Dark Futures and BDSM

I was talking to friends about my favorite character from Battlestar Galactica, Gaius Baltar. I was going on and on about how he was faultless, an innocent, not a genocidal maniac at all, when the truth accidentally slipped out: "I just think someone with all that intelligence and power should be a sub."

Somehow, in our minds, sci-fi and leather have become inextricably linked. You could look to Blake's 7 (as I often do for a variety of reasons) and notice that the villain's costume was bought as a London sex shop, that there's...something going on between the anti-hero Avon and the Federation's beautiful but deadly despot Servalan.

Every future, be it Blade Runner or Aeon Flux, seems to feature women in black catsuits. This vision of femdommes seems to suggest that the only way for women to have any sort of agency is through sexual power and manipulation. On the other hand, it's really hot. When written well, it's also not as much of a problem. I don't believe Six, the robot who has Gaius wrapped around her finger, has no other methods available to her, it's just that Gaius is such easy bait.

I don't particularly like the implications that when society goes south, or humanity has reached a dark age, the only natural response is to get kinky with it. There is nothing debasing or immoral about BDSM and I'd like to see it featured more in healthy societies. But when a society is being portrayed as corrupted or rotted, there's something interesting about pleasure coming out of the pain. So many of the narratives about dark sci-fi are about power and who wields it. It's natural that those questions are then entwined with the politics of survival (both death and sex). It also, in the case of characters like Avon or Spike from Buffy (not a dystopic future but a dystopic present), being dominated serves as a way for the character to be punished and absolved at the same time.

I also want to note that BDSM representation had a very different flavor in the 60s. Adventure shows like Man From UNCLE and Wild Wild West seemed to invent a new kink every week, but the tone was decidedly light campy. Questions about who the characters were or trying to be weren't written into BDSM scenes the way they would be later, it was purely for spectacle. Quite fun, no doubt. But stories that question the future of humanity seem to be more willing to question our gender and sex roles as well. If we're all going to hell, why not have some fun?

If you're looking for more of my content, I just released an article about the Blake's 7 Slash Wars on Fansplaining! I unearth a crucial moment of fandom drama that covers zines, cons, and fans and actors behaving badly.

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