well you are talking about one specific film and i couldnt work out if it was a film about recreational sex or some odd fly on the wall sadist film you were watching.
The latter i don't care for - i don't see brutality or murder as recreational , sexy, legal or anything, but recreational S&M i understand and it's not so difficult to comprehend.
S&M is about experiencing the power dynamic that lies behind all human relations.
It's an enounter with that power and an exploration of it.
It's a kind of fetishising of all the different possibilities of control and submission.
It may be away of controling in a non destructive way very real feelings of self humiliation or sadism towards others.
It can be intensly erotic, pleasurable, recreational.
Pain and the exploration of pain is aprt of that language. I am not in to physical pain in anyway, neither to give it or recieve it. But i understand mental pain and the power of langauge to manifest complex relations between individuals.
Alot of the exploration of power in what ever form is a kind of exploration of 'knowledge' - knowledge of the self, of others, of life. Pain fits in with that registrar , that language also. There is a whole spirtuality and recreationality of pain i just do not get, i dont particually like even having my nipples bitten ! But i understand it is a way into something for alot of people. It does something, it's raw, electric, sensational, pure, some kind of communion…..
Wheni was in my late 20s i started having incredibly strong erotic fantasys about being humiliated. I found it quite scary - it was new to me - i felt guilty but also a deep sense of fullfillment in the ideas. I tended to defuse those fantasys by writing them out so they werent so intoxicating or morally conflicting for me.
My humiliation fantasys centred upon 'enactment' of humiliation - handing over total control of myself to another - being helpless as a kind of erotic nirvana - a sex slave locked up in an old house - ordered around , made to behave like an animal on all 4s - that kind of thing...
It didnt involve physical pain but also i wanted it to be real somehow, not in the confines of a typical S&M club which always seemed to me a bit too theatrical and over themed.
I twice met 2 guys when cruising who were on that wave length and allowed me to explore the reality of that. What i remember was the reality was exhausting and a bit farsical but also wild and true to the spirit.
I met a son of a vicar who had been left in charge of his parents vicarage and he was totally outrgeous. He got me calling him pig and riding him like an animal & barebacking all over the vicarage having sex - he would have been a great sex-buddy - because the only thing we had in common was the ability to fullfill each other's sexual fantasy - but not much else....however i figured outside of the sex he most probably was a little too complex so i declined.
I had a long erotically charged mentally orientated S&M relationship with a bisexual guy - which was incredible - but toally mind fucking - he was into making the power thing real - pushing the extent to which something no longer becomes a game , playing with that boundry and is actually happening - it was so exciting to me as a young man....
Finally both sex and violence are closely related to sensation, spirituality, knowledge & pleasure - it's a fine line - the subtle interplay between taboo and integrity - between horror and ecstacy - one thinks of these catagories as somehow seperate and polar opposites but in reality they are very very close and often one and the same thing.