"Secretary," the movie, is a provocative and warped love story. Viewers may go purple with rage or gray with disgust, while many may turn pink with embarrassment in order to hide the red of arousal. This movie crosses dangerous psychological territory: the threshold between desire and pain, between surrender and subjugation. Gaitskill's "Secretary" is more about submissiveness and "sexual perversion" (Garrett 1). Critic Regina Weinreich argues that Gaitskill's debut is startling and refreshing due to the neediness she portrays in her characters; their "vulnerablility makes them . . . victims of their own behavior" (Weinreich 1). Steven Shainberg's film, working from a short story by Mary Gaitskill, is about two specific characters. Some will claim that Shainberg's film makes sexual abuse palatable, maintains that women secretly crave submission to a dominant male, and makes the case that humiliation at the hands of a man can lead to psychological freedom, not to mention all the awful things it implies about the position of secretaries.
See-ming Lee / 20070208.10D.41106 / SML
See-ming Lee, 1999
LeeYet, "Secretary" is so consistent in its characters that it's fair to say that only in the case of these two weirdly satisfying people are any of the instances true to life. The film shows how specific characters bridge their isolation (Shainberg 3). The additions to the film adaptation of Mary Gaitskill's "Secretary" makes the story more fascinating and better justifies the characters' actions.
Mary Gaitskill's "Secretary" is about a frumpy wallflower who's so "bruised emotionally" that she's struggling to "connect with [her]self" (Weinreich 1). She gets a job as a secretary and ends up in a strange sadomasochistic relationship with her employer. It's a great premise for a story, especially in its absurd moments, as when the lawyer begins to spank his new hire for every typo she commits. Gaitskill is an insightful...