The Implied Slave

Ok, I just want to preface this post-lett with a disclaimer: as thoroughly kinked out as my brain might be, I did not sojourn to the theatre to see P. T. Anderson's latest flick, The Master, due to an unconscious affinity for its aggressive title. Nor, after having seen said flick, would I ever make the claim that P. T. was angling for some tongue-in-cheek BDSM subtext. BUT, I will say that I found that there was much to-do and explicit meditation on the Master-slave dynamic AND that the lessons gleaned from Anderson's live-action thought experiment (brought to the flesh by Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd and Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell) are applicable to D/s lifestyle.

Like I said, an expectation of kink-relevance was far from my mind last night at the Arclight. I don't even think I once thought about the suggestive, provocative title: and it certainly didn't make me wet! Perhaps this avoidance of the elephant was reinforced by A. O. Scott's review of the film for the NY Times, which I read before I watched the movie myself. Scott says a lotta wacky things, and describes the dynamic between Dodd and Quell as almost every fathomable permutation except master and slave: "They are father and son, guru and disciple, passionate friends and bitter competitors locked in a relationship whose sexual undercurrents are as palpable and mysterious as the motion of water under the surface of the ocean." And later in the review,"Each is, in turn, hero and villain, master and disciple, con man and patsy." 

And yet, Dodd's repeated sobriquet, "The Master", implies a complete dominion over someone or somebodies. Cue Freddie Quell: half-witted, slack-lipped, and hunch-backed, who performs menial tasks for Dodd (it is athletic Freddie who carries back the buried trunk of Dodd's unpublished treasure) and performs tricks at his behest (running from wall to window, while mush-minded minions gawk): Freddie is the implied slave and yang to Dodd's Master and Yin. While this visceral dynamic was either over-looked or decidedly too tension-fraught for Scott to mention in his piece, it really defines the entire film. 

If you are hesitant to agree, recall one of the final scenes, where Quell sits before his one-time Master, Dodd, and finally shatters the unspoken manacles lovingly fastened by the latter. Dodd asks Freddie something along the lines of (the verbatim quote escapes me), "If you can find a way through life without a Master-- any Master-- let me know". The Master/slave relationship is acknowledged explicitly in the film, even if the title "slave" is omitted, while I found that the homosexual overtones delineated by Scott were at most ghostly-- now matter how badly I wish they were there :))         

Anywayssss, my main point is that Freddie is a contented slave, if not happy, while he serves Dodd. Sure, he eventually outgrows and sheds his bondage, but that does not negate the positive growth that he makes while in servitude. Truly loyal like a pedigree Doberman Pinscher, Quell repeatedly physically attacks revilers of the Word-of-Dodd. Every hiatus in their friendship ends with a heart warming embrace (and sometimes a butt slap or a rolling bout on the grass). In other words, it is love (of the not-necessarily-romantic variety). 

The characters are not healthy, mentally or physically, but their relationship is. Dodd and Quell reach a mutually beneficial symbiosis through mutually consenting roles of Dominance and submission, respectively. And they achieve it with the natural finesse that I find so hard to accomplish in my own boudoir and beyond... Sure, the journey of their relationship is studded with its share of tragedy, disagreements, and stumbling blocks, but what relationship is not? I also acknowledge that neither Dodd nor Quell is as simple as Black/Master or white/slave (Quell is no bashful lackey when it comes to pressing a lady he fancies...), but it seems difficult to deny that those are the most salient characteristics they exhibit.     

So, I'm not at all trying to argue that this is The Theme of the movie-- there's a whole hootenanny about cults and stuff-- but it is A Theme that needs to be reckoned with if the film is to be understood. And, like, it's so cool to see a confident, affirmative depiction of consensual inequality/power imbalance! Right? Right! Cool.