Breaking Berlin

I was introduced, intellectually, to the world of BDSM way back in 1967 in Cleveland at a subterranean club named La Cave, watching Velvet Underground perform. Lou Reed's lyrics referenced the classic book "Venus in Furs" and between drug references (the band was high that night) all sorts of odd and cryptic rites now commonplace in our cultural references were sung at me.

With "50 Shades of Grey" and BDSM lite videos flooding the market, it's instructive to get a dose of the real thing, vicariously of course, and Ms. Julie Simone is out to do just that. BREAKING BERLIN is her primer on training a sub and it is hardly entertainment but train-wreck-like somewhat riveting to watch. As for the more arcane fetishes, her endless coming attractions on this DVD cured my curiosity, though I still need to figure out what this fascination with cigarette- smoking is all about. (And sniffing muffins is a recognized fetish too??)

I'm a fan of Mz. Berlin, hence my decision to buy and watch BREAKING in the first place. She's a unique figure on the porn scene and something of a Rosetta Stone in unlocking, at a very safe distance, the mysteries of those various cults that coalesce under the BDSM banner. A Rip Van Winkle waking up after hibernating since the '50s would probably interpret much of the dom/sub behavior and rituals as merely a crazed version of "Simon Says" you play at day camp or at a Catskills resort.

Here we see Berlin relentlessly mistreated for over an hour, and it's exhausting to watch. Culprit, under Julie's unkind tutelage, is Aiden Starr, whose credentials are safe as director of a currently popular series (in its own niche that is) titled "Pussy Whipped". That title is only for starters what she does to poor (but she loves it!) Berlin, running through an entire catalog of mistreatments for our listening and dancing pleasure.

Concept is sound: do enough disgusting or simply outré things and one or more is bound to get the viewer's goat. This is in contradistinction to the usual content of fetish entertainment, which generally falls into the "preaching to the perverted" rut of repetitious, boring same-oh, same-oh. I think even Andy Warhol, if reanimated from his premature grave, would be bored stiff watching an hour or so of some Rope Mistress meticulously tying a lovely damsel up in knots - borrrring!

Instead, Berlin is treated to plenty of humiliation (the cryptic peak of which is smearing bright-red lipstick all over her face, a stunt that should be instituted as a regular segment on Tyra Banks' "America's Next Top Model" TV series, surely the apotheosis of Warholian entertainment itself).

Feature opens with her as a human ashtray, got to get that smoking thing into the show somehow, as a real ashtray is attached by a pole to her mouth for no good reason. When she's been a really bad girl (or is that really good girl - I always get terminally confused watching these 100% illogical BDSM efforts where one has to be bad to be rewarded - or is that punished?; I'm so confused) she's forced to wear a weird little mime mask with tears painted on it. Ms. Simone herself shows up in a weirder fetish mask/latex outfit to give Berlin extracurricular punishment, for which B gets blamed when mistress Aiden finds out about this infidelity.

The brutality of this nonsense is what turns me off, and even something as outrageous as a foot-f*ck substitute for fisting (which Berlin duly takes like a man (pun intended) even though its first time for her to be treated to that perversion according to her interview segment on the DVD) comes off as yucky rather than sexy. Sure, cultists get off on this drek, but I don't recognize its potential as a spectator sport - "Just Do It!" as Mistress Nike might say.

At any rate, I highly recommend BREAKING BERLIN as a surefire instructional video guaranteed to cure your interest in the subject. I suspect that someday several decades from now it will be lumped together with those Scare Films about marijuana, nuclear war and unplanned pregnancies that the late Mike Vraney scrounged up and released on video as part of Something Weird Video's weird catalog.