Shibari Bondage Revisits the Mainstream

Here's a shot of Olga Kurylenko sexing it up while in shibari bondage in the French film, "Le Serpent." I'm thinking the titular serpent is a species of trouser snake, and Kurylenko's character, from the look of things, has become its slave. Here's a link to more and larger pics from the movie.

Olga Kurylenko, who's recently gotten a lot of press for being selected as a "Bond girl" for an upcoming James Bond movie, has also made another achievement. Kurylenko is the only actress in a mainstream film to follow the trail blazed by Tina Aumont in Lifespan where Aumont was the first actress to appear in shibari bondage for the first time in the history of mainstream movies. It has been over 30 years since that achievement, and Kurylenko is the first to appear in shibari bondage in a mainstream film since then. Interestingly, both movies are European in origin. When will the US realize it is losing the shibari bondage race, and losing it badly? Can a "shibari bondage gap" be far behind?

Pony Soldier, Funny Games and Pimpin' Da Bondage

I've written an article called "Pony Soldier, Funny Games and Pimpin' Da Bondage" over at my bondagerotica site. It was inspired by the discovery that Penny Edwards wore a VERY tight bitgag in her scenes in the 1952 Canadian Mountie-worship Western, "Pony Soldier."

Bitgags are extremely rare in mainstream media, maybe because to make them look halfway convincing, they have to be worn kinda tight. And Edwards wore the bitgag in SEVERAL scenes, which meant she spent quite awhile sitting around tied up with that thing in her mouth.

I wondered if there might have been some comment about it in movie mags of whatever, so I did a Google search over 100 sites deep looking for results under several different keywords.

In the meantime, I'd been discussing the way Naomi Watts talked up the bondage for her scene in the upcoming film "Funny Games" over on Brian's Page. I felt Watts was trying to promote the film by talking up the bondage scenes, others felt the talk about the scenes was incidental.

So I did some research ... actually a LOT of research ... looking for evidence that current actresses were talking up their bondage scenes to promote their films, and that actresses in older films didn't do that. The results of my research are detailed in my article. The best resource I found was H's Damsel in Distress Site which has over three dozen interviews with actresses about their bondage scenes, or their feelings about bondage. I also found lots and lots of caps of for the films I researched, all are present at the article site. Check it out, it's a fun article.

Lifespan: Sibari From the 70s

Shibari, aka kinbaku in its consensual sex fun form, has been around in Japan since at LEAST the 17th Century and probably well before that. But it never made it to a mainstream venue that US audiences could enjoy until the 1970s, in the form of an odd little scene in an odd little European SF flick called "Lifespan." It seems that the local hottie who's been sleeping with all the smartest mad scientists has been sleeping with a mad scientist who has discovered what might be the key to immortality. It has something to do with DNA and the double helix, all very scientific you know, and not a mere excuse to show the exquisitely beautiful Tina Aumont tied up in shibari bondage because it contains the "double helix knot."

There's an article about it on my site, with pics of Tina all shibaried up. Check it out right here.

Oh, and the truly weird thing: despite the vastly increased awareness of Japanese bondage practices thanks to the success of adult manga and anime in the US, it hasn't showed up in a mainstream venue again since "Lifespan." Weird, eh?