be blind to the rest of the woman. Does fetish cancel out everything else? Is it that powerful that nothing else can matter except for a shoe or the perfect foot or getting spanked by someone donning a leather get up?
I assume that in this context it refers to true all-consuming fetishism. Fetishism to the point of addiction. Fetishism that cannot be contained, or rather, handled in everyday life. I think that there is a difference between being kinky and being a fetishist. Freud’s idea of fetish is for the true fetish, but does not necessarily apply to being kinky. Being kinky would be closer to being more sexually experimental (in my opinion).
In the above clip, Rhianna (a pop star famous for getting beat by her pop star boyfriend) proclaims her love for fetish, specifically s&m. In this specific example, I feel that she has some lingering trauma from the incident with her boyfriend and decided to take it out on her young, impressionable fans. She depicts herself engaging in some known fetish sexual acts, possibly as a sad attempt at remaining both relevant, sexualized, and horribly auto-tuned.
However, by clicking through here you will find an MTV documentary on two young people living with fetishism. The dominatrix is looking for love and a career in the big city, and the foot fetishist found love on myspace. However, the importance of the documentary lies in how the fetish consumes them. At one point the dominatrix says that she “never thought it would get this big”. I’m sure Freud would make a bad joke at that.
Word Count: 369
Works Cited
Leitch, Vincent B. The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism. 2nd ed. New York: W. W. Norton &, 2010. Print.
S&M. Perf. Rhianna. YouTube, 31 Jan. 2010. Web. 9 Mar. 2010. <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdS6HFQ_LUc>.
"True Life: I Have A Fetish." True Life. MTV. New York, New York, 3 Jan. 2010.
No comments:
Post a Comment