Reply #48: "Methinks"? Who talks like that?

[AP]

Answering your questions:

(1) I think the movie has to work really hard to convince women that preferring degredation and economic powerlessness means that you have power, and I think that, ultimately, the argument was not very convincing at all. I wasn't sold.

(2) They should make a sequel to Secretary. One year later: no career, no love, tired of degredation. Where are you now? Not in a good place. She'd be better off with economic power than the hollow, ephemeral sexual power she THINKS she has.

You cannot end a movie with a marriage (one of the most conservative institutions there is) and a woman without a job sitting on the porch of a house in the suburbs, with the husband going off to work, and with a relationship based on the degredation of that woman, and think that the movie is making a progressive argument about relationships.

Basically, the movie is making an argument that you can be in the most conservative of relationships imaginable, but if there's a kinkiness to it, then it's OK. That's the way I read it. It's OK that we had different readings. Mine is as legitimate as yours.

Could you do me a favor of outlining your argument a little more clearly. I'll be open minded. Go ahead. What do you think the movie is arguing. I know you've said that there are women who see that kind of relationship as power. OK, I'll accept that. But could you make that argument in the context of the film? Why is she so desperate to get married? Why the wedding dress, chaining herself to the desk, and ending with that scene of ultimate female domesticity?

If the argument of the movie is that D/s relationships are actually powerful for the s, then is the movie putting her at the recieing end of so many conservative relationships (married, unemployed, secretary, etc.) to make the point that you can have NOTHING, but the (power?) of submissiveness, and then you have a great deal? Is that really a good argument?

Do you know s's who are submissive in EVERY aspect of their lives and are having satisfying lives?

I really think the movie, as I said, just tries to convince people to be at the recieving end of everything and that that's good. Secretary is like if the Matrix were about taking the red pill and not the blue pill (did I mix that up?). It's the equivalent of trying to argue that Neo was a hero for staying plugged in and having the delusion of happiness.