Wednesday, February 9, 2011

The Game

This is the cover for The Game by Neil Strauss, a book that explains all about the contemporary dating/pickup scene. It’s a sort of exposé, sort of how-to manual. I just want to point your attention to some things about the cover specifically, without even getting into how creepy the text of the book actually is.
For one thing, the male figure is about three times as big as any one of the female figures. He’s a person, the women are toys.
There’s only one of him and lots of women. He’s entitled to collect ‘em all.
He’s standing upright, cool, composed, a person in a suit with shit to do. Each of the female figures is in a different kind of porny pose and/or costume. They don’t wear suits. They don’t have shit to do, other than contort their bodies into aesthetically pleasing though uncomfortable shapes, wear 7-inch platform heels, cling to phallic objects, and touch themselves.
The fact that there are several of them with the same body but different poses/costumes implicitly states that though the man is an individual, the women are all the same, despite the differences in their outer appearances.
One of the female silhouettes has her hands tied behind her back and her legs placed in a spreader bar, clear BDSM imagery. When actual BDSM practitioners play with actual BDSM rules, both partners talk beforehand about their limits and both partners are free to stop the action at any time, immediately and with no questions asked. When BDSM imagery is brought up in the mainstream with none of the BDSM rules, all we see is a woman as a bound victim, a series of holes to be taken by force. In actual BDSM the submissive is an equal partner, a full human being with limits to be respected and desires to be fulfilled. In mainstream images of BDSM, she absolutely is not.
The word “Penetrating” is there right underneath a lineup of ladybodies. That one’s pretty obviously gross.
In “The Game,” women aren’t players, and they’re not really the prize. They’re the obstacle standing between men- the real players- and “sex,” the prize (please refer to the Thomas MacAulay Miller article from Yes Means Yes, in the packets I gave you all).
I love Lulu in lots of really different costumes to illustrate the desires of the different men she’s with. The book cover implies that the man who buys it can pick up his favorite “type” of woman, no matter what type that is. The men in our play see a female body and automatically project their favorite “type” onto her. The woman’s own identity isn’t what’s important- the man’s desire is.
I also like the idea of seeing Lulu in silhouette a lot. The details of her person aren’t as important as the mere fact that she’s female.

This is the cover for The Game by Neil Strauss, a book that explains the contemporary dating/pickup scene. It’s a sort of exposé, sort of how-to manual. I just want to point your attention to some things about the cover specifically, without even getting into how creepy the text of the book actually is.
For one thing, the male figure is about three times as big as any one of the female figures. He’s a person, the women are toys.

There’s only one of him and lots of women. He’s entitled to collect ‘em all.

He’s standing upright, cool, composed, a person in a suit with shit to do. Each of the female figures is in a different kind of porny pose and/or costume. They don’t wear suits. They don’t have shit to do, other than contort their bodies into aesthetically pleasing though uncomfortable shapes, wear 7-inch platform heels, cling to phallic objects, and touch themselves.

The fact that there are several of them with the same body but different poses/costumes implicitly states that though the man is an individual, the women are all the same, despite the differences in their outer appearances.
One of the female silhouettes has her hands tied behind her back and her legs placed in a spreader bar, clear BDSM imagery. When actual BDSM practitioners play with actual BDSM rules, both partners talk beforehand about their limits and both partners are free to stop the action at any time, immediately and with no questions asked. When BDSM imagery is brought up in the mainstream with none of the BDSM rules, all we see is a woman as a bound victim, a series of holes to be taken by force. In actual BDSM the submissive is an equal partner, a full human being with limits to be respected and desires to be fulfilled. In mainstream images of BDSM, she absolutely is not.

The word “Penetrating” is there right underneath a lineup of ladybodies. That one’s pretty obviously gross.

In “The Game,” women aren’t players, and they’re not really the prize. They’re the obstacle standing between men- the real players- and “sex,” the prize (please refer to the Thomas MacAulay Miller article from Yes Means Yes, in the packets I gave you all).

I love Lulu in lots of really different costumes to illustrate the desires of the different men she’s with. The book cover implies that the man who buys it can pick up his favorite “type” of woman, no matter what type that is. The men in our play see a female body and automatically project their favorite “type” onto her. The woman’s own identity isn’t what’s important- the man’s desire is.

I also like the idea of seeing Lulu in silhouette a lot. The details of her person aren’t as important as the mere fact that she’s female.

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