Beautifully Bound - Drew Stevens

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Taken Off The Streets - 3

I hope readers will forgive me for dwelling on BF underwear scenes a little longer.

In erotic imagery we're usually limited to fleeting glimpses of these garments. 

It's not unknown for them to magically vanish, just when it starts to get interesting.

With BF though 

we have the luxury of a producer who gives them a fair share of the limelight

Underwear and contents are right to the fore in this picture. 

Ed was just getting to grips with his unplanned captivity 

when a nice young man arrived and began to run his hands over him.

He's not sure he likes it, but I think I detect a stirring in those underpants.

  

For Terry here, the preliminaries have become a little more intimate.
But with hands and legs tied down, he's obliged to watch with glum resignation

as his captor tentatively probes beneath his underpants.

Vincent has already realised that his undignified, over the desk position puts his ass in jeopardy.
His face flushes redder as exploring give him an extra nervous tingle down there.

Will is well past the tingling stage.
Rough hair pulling signals strong arm treatment.

There's more at stake than his modesty.

These men have all been dressed in the same, white underpants 

they have a characteristic blue line at the top of the waistband. 

They are too preoccupied to worry about whether another man had 'pre-worn' them.

Softened the up as it were, but I suspect another mitchmen, clothes sharing situation.

(Click the 'sharing' label below for more examples, this is no 27)

It turns out Will's pants are not for sharing. Not anymore.
 Will loses his modesty in most spectacular fashion
as his underpants are brutally ripped open.

Leaving him perfectly prepared for a noisy, naked paddling.

Danny on his pedestal is neatly packaged and cute
Waiting to be seen to, he has an understandably apprehensive look on his face.

I singled out this great image for my mitchmen 'Beautifully Bound' series a few days ago.

This image tells you that this is a photographer, a captor, who truly appreciates underpants.

Danny's lifted feet result from them attaching his ankles to his neck with a noose-like restraint.

 

 

Sadly, Danny's sexy underpants are not destined to accompany him all the way.

Once they've served their purpose, getting us salivating, they become dispensable.

Unlike Will's experience, they don't just vanish, nor are they casually discarded.

Instead, they are crudely ripped open by brute force.

Opening the way for the fickle finger(s) of fate.

It takes a certain type of man to understand what a gynaecological chair is used for,

 and would be daunting indeed for such a man to find himself strapped into one. 

Flanked by scary-looking toughs, Dan (No 2) feels intimidated enough 

without having to worry about possible, medical procedures. 

If he could see how tempting his ass looks 

in those slightly see-through white underpants 

he might be even more worried.

For me, the delicacy of this touch is so much more erotic than rough grabbing and pulling.

It's a declaration of interest that Dan, the target, can feel and fear, 

even if he does not fully understand why just yet.

The ravaging of Dan's underwear is restrained too. 

A hole is torn which simply exposes his rosebud.

It's hairy enough to suggest he's conservative or naive in sexual matters. 

But something seems to be going on in that mound between his legs. 

It remains neatly contained, but any growth will increase the exposure down below. 

Dan's puzzlement takes on a resentful air as he digests the indignity.

A man like Dan would find this use of the torn hole surprising.

If he knows what an enema is, he'll think it's women's stuff. Like the chair he's tied to.

Now he finds that being subjected to one by a stranger is uncomfortable and demeaning.

It becomes a strange and deeply invasive experience, coolness permeating within him.

 He has no inkling yet that gradually this will turn into increasing pressure

When the tube is removed the urge to eject it all will become unbearable.

Bring on the cane.

As Martin's pants are destroyed with scissors, 

the snipping blades give him cause to fear worse damage.

He's trembling with nipple pain and fear, 

but knows he had better concentrate and stay still. 

The sense of shared intimacy in this picture, mentorship almost, is sexy. 

Being nipple clipped and deprived of your underpants 

while still dressed in the formal work attire of shirt and tie 

must feel bizarre and doubly invasive. 

BF seems to have a grasp of psychological eroticism which isn't apparent with other studios.

Vincent hasn't been carried off to a cold warehouse to receive his treatment.

He gets a house call and is overpowered and restrained in his own hall. 

Being tied up and molested in your own home is a common gay fantasy. 

It carries the additional anxiety of being disturbed by other members of the household. 

How could he possibly explain this? 

His captor gags him to save him the trouble......

 

Vincents underpants are dispatched with clinical precision.

A photograph that's remarkable for its clarity. This photographer understands that the shredding of underwear is a highly erotic moment for on-lookers. Vincent seems to be similarly excited.

