Bob Flanagan - Sick
• People
As you’ve probably read on Richard’s site, one of the first films we watched together was ‘Sick’ - a documentary about Bob Flanagan, self-titled Supermasochist and performer. Though he was born with cystic fibrosis and suffered much of the wrong type of pain in his life (not to mention being given a short time to live), his peculiar mix of masochism, creativity, humour and strength of spirit caused him to live beyond his fourties, and make a mockery of the misery that ‘god’ or fate had apparently tried to dish out to him.
There were many ‘wow’ points to the documentary, which was mostly live footage of Bob and his life partner and Dominatrix Sheree. Though I enjoyed hearing her thoughts and could relate to her in some ways such as having a peculiar relationship with my parents, often feeling unloved as a child and wondering if something was ‘wrong’ with me, not to mention being almost unbearably bossy in the past, it was Bob himself who made the biggest impression and who seemed to almost embody the spirit of masochism in an elemental and almost freakishly total yet beautiful way.
When it was finished I was left with a clear feeling that anyone who wanted to understand masochism and it’s function should watch this documentary. But it transcends mere kink and could really speak to any person who has ever felt pain (the good kind, the bad kind, or even the ugly kind).
So whilst I got a kick out of watching the extreme BDSM dynamics between these two lovers, it ran a lot deeper than that into many other realms such as love, the mind, disease and suffering, fate, and our own personal construction of reality. And seeing one man speak such volumes for the whole masochistic movement was amazing.