ne of the best and ballsiest songs of the punk era was X-Ray Spex's "Oh Bondage, Up Yours!," a feminist screed that was shrink-wrapped in winking SM allusion. In the song, which purports to be something about lost little girls discovering their own voices, lead singer Poly Styrene begs some unnamed something to "Buy me, tie me, chain me to the wall" in a tone that's almost orgasmically sarcastic: she sounds like she wants to be beaten up. Twenty-five years later, the new film Secretary attempts to make a few similar arch points about finding empowerment in physical submission. (Whether Poly Styrene would be able to sit still through Steven Shainberg's quiet depiction of personal revolution — an even quieter adaptation of Mary Gaitskill's superb 1988 suburban Vicodin party of a short story — is an open question.) Maggie Gyllenhaal is Lee, a mousy twenty-something fond of self-mutilation and bow-tied blouses who has recently been released from a mental institution. When she takes a job as a typist for lawyer Edward Gray (James Spader), Gray's admonishment of Lee's clerical errors evolves into vague SM play: in one scene, Gray spanks her over his desk; in another, he jerks off onto her back. The kicker: Lee likes it. It's here, when the film expands upon this she-stoops-to-conquer message, that it becomes apparent Shainberg has distilled Gaitskill's astringent source material into something more conventionally palatable. But Gyllenhaal, 24, gives an intelligent, precisely metered performance, the kind of thing you'd expect of a Columbia graduate from a showbiz family (her father Stephen is a director; mother Naomi Foner is the Oscar-nominated screenwriter of Running on Empty; actor brother Jake is a tortured indie kid of the moment). She had a few things to say about courting controversy — and finding few takers.

— Michael Martin

Your thoughts on the poster?
I'm going to be totally honest with you. When I first saw it, I thought it was just this black-and-white representation of a movie that, in my opinion, is all shades of gray. That it was turning it into just a titillating sex movie when really it's political and very complicated.

But the film is very sexy.
Sure, the film is sexy and about sex. That's an integral part of the movie. But I saw the poster and thought that it was dumbed down. It's funny — I saw the guy who designed the poster at a party. He introduced himself and asked what I thought, and I said that most of the people who were really moved by the film were women, and it didn't seem like the poster was geared toward attracting women to the theaters. I said, "The movie's walking such a fine line, and this crossed over it." And he said, "I kind of hope it has, because that will create controversy." And he said, "What are you afraid of? You're going to be that careful?" And that baited me. I was like, okay. I'll go with it.

Did you read the Mary Gaitskill story the movie was based on, or talk to her, and did it affect your performance?
I've never met her. I'm a little afraid to meet her. I read all of Bad Behavior, and I really liked it, but it didn't affect my performance as much as it affected my brain, the way I looked at the movie intellectually. I guess what I got out of Gaitskill was that people are turned on by all sorts of things, and whether you think it's perverse or not, it's true. There's something erotic, something alive about that kind of desire.

What was your impression of, or experience with, BDSM before you did the movie?
I had never overtly known anything about or been involved in it. Steve [Shainberg, the director] gave me a bunch of books to read, and I was not interested in them — they didn't do anything for me. He gave me this SM porno and that was the first thing that got me into it. This woman had mousetraps on her nipples, was getting the bottom of her feet burned. It was really hardcore, hard for me to watch. I noticed at one point that she was overwhelmed, it was true pain, and I thought, it's really complicated why one person wants that to overwhelm them and another person wants a kind of ecstasy to overwhelm them. When I went to make the film, that was the thing that really stuck with me. When Mr. Gray wanted to spank Lee, he was actually paying this obsessive amount of attention to her. Lee would make the tiniest little typo and he would fly into such a rage that he could hardly control himself. He's seeing her in a way no one else had before.

I don't want to speak for anyone else, but it seems to me that SM is about two things: being brave enough to play with power and realize it's moveable and malleable, and also the desire to be overwhelmed and to be overwhelming. Which is no different than any other kind of sex if it's any good. Both apply to all kinds of intimacy. It's just a little more obvious with SM.

What was your physical reaction to performing those scenes?
It was overwhelming. After one or two takes of the spanking scenes, I could barely keep from crying — not because I was upset, but because I was moved.