  

The domestic setting makes this unannounced lashing seem doubly electric. 

Utilising the stairs as a vantage point accentuates the incongruity, as though a fellow resident, descending, has stumbled on the shocking scene. This angle also makes the most of Vincent's muscular, tattooed back and cute butt. Suddenly we get the impression of a powerful, streetwise man being tamed rather than a sweet, innocent victim. 

This is a rather special sequence and there's more of Vincent to come in Part 4

 Read whole series from Part 1

Visit the BF website (members only)

Augustine revised

Strapped to the boiler

 As part of my on-going revision of my A-Z of Fetish Artists,

 I have updated my article on Augustine 

with more examples of his work and link to his blog

A-Z of Fetish Artists - Tagame (Part 3)

Part 3 - Taboos and Secrets

Tagame's comic book style gives him scope to explore the psychology of his characters and his work is full of men with secrets and illicit desires ready to be used against them, like the runaway gangster in 'Kodama' who is trapped by his rescuer (see Part 1).

 Panty Fetishist caught out in Tagame's 'Maso'

In 'Maso' there is a young man who not only has a fetish for women's underpants, but also gets a kick out of trying them on at night in the aisle of the local 24-7 store. Unfortunately his activity is spotted by the checkout operator. 

 

Bullies at Work in Tagame's 'Maso'

Rather than calling the police and exposing the panty boy to public humiliation, the checkout operator decides to bring in two buddies. They strip the fetishist and put him through a series of painful trials utilising commonplace items on sale in the store.

(The characterisation of the bullies in this image is very Yaoi-like especially the spiky-faced character in the centre.)

Beating Scene from 'Maso'

The bullies degradations include shaving the victim, pissing on him and inserting objects into his backside. This torment is briefly interrupted by a fierce belt beating (above) whose intensity Tagame simulates with frightening success using impact patterning and a blurred effect to convey the violence of the attack and the confusion of the victim. It makes Bound Gods seem quite tame!

There's too much sexual involvement by the attackers for this little sketch of homophobic bullying to be truly lifelike but their cruelty and contempt are all too believable. However, at the very end it transpires that the whole thing is a set-up and the victim has actually enjoyed it, regretting only that his assailants declined to fuck him. In the final frame of the story, the chief 'bully' turns out to be his (controlling) boyfriend. This last minute 'sanitisation' doesn't really neutralise the abuse but merely slants it in a different direction.

Tagame's clever choice of a much-derided, feminising fetish, (a minority group within a minority group), allows him to lure readers who see themselves as 'normal' into the bullies camp. Obviously, it's not meant to be a morality story and he lets their consciences off the hook at the very end, but it gives some insight into the thoughtfulness of his story telling.

The writing of this story features two stylistic devices which are often used by Tagame. The surprise ending (or reveal) closes the story with a satisfying(?) twist that causes the reader to backtrack and look for the 'evidence' he missed (like the fact that the victim appears to have donned the panties without removing his trousers). The other sophisticated feature is some selective time shifting back and forth, which he uses to disguise the true motivation of characters. This trick enhances the quality of his story telling, but unfortunately makes his stories even harder to decipher without a decent translation. 

 Associating homosexuality with being female seems to be as common in Japan as it is elsewhere in the world, but Tagame says the negative connotations are an importation from the West and sets out to prove it in 'Inaka Isha'.

The Doctor's Ceremonial Shafting from Tagame's 'Inaka Isha'

A gay Doctor recently transferred from a big city hospital to a remote country village strikes up a casual relationship with an agricultural worker. In the respectability of village life, this homosexual affair with a married man transgresses a host of conventional taboos, not least the social gulf between the Doctor's professional status and that of his bit of 'rural rough'. His fear when his secret is discovered turns to shame as he stumbles into further, increasingly sleazy, sexual encounters, threatening his standing in the community. As word of his promiscuity spreads, however, the men of the village, in an unexpected but bizarrely logical outcome, decide to recruit him as their official, collective concubine. In the scene above, the happy villagers sing their traditional wedding song as the Doctor formally accepts the post (so to speak). This somewhat one-sided expression of commitment is freely adapted from the more usual 'ring on finger' tradition - but is rather more embarrassing to perform in front of a large congregation. The Doctor finds this humiliation outweighed by anticipation of pleasures to come.

The ingredients of this humorous story – conventions, taboos, secrets, self discovery and acceptance - mirror the journey of all gay men. Interestingly, even in Tagame's Utopian vision of a non-judgemental, accepting community of simple folk, the Doctor's promiscuity still causes him to be set aside and (in effect) exploited – albeit kindly. Hmmmm.

