Tuesday, February 21, 2012

They don't make 'em like they used to

What's the subject of the day?  Why, what else could it be but vintage bondage porn?  Naturally.

By vintage, I'm referring to the photographs taken by intrepid fetish pioneers in the 40s and 50s.  This sort of thing existed before then, of course, but it's the images of that era that have really seemed to stick around.  Moreover, they inspired many photographers, models, and artists to realize their own fetishy dreams and create the content you could find in the old bondage magazines and media of the latter half of the 20th century.  Not to mention the number of naturally born kinky persons whose first introduction to bondage and fetishism came from stumbling across magazines and stills from that era.


While there were plenty of photographers and producers doing this kind of work, the majority of the photos you're likely to find were distributed by Irving Klaw.  Unfortunately, he was targeted by a government witch-hunt that was trying to prove this "pornography" (though there was no sex or even any nudity) was responsible for juvenile deliquency in America.  Fearing prosecution, Klaw did as many of us would under similar circumstances and caved to pressure, burning possibly 80 percent of his original negatives.  But they weren't exactly successful in stamping it out, were they?  And while he may have only been in it for the money, his efforts did a service for inspiring those who would come after.  For instance, the work Betty Page did with Klaw would later contribute to her becoming a pin-up cult icon decades later.  Isn't it funny how one era's "porn" becomes another era's art?

  


 
















Perhaps you don't enjoy these sorts of pictures, or the style, and that's fine.  But I do.  They can entrance me better than most modern bondage art.  Which is not to say I don't love the modern stuff, but the images from the 50s hold a special fascination for me.  But why?

Maybe part of it is the black and white images, which seem simultaneously both starkly gritty and far removed.  I'm not sure if its the film used, the cameras, or simply the patina of age which gives the old photos quite a different look than many modern black and white photos.  Sometimes the sets are a factor in their appeal: the old furniture, the lamps, the rough homemade bondage devices.  The air of playfulness is also endearing.  It's more like bondage for bondage sake;  titillating and teasing, yes, you can imagine what you like, but it doesn't intentionally lead one to believe that it must always inevitably lead to the ripping off of clothes and sex.  Perpetual, the captivity exists for a purpose all its own, in a world of its own.

I think a large part of the appeal for me is the fashion.  I enjoy (to a fetishistic degree) many of the clothes from 40s and 50s, especially the undergarments.  The shiny briefs, the girdles, the conical bras, the stockings, gloves and so on.  All the satin and rayon and nylon with hardly a scrap of cotton in sight.  And I really do prefer the look of clothed bondage instead of nudity.  With clothing there is mystery, things left to the imagination, and also, perhaps, an additional air of chastity, a barrier, an inaccessability affecting both you and her.  At the very least, clothed bondage seems less overtly sexual and more damsel-in-distress.

Well, whatever the combination of many factors, these old photos have a special hold on my imagination.  Just for fun, here are a few more, though there are many others floating around out there.






Saturday, February 18, 2012

Crash!

Holy cow...

Just now getting back inside and sitting down, relieved.  A little over an hour ago I was sitting here, messing about on the internets, when I heard brief skidding of tires, a crunch, and a very loud boom.  I immediately went for my shoes, I knew what had happened.  It's happened before.  But this one was a lot louder.  The whole time I was getting my shoes tied I was thinking, "Nobody be hurt, nobody be dead." 

A little geographical explanation is in order.  I live on the side of a hill; the road is fairly steep and ends in a T intersection.  But it continues forward, down, into a sharply curving private driveway for some condos.  Beyond the curve of this driveway is a low barrier of granite boulders.  The ground slopes sharply down past the boulders and beyond are trees and empty space.

It's not unusual for cars to think the driveway is a road that keeps going straight, so now and then you hear a squeal of tires and a crunch.  Especially when people are driving too fast and it's raining or snowy out.  Usually they stop against the curb or, at the worst, have left the road and are sitting astride that mound of granite boulders.

This time when I went down to the bottom of the street, phone and flashlight in hand, I saw no car in the driveway, no car on the rocks.  I got to the edge of the slope and saw, a good thirty or fourty feet down the hill, the headlights of a completely mangled car facing the wrong way.  It must have gone airborne for a second to get down there.  But I also saw a young guy standing beside the car already on the phone with 911.  There was a passenger clambering out, too, and nobody was seriously hurt beyond a minor but stubbornly bleeding cut on his thumb.  Thank goodness.

