Raising Arizona

Those who know me, are aware that I have a reaally big film collection and I really enjoy discussing film. I suppose this comes first from going to good schools, and understanding just how film fits into humanities in the 20th century. But it also has alot to do with thinking about how to make them, or set up scenes.

Bet you didn't know that Raising Arizona has a message for those of us that like Kinky Sex. I entered the world of soft BDSM came from someone I loved very much, who was into spanking. She was extremely well connected, she came from a very wealthy family. Now I was not a virgin - I had alot of really, really great sex up to that point. It was my great fortune to have lost my virginity to a california girl who loved sex almost as much as I did. I still keep notes on her and love talking to her every now and then. Lets just say we were adventurous. But I was definitely not into BDSM or kinky sex, after all I was pretty young.

So leading up to her, I'd been into , respectively, a girl from california, an art student who was into punk rock but who had a pussy that could still to this day grip me like a ... ahem. Where was I. And a classical pianist.

Now , I had really been into the punk rocker (well technically punk rocker -she was into the Doors too) - but the pianist. She could play the Czerny exercise in 4/16 time in two octaves at once (ok, well .. one) and she had Rachmaninoff down wired. However. She was obsequious. Anything I wanted her to do, she would do. I once taped money all around her waist and had her run through the ghetto.

Now, the pianist tried to trap me into marriage. I didn't like that. She actually went insane later in life, I believe - really placed alot of strange calls to my family. But I never really liked her at all. I think if I recall, in fact, she approached me. The relationship however, helped me to a form a certain symmetry to my character - because I had been so, so into the punk rock girl and now had a girl so into me. So, I was not into her really passive and kind of simple demeanor. I never hurt her, outright - but I just wasn't into her.

Alright, well before I forget, we're excluding 19 year old exchange student from Amsterdam that fucked like a bunny and lived with me for four of the most sleepless months of my life, but hey - I got my ring back so I'm good. :)

Alright, so I've been around the block a bit. Now. Enter the girl we spoke of at first - who formally introduced the lifestyle to me. She was almost non sexual and matter of fact way. For example, We would be driving down California 5 and she would say "are you a top, or a bottom?" and I'd say.. uh.. "what?" . And she'd explain. I think she wanted to be dominated, so badly that she would train me as her master. We did it in the guest room of her parents house. She was pretty simple really, wanted to be spanked I think. We ended up mostly great friends. I was a lousy master to her. But I learned, hey - so thats a start.

If I'm not mistaken, she ended up getting her spankings from someone who ended up working on the mars rover mission and was convinced all life on earth would end. But she was a bottom.

And I was a top. Now all of this will get back to the film Raising Arizona, but not just yet.

I don't think anyone is really born a top. I think you're partly made top and part environment. You're probably disposed to it, genetically - which is why there are bull dykes and twink men.

The earliest significant porno that I can recall is of a penthouse portfolio excerpt of 'bonnie and clyde' where bonnie was bound. She wore a merrywidow.(note to any female reader: please understand this is an extremely powerful tool) - I think this was the one which had a girl (pink background) dressed up kind of like a cop on the front.

This can't be done with two weak people. I am now pretty sure of that. I think the submissive/ dominant strains arise out of the idea that two people can pass through the regular levels of society and then once they're out on top, they are left to their own devices. We end up seeing this as a sort of soft BDSM or kinky sex but its really two people skyed through the so called norm and finding new roles for each other.

Which brings me back to Raising Arizona. This was a film that has a well thought out, well written idea. Like a really great scene, for example - or a fun relationship where two people can breathe. But where there are definite roles and expectations.

Raising Arizona has an undercurrent of criminals putting themselves back into their cage. It actually happens three times, if you count.

The two main characters, Ed and Hi, are both strongly sexual. Ed pounces Hi as he walks in. She looks good with a gun. She is a desert flower. Ed is the only one who knows this and she knows it as well. Everything about the film has a certain honesty to it.

In the film Raising Arizona, there is a scene in particular that expresses a certain feeling, is when after all of the flirting he's still basically where he was before and his idiot robberies land him back in front of Ed's camera. Where of course he wanted to be all along. (putting yourself in a cage, and casting Nicolas Cage into that role. clever!) Now , Ed (the girl) is crying. This also lets you know despite her tough initial stance, that she is essentially submissive. I remember the line well "It seems that her Fiancee (pronounced correctly) left her for a female cosmetology student that knew how to apply her feminine wiles". Well, Hi sees that and he says... "You just tell him... you tell him that Hi will be waiting for him at (name of the prison) " and he does so with great implied brutality. This brutality is in fact real, she can feel it. But she knows she can trust him.

After all, he's a professional convenience store thief who never uses a loaded gun..