Looking purely at this artwork, it's a good example of how the comic book 'commentary' (which is simply singing and sound effects) diminishes the impact of what would otherwise be a powerful image. The unfamiliar costumes are an obstacle to westerners too, but I guess that's our problem not Tagame's!

The Husband's Remorse in Tagame's 'Gedo'

Tagame turns the shame of failing to conform back against the straight world in 'Gedo'. This simple image conveys the humiliation of the impotent husband as he grovels naked before the disapproving family and it's a very erotic moment for us as on-lookers. It's easy to take nudity for granted in scenes like this (less so if you reach it via Tagame's scene-setting) but you only have to imagine doing this before your own family to realise how difficult and embarrassing this act of exposure and contrition would be. Transfer to the Orient with it's heightened traditions of position, responsibility and 'face' and you can see how such a punishment would be scarcely less painful than the beating meted out in 'Maso' (above).

 

Loosing face is also the theme of this image although the victim is the last to know about it. I don't have a translation of this story (or it's title even! Help!) but the mature man shown tied and blindfolded appears to be a politician, his long hair perhaps suggesting academic or reforming leanings, a pillar of society in other words. He also has a taste for sadistic young men and here he is being offered up by one to his political colleagues/enemies who gloat over the revelation of his secret and the power it gives them. Thankfully he has a better body than your average politician!

 Kazuma Undressed in Tagame's 'The Trap'

(read frames in normal left to right sequence)

The forcible undressing of this bewildered young man in a scene from 'The Trap' layers fear, uncertainty and power play over the most basic of erotic acts – exposure of the naked body. The multi-frame comic format is ideally suited to depicting progressive disrobing of course, but size restrictions on frames and the need to vary the image lead to a detail-snapshot approach which seems tantalisingly incomplete when viewed at leisure. The ideas in frames 1, 3 and 6 are good enough to form the basis of more substantial images and this tells you how much creativity is consumed by these works. The cartoon-y style creates an ambiguity about the age of the youth. Tagame flirts with this from time to time, but of course it is unwelcome (nay taboo!) these days. I'd prefer an older looking man anyway, which would make his loss of power more compelling - (see next image!).

Tormented Hero in Tagame's 'SIPOW'

If physical coercion plays a major part in Tagame's repertoire (and it's implicit in any bondage scene) he does occasionally depict men who voluntarily submit to abuse for altruistic reasons, like the prisoner in SIPOW (South Island Prisoner of War) who surrenders to the sexual demands of the Camp Commandant in order to obtain medicine for his sick comrade. This hero is one of Tagame's more appealing creations - handsome, muscular, hirsute, positively oozing masculinity – and in his scenes with the sick man - touchingly compassionate. His story is not Tagame's most inventive S&M-wise but does feature some interesting twists.

Enema Test from Tagame's 'Pride' 

(Read the frames from right to left)

 

It seems appropriate to conclude this section on psychological plot ingredients with a reference to pride, which comes before a fall and is quite a different animal to the fear and anxiety which drives many of Tagame's stories. It also happens to be the title of one of Tagame's best works, mentioned previously in Part 1. This page from the story shows the besotted student undergoing an enema cleansing so that he might be fit to receive his master's tool for the first time. Tied up in the lounge of the Professor's luxurious flat, the torment of having to retain the fluid needs little imagining.

In the sanitised world of modern porn, enema waters always run clear. Not in Tagame-land though, where the follow-on, emptying of bowels is depicted in graphic detail. I won't test the mettle of my readers by reproducing that here. The revulsion it usually causes is shared equally by the victim of course and that's exactly why a forced public performance is such a powerful humiliation. The perpetrator and witness is the Professor, who the young student victim looks up to and desperately wishes to please. A more telling chastisement for his sin of pride is hard to imagine. 
 

Tagame uses this device frequently in his stories in order to put his men in their place, but thankfully he doesn't usually pursue the subject in greater depth than I have described. For example, it is this procedure (which I alluded to in Part1) that is inflicted in 'Kodama' on the gangster, without warning, by his rescuer, an otherwise perfect stranger. You can imagine the shock and bewilderment that would follow for a grown man, a hoodlum used to bossing lesser men.

We could debate the validity of Tagame's willingness to shock, he does place his atrocities in a thought out context but I know it must deter many readers from the whole of his work, which is a shame. In the final part of this series I will present some lollipops to sooth the nerves.