I made my way down there, asking repeatedly if everyone was all right.  The wide-eyed passenger staggered over to me and I patted him on the back.  He clung briefly to my coat.  I looked again at the car up close.  The front end was smashed beyond recognition.  The engine wasn't a part of the car anymore.  Those boys were lucky to be alive, much less nearly unscathed.  I escorted them up the hill and into a neighbor's house so the injured guy could wash up and get something on his cut.  A couple minutes later, a firetruck with sirens on arrived, the first of a parade of flashing lights.  An ambulance, two police cars, and traffic patrol car were all jostling for space at the bottom of the street.  Later on, two flatbeds, one with a crane, joined the fray.

The guys were fine, though understandably dazed.  Turns out the driver had bought that car for himself just two months ago.  Well, that sucks pretty hard.  But I guess any wreck you can walk away from is a good one.  Just now I hear the tortured squeals of metal as the car is being hauled up by the crane.  I'm just glad everyone's okay.

It's not been the first time I've gone down to investigate a crash.  These things usually happen at night, and I'm a night owl, so I'm usually the only one to hear it happen.  Twice in the past few months (once just a week or two ago), I've been the first one, or only one, to go down after a loud crunch to find badly damaged cars on top of the rocks, up against the trees.  Those times it was young women driving alone, and thankfully uninjured.  Both times I invited the bewildered drivers (and their friends who would arrive later) inside my house out of the cold and rain to smoke and wait for the wreckers to come.  It feels nice to be able to give people a little comfort.

On a funnier note, the last time I invited the young woman inside I started to worry as I was leading her back up the street.  I had been scanning this pile of hundreds of assorted old bondage photos, clippings from magazines from my youth, just for the fun of it.  Bound, gagged women.  Well, that pile of photos was beside the scanner, which was near the door and clearly visible to anyone coming in.  What would she think if she, after a bad accident and all alone, saw that upon entering the house of a smiling stranger in the middle of the stormy night?  And what could I say in way of explanation?  "Oh, don't mind those, my dear.  Step right inside, make yourself comfortable."  It's like the set up of a typical horror movie.  Luckily, I entered first and was able to casually spread my coat right on top of the pile of bound damsels.  Out of sight, out of mind.  All was well.

And all is well.  Thank goodness.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Let's get to it!

Alright!  Let's get to it.


I'm not even going to bother trying to catch up on everything that's happened since I last blogged regularly.  It's all been progressing fairly much the same.  No great highs or great lows in my own life within the past year or so.  In that time I wrote the story Heartless, which I like very much, as well as made my Random Slave Role Generator, which was an enormous undertaking.  That one I'm still adding to.  I need to introduce goth slaves and medical slaves into the mix.  I have several stories in the works, but I'm a slow writer prone to writer's block, so I can make no predictions whatsoever as to when they'll be finished.

I've also been working on scanning and restoring the old family photos.  It's a big project and I've only finished 5 out of 20 or so photo albums.  Taking the time to restore them as best I can makes it a slow process, but I got a new scanner for xmas which has helped speed things up. 

And here's a little picture of yours truly taken last month.

That metal paddle has been known to sting a wee bit.

Thursday, February 16, 2012

New Blog, First Post

Okay!  So, here we are.  I'm not exactly sure why, but I decided to give this a try.  Just in case you don't know, I'm Erika, aka Evil Dolly.   Any persons reading this probably came here from my personal site, evil-dolly.com.  If you haven't been there, well, it's where I keep my stories and drawings.  Strange, fetishistic stuff.  Disturbing stuff.  Kidnapping, brainwashing, body modification, love.  You know -- the good stuff.

Anyhow, I used to keep a journal on LiveJournal but I haven't kept up with it for a couple years or so.  It can be hard for me to keep that kind of journal sometimes.  I procrastinate, then more and more stuff happens, so then I know the next post is going to take even longer to write to catch up with everything I wanted to write about in the first place.  Before I know it, months have gone by.  Years.  Still, it can be fun and I'd like to be able to get back in the habit of writing at least something on occasion.  Just lay down some of my thoughts and life experiences into words.  My website doesn't really have that function.  Here maybe I can keep fans informed of updates and interests, as well as the trivialities of what's going in my life for those with a morbid curiosity in the mundane.  Maybe I'll be able to keep up with it.  But I make no promises!

I'm going to move the old LiveJournal entries over here, just so that I have everything in one place.  If you see entries dated earlier than this one, that's where they're from.  Keep in mind that some of those entries were written as far back as... checking... 2004.  Wow, really?  Doesn't seem like that long.

Also, this blog isn't like an informative sorta blog.  It's just me, writing about whatever for personal reasons.  But maybe it'll entertain some folks, too.  Now that I'm on this Blogger do-whatsit and behind an adult warning, I'll be able to post somewhat more mature content.  Thanks to that, maybe I won't have so many posts about the weather (I make no promises).  Perhaps I can do some reviews and little things like that.  We'll see what happens.

~Your friendly dollmother, Evil Dolly