There is a beautiful moment there - where the sub suddenly realizes, she is a sub despite her having made a lifestyle of dominating men. Watch carefully. One can see her suck in her breath and just sort of glow a bit, at that moment - her pain dissipated into curiousity and wonder. She loses her pain in the expression of brutality from Hi - but both her feelings, and Hi's are very real. This exchange is not overtly sexual but it is real. A woman, for example, willing to cheat on her husband should be punished. Not randomly or just in any way - but in a very specific way in which the brutality of it can be explored. Consensually. And you also have to have someone willing to dedicate themselves to administration of it. Like Ed and Hi, they both have to feel it. The top is only shouldered with the genesis of it.

Its important to note that this isn't relationship space at present. This is within the animal realm. A pleasurable BDSM experience is thought to depend greatly upon a competent top and the bottom attaining the correct state of mind. Trust and sexual arousal help a person prepare for the intense sensation.

So, Hi goes off and robs another convenience store - but he locks his keys int he car. Woops. He is fingerprinted, handcuffed and led away , his hand touches hers, and he asks "do you have a new beau?" and she replys that she does not and so he slips the ring on her finger and says "don't worry I paid for it".

There is another life going on here - where Hi is travelling through the landscape of his romance for her.

I am in IT, and have been married for 12 relatively happy, sometimes poor , sometimes rich - years. We spent our honeymoon night watching the opening of "Natural Born Killers" by oliver stone. She fell asleep. We did not live together, without being married + we were stoked to be there but in her tradition the wedding was a big drawn out affair and we were tired.

So if you can visualize this, my wife was in her wedding dress, and I was in my suit - and we both were there watching the opening of NBK. And we both slept like babies. And yes, we pounded ea. other like mallard ducks the next day, hey - the wedding was a big, drawn out affair and we wanted to go have some fun. :-)

Fiction, used to be known as a 'romance'. When shakespeare wrote sonnet 121 - "to any to which romance doth compare" (my mistress' eyes are nothing like the sun) he was referring to "fiction". Both films, NBK, and RA - are films in which there are two strong, central characters who are both . well, commiting crimes. No delicate way to put it. But it is still a romance. (actually, NBK ends with Mallory pregnant and doing bong hits, but if you can account that she's in a mobile home and they're travelling around with happy kids all about - one can actually draw the conclusion that the films both end on the identical note).

At the end of the film RA, Ed and Hi return the child that they stole and they admit that they are both not good for each other and that they must break up - and they are advised to sleep on it. At least one night. Even if you don't conceive you still have each other, and then the man who gave them such advice simply looked away and say "I wouldn't know what I would do without my wife".. It was visible, how his wife was a part of him. How, in his very self - she existed. I believe she always existed for him like that. His advice was sound. But his demeanor completely changed, he had accomplished the task his wife set him to - and he took the tone of a master with the two that were in his home. " go out the way you came". He never even looked them in the eye. Again, if you're sensitive, this is a form of mild brutality and also kind of a turn on. Its nice to see a strong marriage. Its disgusting to see a weak one but people instinctively move away from it. RA and NBK actually lionize the union between two people who will die together. That is a natural state for us.

Perhaps , the ability to express brutality in a way that can be explored - in a way that helps guide the very soul.. we will never know where the person who had just spoken that advice, had drifted - but in RA, at that scene where Nathan Arizona so quickly transforms his tone with Ed and Hi - there is a real presence within him that - those that he had been actively negotiating with, as simply "boy" and "girl". Then he became explicit, in his advice - directed and simple -and then, simply told them "you can leave the way you came". And walked off.

Raising Arizona was a colorful, kind and slightly offbeat , comedy -. If such a romance did not occur we would never have seen a man lying in a bed for the first time- actually hating the prison that he's in ... Ed is slightly messed up at the beginning and so is Hi - in fact, Hi actually likes to be in Prison, sort of .. but his epiphany comes in the form of an image of a woman in a police uniform shooting his picture - he is looking up to the top bunk and sees her flashing him with the camera. There are other scenes - A little child kidnapped, "resting his dogs" up on the divan where his loving kidnappers take their first family picture. The lone biker of the apocalypse , who was especially hard on the little things. .. but it all hangs together. Actually, to tell the truth - I found the scenes where the baby was left in the car seat on the road pretty scary. I mean, I used to drive in New Mexico. There are places where there is no effective speed limit. I knew the baby was there and was actually worried for it... Its funny how I'm not that scared of a guy with a gun pointed to my head but I get really nervous when I see a baby sitting in a car seat in the middle of the road. In the end, Raising Arizona had a playful aspect to it that I appreciate and it was one of the nicest things in the world to have fallen asleep watching it >:) last night.

And yep, the film might just be about how Kinky Sex can be healthy too. Not sure. I just love kinky sex I guess.

Gotta go. The kids are saying theres a "clock roach" in the room. They probably made a little bug out of my chess clock. I will be required to .... kill.... ( inasmuch I shouted in a booming voice.) (they think thats funny) ... here comes death... the wages... of ... sin....