Throwback Thursday Gets Weird with Sailors, Slapping, and Retro Film Style

August 15, 2024
HANK ORSO

Is this your #Kink? #FaceSlapping.
"A slap across the face brings you to attention and corrects your mistakes"
Nothing like a good slap to wake you up, right?! #femdom #fetish #correction pic.twitter.com/bJ6pmVb74X
— Female Fetish Flix (@FemFetFlix) May 13, 2019

I'm not exactly sure what the point of this post will be, except to share with you all the absolute homoerotic weirdness that is Guy Madden's short film "Silly-Boy Slap Party" from 2004. I came across this oddball piece of art several years ago, and on occasion, something will come across my glazzies that reminds me of it and I have to go back and re-watch it a few times just to remind myself that it's not part of some fever dream I might have had. I had many fever dreams! But nope, this is real, folks. Pardon my rambling.

If you're uninitiated, Madden is a much-heralded (straight-ish) Canadian filmmaker from Winnipeg who has made an award-winning name for himself with short and feature-length films, books, and art installations. His oeuvre (I think I'm using that word right) tends to explore human relationships, his style hearkens back to his love of silent film-era classics, and they're just a tad oddball.

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Do I have to explain to you the significance of having Isabella Rossellini star in your film? The daughter of acclaimed Hollywood icon Ingrid Bergman, who has starred in everything from David Lynch films to comedies, and her own creation, a series of short films for the Sundance Channel on the mating rituals of different animals called Green Porno starred in Madden's 2003 film The Saddest Music In the World alongside Mark McKinney of Kids In the Hall fame. It's a simple plot, of a beer company head played by Rossellini who creates a contest to find out which country has the saddest music. Yep. Arty and odd and thoroughly lovely.

Okay, sorry. Back to the slapping fetish. Madden's short film in question was first filmed in 1994, but the print was somehow destroyed. So he recreated it in 2004, and it's...well...we don't really know what's going on here beyond what we actually see. A group of what seem like sailors lounge sleepily in a tropical paradise, seemingly bored as they lie singly or in groups, limbs draped over each other in casual manly togetherness. It's not specifically gay, but it's totally gay!

An old man says he needs to go get condoms (?!)), and wanders off with his rickety old bicycle, but not before he gives them a warning: "NO SLAPPING!" Well, like anyone, the best way to get someone to do something is to forbid him from doing it! And since men are basically children, it doesn't take long before the slapping begins. And I don't mean a gentle slap here and there; I mean hard cracks that start slowly and build with a rhythmic crescendo in cadence with the drums played alongside, sop that slaps and drum beats work in accordance to a rising pulse to an almost orgiastic explosion of energy, and a rapid evaporation of tension that includes wilted bodies and tears. They are left lying in a pile of sweat-soaked muscles, heaving and spent.

There's absolutely no significance, lesson, or wisdom to be had by this. It simply is, a thing in and of itself to titillate and make you wonder. And sometimes that's all experimental film has to be, an experiment to see what gets created and what people's reactions to it will be. And that is great queer art! Iconic queer filmmaker John Waters also thought it was great art when he included it in the television broadcast of his film anthology series John Waters Presents Movies That Will Corrupt You in 2006. And that's pretty darn good validation, I'd say!

And now, the film in its 4 or so-minute entirety! (Oh, BTW, there is a 4:45 director's cut!)

WAIT! Hold on! I remember what I recently saw that made me think of this short film! It was this scene from The Master with Joaquin Phoenix dry-humping a sand sculpture of a woman while surrounded by sailors before jacking it into the ocean! Watch this scene and listen to the music and tell me there isn't a similarity to the above-posted movie!