See more of his work at Tagame's website

 

Part 4 continues here

The earlier parts of this article are here at Part 1 and Part 2

For previous articles in this 'mitchmen' series click on the A-Z label below

A-Z of Fetish Artists - Tagame (Part 2)

You can view part one of this article here

Part 2 – The Blockbusters

If you asked an average Tagame fan for his favourite picture, I suspect that many would have some difficulty nominating a specific one, but typically might recall a spectacular, torture scene along the lines of the one above (from 'The Silver Flower'). Tagame uses striking images like this as points of climax and high drama within the story. Close-up views and unusual viewpoints help to make them extremely powerful and dramatic. Yet, paradoxically, while Tagame's canon of work is highly regarded, the individual 'blockbuster' images just don't seem to enjoy the same fame as (for example) Tom's or Etienne's work. Why should this be?

I suppose pictures like this, daring and original in their time, have been overtaken by a decade of adventurous bondage photography which has made them seem rather less exciting. Tagame's treatment of this subject is not particularly sensual or dramatic either. There's no wriggling or escaping going on, just an angry expression on the captive's face, accentuated by his very bushy eyebrows and moustache (which for me quite neutralises any erotic feeling). Tagame's coloured images do often look rather 'staged'. In this particular example we also have an upside-down, human image. Our brains have difficulty decoding these and that infuses the image with a sense of the unexpected and bizarre. It's a useful technique in a comic story but the images don't seem to register in our memories in quite the same way as normal orientations.

There's plenty of facial hair in this image too (from Gedo – House of Brutes) but the tearful face (in contrast to Mr Angry above) amply compensates and I do like the swirling patterns of his body hair. It all suggests this is a very virile man, but in the story he is supposed to be a young husband who is not up to his marital duties. He is mercilessly chastised and given unconventional guidance by his father and family (counter-productive in this form I would have thought!).

This image could easily have been a suspension pose as well, but dumping the captive on the floor helps to emphasise the contempt and humiliation being heaped upon him. The single foot in the corner of the picture, threatening a well-aimed kick, looks a little odd, but feet and shoes are highly symbolic of scorn in many cultures.

Tagame loves chunky, thick-waisted bodies but he gives himself an artistic challenge by trying to fold them up like this. The result is not quite convincing, but this is one of Tagame's images that has 'stuck' with me – that's partly because of knowing the erotic 'mitchmen-esq' background story. It's a reminder that these pictures are from comic book narratives and are not really designed to be viewed on their own. These climactic scenes, seen in isolation contain few pointers to the context and background story and where clues do exist (as in this example) they can be puzzlingly obscure, but that's simply because it is all laid out in preceding frames.

This page from 'The Trophy' makes the point quite well. The final electro-torture image is very dramatic in it's own right, but it works even better with the introductory frames. In fact the first little picture showing electrical 'currents' dancing around the water-soaked captive's neck and body is an impressive, suggestive little detail in it's own right. It's the sort of chopped-off, half-explored idea that makes Tagame's work both tantalising and frustrating at times.

In this page from 'Jujitsu Kyoshi', two striking images have been cropped, reoriented in one case and shoe-horned in together to create an impression of the prolonged and varied punishment of the disgraced Jujitsu Instructor. Tagame knows what he is doing, he wants you to turn the page round and it works fine for the purpose of the comic, but I guess it's not surprising if cropped pictures like these do not get wider recognition. I think the right hand one in particular is excellent. The intensity of the encounter is brilliantly captured in the different expressions on the two men's faces- cold determination vs fearful anticipation. The drawn back whipping arm and the ball-stretching gym weight are superb details.

Notice the use of atmospheric, background patterning in this and the previous image. It's a favourite device of Tagame, not only contributing to the feel of the picture but saving him from having to deal with background areas too small to convey useful detail. More importantly, it seems to reflect an interest in conveying what the victim is experiencing - the searing razzle of the electricity, the surge of cold water, the tingling sting of the whip.

This is part of the finale from 'The Trophy'. The story features Funayama (a policeman and national sports champion, left) who is kidnapped on the orders of a lustful politician and forced to become his plaything (the electro-torture image above captures part of that process). Funayama's police colleague (right) who tries to find him is caught too and shares his fate. Not Tagame's most inventive plot, but the ending is spectacular as the two men end up pitted against each other in a bizarre (if improbable) contest of sexual capability.

