Horrors of the Casting Couch

The only way to become a star is to get under 

a good director and work your way up.

I.

When researching a recent post on the 1959 film Horrors of the Black Museum, I came across this publicity photo featuring one of the female stars, June Cunningham, and writer-producer Herman Cohen getting an eyeful of the former in costume and presumably on set.

Clearly, it was meant at the time to be humorous, in a saucy postcard or Benny Hill-like manner. But today, when so many things are viewed differently, it does seem slightly troubling - and, indeed, will be for some members of the Me Too generation far more shocking and horrifying than anything that appears in the movie itself. 


II.

Of course, games involving the complex interplay of sex and power have a long history in the entertainment industry and the central role of the casting couch - upon which so many promises are made (by mostly male directors and producers) and so many favours granted (by mostly pretty young starlets) - has been an open secret from the beginning (so much so that casting couch has become a well-known euphemism for the sexual politics of showbiz and a popular pornographic trope).   

It would be wrong, however, to always interpret this phenomenon reactively and think only in moral terms of abuse and exploitation, vulnerability and victimhood. For one thing, power isn't something that one party exclusively possesses and the other doesn't; nor does power always express itself in a base or vulgar manner. Further, as Foucault recognised, power doesn't only weigh on us as a form of repressive violence; it also induces pleasures and is a great productive network running through the entire social body.

Looking at the above photograph, we might also recall Baudrillard's work on seduction and the revenge of the object that curdles conventional notions of agency, consent, and truth. If nothing else, it's important to know that appearances are deceptive, situations reversible, and tables can often be turned in the blink of a gouged out eye.

Thus who can really say who is fucking with whom here? Cohen wears the trousers; but Cunningham has the ability to charm the pants off him ...