I read an interview with Steven Shainberg, who said that when people would read the script, they would ask, is this softcore porn? And he would have to tell them no. And I thought it was funny, the instant association. It's something Nerve faces: when you try to show images of sexuality that are more explicit than people are used to seeing, it's instantly this valueless porn. How much defending or explaining of the movie did you have to do in that way?
It's funny — I anticipated that I would have to do a lot of defending. I thought there would be a whole contingent of people who would argue, "How is this woman supposed to be empowered when she's submissive and in an SM relationship?" But if people are having that response, they're not talking to me about it. And I was ready. I had my whole argument. I'm ready to have the conversation with whoever wants to have it with me.

Okay. In an interview, Gaitskill said that one of her interests in writing the story was to show that a woman could be in a submissive relationship without being a victim. Is that how you approached the part? Absolutely.

How did you reconcile that?
I think that for a long time, there have been rules about how women can and can't be treated. As a way to achieve equality, which for hundreds of years was impossible, these rules were set up. They were very important, necessary and helpful, but they include — and, I think, mistakenly include — what is okay to desire and want, to find sexy and to be moved by. Those rules were necessary for a while, but now they're not for a woman my age. Now, I think it's my responsibility to expose the ways in which they're no longer helpful. And when people say, "How can you, politically, make a movie like this, where a woman is emboldened as opposed to victimized?," look at a movie like The Piano Teacher. I really liked it, but I thought the ultimate message in that movie was that their SM relationship was really no different than any relationship any couple gets involved in, which is to say that one of them has a certain amount of power.

And there was the implication that Isabelle Huppert's character was irreparably damaged in some way.
Right. First, that her SM stuff came out of a sickness and a lack of something. But also, I think one of the characters says to the other, "How is what I'm asking you to do, which is follow all of these rules and use all of these toys, any different than you saying, 'Oh, honey, I love you,' and 'Sweetie, I just think you're so great,'" and playing that part? That is not what I think Secretary is saying. I think The Piano Teacher has a much more classically feminist message. Secretary is saying, "I find this sexy and moving, and what's wrong with that? And if these rules that have been put in place to help me feel more powerful are actually doing the opposite, then we need to knock on them a little bit and see where they crumble."

Did you set any personal limitations before going on set?
All the nudity was contracted. That was something everyone had something to say about. Steve was like, "If this were a European film, I'd be able to do whatever I wanted," and my family was like, "What? You're going to get naked? Are you crazy?" And my agent felt like, "You can't do this, it's just not okay and it's not right." A lot of things were proposed, and I just knew they were gratuitous. Some scenes, on the other hand, would be great reasons to show my body. I'm playing someone, in the beginning of the movie, who has no sense of herself. I don't think she's ever been naked alone. By the end of the movie, she's lying naked with somebody who loves her, and she feels beautiful for the first time in her life. So I think that's an amazing reason to show your body.

I definitely put limits on myself. It was actually very helpful to say, "I will not cross this line, I will not cross this line, but anything in between, let's fuckin' go for it."

On IMDB.com, women, on average, rated the film almost twice as high as men did. Why do you think that is?
I think the film is starting to break down those rules of old-school feminism that seemed so solidly in place. I would like to think it feels like a bit of a relief: I can desire whoever I want to desire, can't I? I don't know why men respond differently to it. I think that ultimately Lee is very powerful in the movie. She really has a strong influence over Mr. Gray, and maybe that's difficult to watch. Someone else said that to me: Ooh, maybe it's hard for men to watch a woman being powerful. I don't believe that. I think it's probably hot for a lot of guys to watch. I hope it is.

How did you internalize the character's self-mutilating tendencies? How did you make them make sense to you?
I don't cut or burn myself, but until a month ago I smoked cigarettes. I've dated people who weren't right for me and stayed up until 2 a.m. when I had something important to do the next day. We all choose small ways of being masochistic: things that, for whatever reason, feel good but are simultaneously painful.

I think people do that because of the way we're raised — maybe you watched someone you cared about doing something painful, and that, all of a sudden, feels like love. It's not bad or good — it's just the way people are. I found some much subtler ways that I could relate to that instead of reading things about people who cut themselves with staples. I think there are more complex ways in which we're all masochists.

 

© 2002 Michael Martin and Nerve.com.