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Love And Leashes (a Netflix movie review)
Aug. 16th, 2022 11:56 amI watched a Korean movie on Netflix called Love & Leashes, about a submissive guy who transfers to another department at work and meets a woman in that department who he wants to be his Master. Although she is ... "intimidating", she has never heard of BDSM before, but she finds the idea intriguing.
Korean culture is very different from USian culture, and how they conduct relationships is different. Going into this movie, I didn't know if what I was watching is actually how BDSM relationships are done in Korea or if it's more "the writers know nothing of this subject but thought it would sell a movie script", because it's definitely not how I would recommend conducting a D/s relationship here. But a USian friend of mine who has been living and teaching in Korea for the last several years chimed in to give some background:
The characters' motivations are clear and their behaviour is consistent with both their personalities / histories, and also with what is known about BDSM, kink culture, and kink psychology. There's no abuse happening at all - it's being led by the sub with negotiation and boundaries from the dom, there was discussion and concern about unfair power imbalances due to the work connection, and it was established that the "newbie" to BDSM had personality tendencies in this direction already and does not find kink to be disgusting or that it must be the result of some childhood trauma.
In other words, everything that is happening so far makes sense, in context.
It's very rom-comy, not erotica, and I think that helps. Trying to make her dark and foreboding as a dom would, I think, remove a lot of its charm.
It does make me miss having a puppy, though.
Some of my notes while watching it:
OTG they're so awkward! It's very endearing.
OK, her digging her red heel into his fully clothed back is so far way more erotic than every sex scene in 50 Shades combined.
Puppy play, verbal humiliation, pain, service submission, nurturing dom ... someone here has actually at the very least read about D/s and not just attended a public dungeon with play restrictions.
AFTERCARE!!!
[discussing how his last girlfriend dumped him for being into BDSM]
The movie version feels very manga, without being cartoony, if that makes sense.
They are so adorkable
By the end, I felt it had remained charming the whole way through. It was very much a rom-com complete with confusion arising from not communicating and a ridiculous happy ending, but it was so very pro-kink and the leads were sweet and adorkable and endearing.
Note to all writers: this is how you write "quirky" and "relatable" characters, not by making them Hollywood pretty but having everyone else describe them as "plain" while giving them no personality but making them clumsy. Also, don't soften a "hard" edged woman. Not everyone who has a strong personality is using it as a wall to hide behind and keep people from getting too close, and making a woman softer and smaller is not how she finds someone to love her. Plus, it's totally possible to be "strong" and even "hard" without being a bitch.
Also, a submissive man is not "weak". We see the male lead here standing up to his bosses and taking control of situations when necessary but also never stepping over the women around him when he needs to be aggressive. He supports them and uses his privileged position to make them heard, within the cultural context.
Anyone wanting to write about kink in an erotic setting where there is a conflict to overcome needs to address the idea of shame. And unlike the current most popular example, the goal is not to reinforce the shame of the kink tendencies, but to either overcome it or to find a way to deal with social shaming in an appropriate cultural context without internalizing it. This is a good example of one way to address shame well.
Korean culture is very different from USian culture, and how they conduct relationships is different. Going into this movie, I didn't know if what I was watching is actually how BDSM relationships are done in Korea or if it's more "the writers know nothing of this subject but thought it would sell a movie script", because it's definitely not how I would recommend conducting a D/s relationship here. But a USian friend of mine who has been living and teaching in Korea for the last several years chimed in to give some background:
It's based off a webtoon by an anonymous author. And the style in the movie is pretty spot on with Korean bdsm forums and the lingo in Korean is super accurate and could only be known by pretty extensive research or experience.Even not knowing if it was a culture difference or uninformed writing, 20 minutes in and it was already 50 shades more charming than the piece of shit I've been choking down lately.
Even the word for fake Dom -- 변바 is in it. It's super niche bdsm slang. Same with 연디 date d/s.
When it shows twitter handles those are a few letters off from real people I know irl in Korea. The background info is... eerily exact to the real bdsm scene here.
The characters' motivations are clear and their behaviour is consistent with both their personalities / histories, and also with what is known about BDSM, kink culture, and kink psychology. There's no abuse happening at all - it's being led by the sub with negotiation and boundaries from the dom, there was discussion and concern about unfair power imbalances due to the work connection, and it was established that the "newbie" to BDSM had personality tendencies in this direction already and does not find kink to be disgusting or that it must be the result of some childhood trauma.
In other words, everything that is happening so far makes sense, in context.
It's very rom-comy, not erotica, and I think that helps. Trying to make her dark and foreboding as a dom would, I think, remove a lot of its charm.
It does make me miss having a puppy, though.
Some of my notes while watching it:
OTG they're so awkward! It's very endearing.
OK, her digging her red heel into his fully clothed back is so far way more erotic than every sex scene in 50 Shades combined.
Puppy play, verbal humiliation, pain, service submission, nurturing dom ... someone here has actually at the very least read about D/s and not just attended a public dungeon with play restrictions.
AFTERCARE!!!
[discussing how his last girlfriend dumped him for being into BDSM]
"Do you really enjoy all this pain and suffering?"#SoMuchBetterThan50ShadesOfShit
"It hurts ... but I still feel so alive, you know?"
"I don't get it"
[crestfallen] "It's understandable."
"I mean, if it makes the person you like feel more alive, why can't you do it for them, you know? It's not like it's anything bad."
[slow hope]
The movie version feels very manga, without being cartoony, if that makes sense.
They are so adorkable
By the end, I felt it had remained charming the whole way through. It was very much a rom-com complete with confusion arising from not communicating and a ridiculous happy ending, but it was so very pro-kink and the leads were sweet and adorkable and endearing.
Note to all writers: this is how you write "quirky" and "relatable" characters, not by making them Hollywood pretty but having everyone else describe them as "plain" while giving them no personality but making them clumsy. Also, don't soften a "hard" edged woman. Not everyone who has a strong personality is using it as a wall to hide behind and keep people from getting too close, and making a woman softer and smaller is not how she finds someone to love her. Plus, it's totally possible to be "strong" and even "hard" without being a bitch.
Also, a submissive man is not "weak". We see the male lead here standing up to his bosses and taking control of situations when necessary but also never stepping over the women around him when he needs to be aggressive. He supports them and uses his privileged position to make them heard, within the cultural context.
Anyone wanting to write about kink in an erotic setting where there is a conflict to overcome needs to address the idea of shame. And unlike the current most popular example, the goal is not to reinforce the shame of the kink tendencies, but to either overcome it or to find a way to deal with social shaming in an appropriate cultural context without internalizing it. This is a good example of one way to address shame well.