This enema retention test produces an amazing picture, but (like the candle picture above) the strange angles, with bodies oriented in almost every direction take a lot of sorting out visually. The non-standard, thick waisted body shapes don't seem to help either. There's no shame in this, bodies lying on the floor are very difficult to render - even in photographs - and particularly if their limbs are not in their usual arrangements. Compare Etienne's hog-tie from Sailor Beware (below)

Etienne - Sailor Beware

As an aside, notice how Etienne's picture is positively stuffed with clues about what's going on. 

In contrast, Tagame's picture does not have any indications that the captives are Police colleagues being groomed for sexual slavery. Nor is it obvious that both men in Tagame's picture have one hand and ankle cuffed together and hoisted in the air – making enema insertion easy and giving the potential for a very sexy pose. Tagame passes on this because the head to tail arrangement of the two men is important for what follows in the story (you work it out!). Mr Angry makes a reappearance here, it seems rather a pompous response to anal insertion, but happily, the young Funayama looks more suitably discomforted.

Whipping (from Takeki Chishio)

Tagame's readiness to depict pretty much any extreme you can imagine is part of his attraction for some and but undoubtedly the reverse for others. His 'historical' stories in particular sometimes feature successions of barbaric tortures and mutilations, even executions, all graphically portrayed. For my money these go beyond the realms of erotica into pure 'horror'. This image (and the 'Wedge' image posted previously) are as far as I want to go in giving examples, suffice to say this is just the opening shot in this man's terminal torment. 

Notice that it's a double whipping and another extremely effective portrayal of a vicious punishment. In this image, the sound and movement 'effects' are more prominent, visually conveying urgency and drama while a bold ray pattern represents the impact and focus on the man's back. Once again, it works perfectly well on the comic page, but taken in isolation is a bit overwhelming.

My final example portrays a less violent torment inflicted on a young man by a gang of blackmailers in 'The Trap'. The preceding frames detail his forcible undressing step by step in a scene you won't have seen replicated in any video. The sequence culminates in this bottom shot to die for - but what a disappointment it is to have prominent speech bubbles blocking the middle part of the image!

The fact is that Tagame is a story-teller. The dialogue drawing out the poor victim's secret desires is clichéd, but it's the main point of this storyline. The exposure of his smooth and rather beautiful young body teases us but is mainly there to represent a sort of purity that is progressively tainted by the gang as they taunt him, humiliate him and then take him - and he discovers that he likes it. So what appears at first to be a familiar 'get-em-off' sex scenario turns out to be a porn-y parable of a young man discovering his true sexuality.

In this part of my article I've tried to show how Tagame's comic book techniques and his focus on story-telling cause his imagery to seem unsatisfying when viewed in isolation. Tagame's stories are the essence of his work and the illustrations are simply the building blocks of them. He doesn't want you to get off on looking at the characters, but by seeing, sharing almost, what happens to them. As I explained in part 1, getting into his stories isn't easy, but they reward the effort, having more depth than you might expect, reflecting the experience, the unfairness, the consequences of growing up gay and that is what I will explore in my next article.

Part 3 continues here

 Meanwhile, I recommend readers to visit Tagame's website

For other articles in this 'mitchmen' series click on the A-Z label below

Mitchell's A-Z of Fetish Artists - Olaf

Olaf was a prominent illustrator for magazines like Drummer in the 80's and his work is much admired for it's technical skill and detail, typified by the Inquisitive Cop picture below.

Olaf - Inquisitive Cop (my title)
There's an element of tribute to Tom of Finland here, in the cop's face for example. The amazing detail in the tweaking hand suggests a photographic reference which is legitimate in my view as long as there is 'added value' by the artist.

Olaf - Slave's Gambit

Many of his pictures hint at fetish subjects without depicting anything very specific, no doubt a consequence of commercial constraints. The enema example here is an exception and it makes a dramatic statement. Technically there's quite a contrast between this picture and the previous example with somewhat muddy detail in the mid-section. It almost looks as though two different poses have been 'married' together. I must say, however, that the treatment of the bound hands is excellent.

Olaf - Devils 3

The final example is completely different, one of a series in which two devils ravish a man in a churchyard. To me this is a glimpse of the real Olaf, full of spontenaity and excitement, and unashamedly glorying in lust and eroticism. The blobby shaped background is a bit odd but in this picture technical correctness simply doesn't matter, it expresses it's subject with great panache and life, qualities which are rather less apparent in his 'better' art.

I don't know of a specific site for Olaf.

There are small exhibitions of his work at Erotic Art Collection and at Gay Erotic Art Links

You can also get a book of his work - just Google 'Olaf Gay Artist'.

For more articles in this series click on the A-Z label below.