Bound in the 30s
By
Drake
By
Drake
Thank you, Mr. Christian, for the opportunity to say a few words on your splendid blog about America’s preoccupation with bondage in the 1930s and early 1940s and to share a few entertaining images from the period.
What was there about the 1930s that made American men want to tie up women? A certain amount of BDSM begins to show up in popular culture from the 1920s, though not overtly. Pearl White knew her ropes and Houdini got a lot of publicity in the teens and twenties by being tied up naked. Aleister Crowley’s much publicized sex magic in his Greenwich Village years included the kinds of restraint and sensory deprivation erotic play that his pal William Seabrook carried to more creative heights, but the full flowering of ropes and chains didn’t occur until the 30s.
Was it the Great Depression? Some writers have theorized that the explosion of damsel-in-distress stories in the pulps and crime mags came about because American manhood was threatened by its new economic straits and needed to feel more in control. It’s probably telling that the 30s’ variety of bondage was almost exclusively female focused – images of bound men are far more common in the 50s for example – and the sensations evoked by having a lovely lady trussed and ready for intimate attention may well say something about male fixations in the decade.
The decade’s signature kink is probably best expressed in the pulp magazines. There was an entire genre of pulps that focused on binding and whipping women, fetishistic rather than misogynistic (though the line blurs often). Called Weird Menace pulps, magazines like Dime Mystery, Dime Detective, Terror Tales, Thrilling Mystery, and Horror Stories month after month featured beautifully painted girls tied, threatened, stripped, and ready for rescue. The genre became widely enough known there was even an article in the American Mercury parodying the genre.
The cream of the sexy pulps were the Spicy line, published by Harry Donenfeld’s Culture Publications. Not quite as rough as the Dime books and their brothers, Spicy Mystery, Western, Adventure, and Detective featured an emphasis on heaving, barely restrained breasts, but the women were not tied up quite so often. The end of the line for the sex pulps is often traced to an issue of Spicy Detective for April 1942. As the story goes, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia happened onto the issue, freaked out, and ordered a crackdown on what could be sold on New York City newsstands. With the lucrative New York market closed to smut, the pulp publishers gave it up, Spicy pulps became Speed pulps, and the glorious era of bondage fantasy ended.
The end of the age had a lot more to do with the war, I think, than with the Little Flower. America cleaned up its act with the coming of the war – vice crackdowns happened across the country as we steeled ourselves to fight the bad guys. Now it was only the enemy who tied up our women and they did it more discretely than the maniacs and mad scientists of the 30s.
The great survivor of bondage culture was the creation of a guy named William Moulton Marston, a psychologist and inventor. Marston was a sort of Renaissance man, who dabbled in many areas. His discoveries about systolic blood pressure and stress led to the development of the lie detector and his behavioral theories about – yes – dominance and submissive behavior led to the “DISC Theory,” still beloved by management training companies today. Marston lived with both a wife and a mistress and his theories about the roles of men, women, and bondage led to the creation of Wonder Woman for DC Comics in 1941.
Early Wonder Woman comics are … there is no other word for them … amazing. Marston’s preoccupations infest every issue, with the Amazons playing elaborate BDSM games and finding liberation in their chains. If the philosophy is not always consistent, it is totally, wonderfully kinky and entertaining.
Marston may really be a kind of key to the cultural meaning of bondage for America in the 30s… a 20th Century expansion on “She Stoops to Conquer,” the emergence of women from passive objects to equal partners in sex, work, and creativity that we know and love today. World War Two empowered women and, after the war, popular culture sees an explosion of strong women and bad girls that probably represent a new kind of male anxiety, coupled with the desire for a little reversal in who gets tied up.
