secretary

I watched Secretary, directed by Steven Shainberg, for the second time with James recently. I love Maggie Gyllenhaal because of this film, and I enjoyed her as the main character, Lee Holloway, just as much years later. This film positions sadomasochism as a marginally mainstream attitude towards intimacy, and I have referred to it as a kind of introductory tale for the uninitiated. This is a love story between Lee, a secretary, and her boss, Mr. Edward Grey. It all seems like a recipe for classic objectifying fucked up gender relating when Mr. Grey starts commanding Lee to do menial tasks around the office in an obsessively meticulous way. But the power dynamic shifts when the viewer realizes that Lee enjoys and eroticizes the controlling encounters, especially when they involve spanking. As these scenes are replayed and subsumed into her own fantasy and masturbatory life, the power differential actually swings in the other direction- Mr. Grey loses control of his own desire for control. Because Lee is not ashamed of her own desire, she makes open and honest gestures of love that Mr. Grey repeatedly rejects out of fear. In the end, it is Mr. Grey who we pity in his repression and naked need for love, yet both characters are ultimately humanized in their idiosyncratic yet totally plausible bid for everlasting love.