Freud asserts that the two primal human forces are that of Eros and Thanatos, sex and death, respectively. In a time when the terms sex and violence fit together like a dysfunctional couple, it is no wonder a film like Secretary slyly emerges. Director Steven Shainberg co-wrote the screenplay with Erin Wilson based on a naughty story by Mary Gaitskill. The film takes off in the direction of delicate, internal, complementary oppositions. Sadist relates to masochist as dominant to submissive, master to slave, and essentially boss to secretary. Laden with connotations of sexual arousal intermingled with power struggles, the title Secretary itself is loaded.
This deranged, erotic fairy tale begins with Lee’s (Maggie Gyllenhaal) discharge from a mundane, yet comfortable stay in a state mental hospital. Her institutionalization was precipitated by an incident of nearly fatal deep cutting. It is her ritual for pain release, her only activity and means for control in a world of alcoholic fathers, over-attentive mothers, and backyard weddings — reminiscent of Welcome to the Dollhouse’s suburban hell.
Proactively, Lee takes typing lessons and becomes the legal secretary of one E. Edward Grey (James Spader). His Victorian orientalism office d?cor is as subtly bizarre and incongruous as he is, the embodied “gray area” of sexual perversion. His office serves as a sumptuous and colorful escape for a self-loathing, emotionally imprisoned Lee. Her secretarial tasks are simple: typing, answering phones, and a bit of light spanking. Peculiar sexuality is normally remanded to the private sphere of the bedroom, but here it is enacted in the public space of the office.
Further blurring occurs in the clash between an awkward and lanky yet confident and sensuous Lee. Gyllenhaal is a brilliant paradox as she demonstrates with only a powerful gaze that her submission is not passivity. With Lee bent over a desk and Mr. Grey spanking her, the camera lingers on Gyllenhaal’s facial expression as it goes from surprise to fear to something like ecstatic release.
The obsessive-compulsive Mr. Grey derives his pleasure from releasing his anxiety, among other things, through physical violence and humiliation. Feminists and Christian moralists shake their heads in collective disapproval. But Spader’s guarded, layered excitement is far from dangerous. (He even lets mice go free unharmed from his mousetraps). His character’s shrouded complexity emerges from his being both drawn to and fearful of his abnormal addiction. “We can’t go on like this 24 hours a day,” he explains, but Lee cannot understand why not. She has turned her self-mutilation into a mutually beneficial S/M relationship.
A “healthy” notion of eroticism between Lee and Grey is unrealistic because the love of a willing submissive is generally not enough to overcome feelings of shameful sexual depravity. Power is exciting and uncontrollable, and as such it subverts love in its willing destruction. The Death Instinct calls for the sadist’s active will to overpower and crush the object of desire while the masochist regresses passively. Death, sex, love, and power are dangerously conjoined.
But Lee becomes the sadist in actively seeking out her ultimate pain. Sexual arousal is extremely quirky, replete with earthworms, typing errors, deified red sharpies, and riding saddles. Gyllenhaal as the woman on the bottom may be submissive but she is certainly not passive or boring; complete self-sacrifice to individualistic pathology is perhaps the truest freedom and assertion of self.
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Freud asserts that the two primal human forces are that of Eros and Thanatos, sex and death, respectively. In a time when the terms sex and violence fit together like a dysfunctional couple, it is no wonder a film like Secretary slyly emerges. Director Steven Shainberg co-wrote the screenplay with Erin Wilson based on a naughty story by Mary Gaitskill. The film takes off in the direction of delicate, internal, complementary oppositions. Sadist relates to masochist as dominant to submissive, master to slave, and essentially boss to secretary. Laden with connotations of sexual arousal intermingled with power struggles, the title Secretary itself is loaded.
This deranged, erotic fairy tale begins with Lee’s (Maggie Gyllenhaal) discharge from a mundane, yet comfortable stay in a state mental hospital. Her institutionalization was precipitated by an incident of nearly fatal deep cutting. It is her ritual for pain release, her only activity and means for control in a world of alcoholic fathers, over-attentive mothers, and backyard weddings — reminiscent of Welcome to the Dollhouse’s suburban hell.
Proactively, Lee takes typing lessons and becomes the legal secretary of one E. Edward Grey (James Spader). His Victorian orientalism office d?cor is as subtly bizarre and incongruous as he is, the embodied “gray area” of sexual perversion. His office serves as a sumptuous and colorful escape for a self-loathing, emotionally imprisoned Lee. Her secretarial tasks are simple: typing, answering phones, and a bit of light spanking. Peculiar sexuality is normally remanded to the private sphere of the bedroom, but here it is enacted in the public space of the office.
Further blurring occurs in the clash between an awkward and lanky yet confident and sensuous Lee. Gyllenhaal is a brilliant paradox as she demonstrates with only a powerful gaze that her submission is not passivity. With Lee bent over a desk and Mr. Grey spanking her, the camera lingers on Gyllenhaal’s facial expression as it goes from surprise to fear to something like ecstatic release.
The obsessive-compulsive Mr. Grey derives his pleasure from releasing his anxiety, among other things, through physical violence and humiliation. Feminists and Christian moralists shake their heads in collective disapproval. But Spader’s guarded, layered excitement is far from dangerous. (He even lets mice go free unharmed from his mousetraps). His character’s shrouded complexity emerges from his being both drawn to and fearful of his abnormal addiction. “We can’t go on like this 24 hours a day,” he explains, but Lee cannot understand why not. She has turned her self-mutilation into a mutually beneficial S/M relationship.
A “healthy” notion of eroticism between Lee and Grey is unrealistic because the love of a willing submissive is generally not enough to overcome feelings of shameful sexual depravity. Power is exciting and uncontrollable, and as such it subverts love in its willing destruction. The Death Instinct calls for the sadist’s active will to overpower and crush the object of desire while the masochist regresses passively. Death, sex, love, and power are dangerously conjoined.
But Lee becomes the sadist in actively seeking out her ultimate pain. Sexual arousal is extremely quirky, replete with earthworms, typing errors, deified red sharpies, and riding saddles. Gyllenhaal as the woman on the bottom may be submissive but she is certainly not passive or boring; complete self-sacrifice to individualistic pathology is perhaps the truest freedom and assertion of self.
Archived article by Danielle Billotti