If Mr. Christian is willing, I may have more to say about that in the future…
What was there about the 1930s that made American men want to tie up women? A certain amount of BDSM begins to show up in popular culture from the 1920s, though not overtly. Pearl White knew her ropes and Houdini got a lot of publicity in the teens and twenties by being tied up naked. Aleister Crowley’s much publicized sex magic in his Greenwich Village years included the kinds of restraint and sensory deprivation erotic play that his pal William Seabrook carried to more creative heights, but the full flowering of ropes and chains didn’t occur until the 30s.Was it the Great Depression? Some writers have theorized that the explosion of damsel-in-distress stories in the pulps and crime mags came about because American manhood was threatened by its new economic straits and needed to feel more in control. It’s probably telling that the 30s’ variety of bondage was almost exclusively female focused – images of bound men are far more common in the 50s for example – and the sensations evoked by having a lovely lady trussed and ready for intimate attention may well say something about male fixations in the decade.
The decade’s signature kink is probably best expressed in the pulp magazines. There was an entire genre of pulps that focused on binding and whipping women, fetishistic rather than misogynistic (though the line blurs often). Called Weird Menace pulps, magazines like Dime Mystery, Dime Detective, Terror Tales, Thrilling Mystery, and Horror Stories month after month featured beautifully painted girls tied, threatened, stripped, and ready for rescue. The genre became widely enough known there was even an article in the American Mercury parodying the genre.
The cream of the sexy pulps were the Spicy line, published by Harry Donenfeld’s Culture Publications. Not quite as rough as the Dime books and their brothers, Spicy Mystery, Western, Adventure, and Detective featured an emphasis on heaving, barely restrained breasts, but the women were not tied up quite so often. The end of the line for the sex pulps is often traced to an issue of Spicy Detective for April 1942. As the story goes, Mayor Fiorello LaGuardia happened onto the issue, freaked out, and ordered a crackdown on what could be sold on New York City newsstands. With the lucrative New York market closed to smut, the pulp publishers gave it up, Spicy pulps became Speed pulps, and the glorious era of bondage fantasy ended.
The end of the age had a lot more to do with the war, I think, than with the Little Flower. America cleaned up its act with the coming of the war – vice crackdowns happened across the country as we steeled ourselves to fight the bad guys. Now it was only the enemy who tied up our women and they did it more discretely than the maniacs and mad scientists of the 30s.
The great survivor of bondage culture was the creation of a guy named William Moulton Marston, a psychologist and inventor. Marston was a sort of Renaissance man, who dabbled in many areas. His discoveries about systolic blood pressure and stress led to the development of the lie detector and his behavioral theories about – yes – dominance and submissive behavior led to the “DISC Theory,” still beloved by management training companies today. Marston lived with both a wife and a mistress and his theories about the roles of men, women, and bondage led to the creation of Wonder Woman for DC Comics in 1941.
Early Wonder Woman comics are … there is no other word for them … amazing. Marston’s preoccupations infest every issue, with the Amazons playing elaborate BDSM games and finding liberation in their chains. If the philosophy is not always consistent, it is totally, wonderfully kinky and entertaining.Marston may really be a kind of key to the cultural meaning of bondage for America in the 30s… a 20th Century expansion on “She Stoops to Conquer,” the emergence of women from passive objects to equal partners in sex, work, and creativity that we know and love today. World War Two empowered women and, after the war, popular culture sees an explosion of strong women and bad girls that probably represent a new kind of male anxiety, coupled with the desire for a little reversal in who gets tied up.
If Mr. Christian is willing, I may have more to say about that in the future… If you like these images and my musings, you can find more of them (more pictures, fewer words) on my Tumblr Blog, Drake’s Way. My partner is erotica writer Angela Caperton. My obsession with vintage kink has helped inspire quite a few of Angela’s stories in books from Cleis, Black Lace, eXtasy, Circlet, Drollerie, and other publishers.
3 comments:
Welcome aboard Drake, nice work. My ebook 'Dee Dee Day' is on eXtasy too. Small world.
Mick
www.mykoladementiuk.com
Wonderful stuff and a great analysis of a remarkable fetish!
Thank you so much!
I follow you on tumblr. This was an awsome piece. I love being tied up. Through tumblr I have been able to find so much stimulating art. Love, love, love.
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