Source: Adult Industry News
By: Rich Moreland
Emma Marx Prelude – Submission Pornography
As a movie reviewer, I rarely include a prelude to set up my take on a film. But when it comes to The Submission of Emma Marx, it’s necessary.
Emma Marx is an engaging production that defines an emerging adult sub-genre I call “submission pornography.” The movie offers today’s generation of women and couples a BDSM romance with a harder edge that was unheard of decades ago. Submission porn is romantic erotica with a hardcore kick of dominance and submission (D/S) in which the female characters seek out and savor their pleasures. In other words, it’s the missing connection between Fifty Shades of Grey and Kink.com.
Emma presents a new take on an old theme that was once, by virtue of the delicacy of the female sex, considered to be exclusively a male fantasy. Bondage and discipline with women as victims has been around since the invention of film. An old stag from the 1920s, an English Tragedy, is a classic example. A jilted boyfriend captures his ex for BDSM sex. It’s a revenge tale and she doesn’t have fun. Not to be outdone, French stags have their hand at whipping a few women as late as the 1940s.
The 1960s saw naked women tortured in sexploitation dreck like White Slaves of Chinatown (1964) and Love Camp 7 (1968). It’s high camp soft core at its most brutal. The abused girls get their revenge at the end, but what’s the point?
Then, in 1975, a shocking BDSM narrative hit the legitimate screen: The film version of the French novel, The Story of O. Proper decorum insisted that women were not to like this soft core account of sexual slavery under the lash. But it is a love story and O can always walk away. It’s all consensual.
Adult film responded with a Gerard Damiano knockoff called The Story of Joanna (1975), a movie remembered more for the legendary Jamie Gillis, than its bondage (which is pretty tame) and sex. Incidentally, like O, Joanna (played by Terri Hall) emerges as the narrative’s strongest character.
Fast forward through adult’s light bondage fare of the 1980s and 90s and we arrive to now. Female desire is finally validated with Fifty Shades, albeit in a “must reform him” setting that finds excuses for the perverted male. Liking BDSM for its own sake is still a bit off limits for author E. L. James. But the dungeon door is ajar and modern women no longer recoil at floggers, ball gags, and collars. There’s an eagerness to take a second look at demonic pleasures in the name of love and sacrifice.
Though adult film’s road to the BDSM Land of Oz remains a slogging trek, San Francisco’s internet giant, Kink.com has changed the landscape in this century by taking bondage and the hardcore to extremes.
So, how to get from porn’s traditional romance and erotica that limits a woman’s rough sex choices to a tamer version of Kink.com?
Enter a diminutive girl named Emma.
Written from a hetero female standpoint, Emma Marx captures (pun intended!) the spirit of submission porn. The movie experiments with the mid-way point between the psychological tension and passion of sex that women embrace and the stark “beat and punish” male fantasy of Kink.com.
Submission pornography involves solid storytelling and creative directing, but the most important ingredient is the female performer. She must be vulnerable, assertive, and love her punishments and her lover equally. This is where Emma Marx shines. The energetic Penny Pax, who plays Emma, is a Kink.com veteran and an authentic star in a business that too often proclaims every girl a star. She is superlative in a beautiful narrative.
Look for my review of the film soon.
