Impressions of O

I'm somewhat ashamed to admit I have never read The Story of O. I realize this is requisite reading for a budding, or even veteran, player in a D/s dynamic, but I simply have not put it on my reading list.

That has changed and it's going to be the next thing I read.

Last night I watched a film called The Writer of O. A biopic of Dominique Aury, the author of the Story of O.

A French writer who was highly respected and afforded a position of honor in the French literary community, she successfully crafted this tale of love and submission, perhaps the ultimate submission, as a gift for her lover. And as a dare. Her lover and employer, Jean Paulhan suggested that a woman could not write erotica. That they were not capable of envisioning such tales. She set to, and did, prove him wrong.

The film itself did not, I suspect, give the author her due. There were wonderful segments of interviews with her many years after she came out as the author. She had a sharp and visionary mind. She strongly, and rightly, believed that women had the capacity to be as immoral as men. That their imaginations and fantasies could easily wander towards scenes both loving and tempered and brutally erotic.

There were some contradictions in the film that confused me as to the position the filmmaker was taking towards the prose in The Story of O. Specifically, enactments of scenes from the book, where O is being made into a slave, would be cut with scenes of butchery (and I mean that literally - of animal slaughter) and images of slaves, shackled and led along. I couldn't understand if this meant the filmmaker did not approve of the Story, and so this montage was meant as a criticism? That's how it appeared. And yet, in the interviews with Aury, as well as interviews with other players in her life - publishers, biographers, friends - we're led to see the author as a strong, smart, courageous and immensely creative woman.

Contradictions aside, I found the film illuminating. I believe it will set a groundwork, a reference, for me as I read the book. Knowing the authors intentions, to write both a love letter and a polemic on women's ability to be as licentious as men will, I believe, inform my impressions as I read The Story of O.