Another thought on the spanking scene

Lizzie explores submission in female roles often in her films. In many instances, women are portrayed as controlling men through their submission, or what is termed as "topping from the bottom" in S&M parlance. In this case, Dana is submitting to David to draw him in to more fully expose himself so that she can gain more information to destroy him with.

Another theme in Lizzie's films is sex used by women as a control mechanism. Often sex is portrayed as passionless and devoid of eroticism for the woman, but is utilized as a tool to exploit men's desire. In this scene, David seems to be in control and fully dominating Dana, but in reality she is simply playing a part to shift power from him to her. Only David is interpreting the sexual interaction as meaningful and erotic, for Dana it is simply another device in her repertoire to elicit control.

In the spanking scene, it is David that loses control - lashing out physically in a way he hasn't done before. In all his previous encounters, it is the women that lose control, becoming emotional and hysterical which he then exploits to exercise power over them. Here Dana turns that around and provokes David to lose control, to become emotional and broken and then she exploits that to gain power.

Dana communicates earlier that sex for her is meaningless and passionless, so it isn't difficult for her to utilize that to gain control over David, which is exactly what he has been doing to women. He used the meaning these women interjected into the sexual situations to dominate and manipulate, which is exactly what Dana is doing to him now. David uses sex to dominate, humiliate and then abandon his prey. After which they are devastated and left hurting, only because he has gone. He made them feel "special" and then he left, in essence removing the drug they became addicted to. Never has he pursued a woman after exploiting her, however here Dana completely reverses the circumstances with David losing control, becoming involved and then pursuing Dana after she has abandoned him. Basically Dana does to David what he has so often done to all these women, however (and this is the part I don't understand) she become invested as well. This must have been a demand of the studio, because it simply makes no sense for Lizzie to insert this twist. In the end, David and Dana are mutually destructive for each other.

It could be that Lizzie is saying, to manipulate any person by sexual means, to exploit anyone through manipulating their self-esteem is wrong. No matter whether it is a man or a woman, it is wrong. Or it could be the studio demanded Lizzie interject this to add some "hotness" and "eroticism" to the plot, I'm not sure.

I would love to have seen what Lizzie would have done with this film had she been given a free hand. It seems at one moment to be an expose of manipulative men, and societal attitudes concerning sex and gender roles. Then at another moment it is a cheap "erotic thriller". Sometimes it seems like David is simply society and it's attitudes, then at other times it is as if David is an amalgam of men in general, then at other times it is as if Lizzie is saying that all sex is garbage and all sex is rape for women.

At the end the male prosecutors ask Dana's friend if there is anything Dana hasn't told, if there is anything she is "hiding" and the last scene is Dana burning the Polaroid photo of her nude in a bathtub. It seems as if Lizzie is saying that Dana was complicit in her actions with David, that she did some of this stuff willingly. The message we walk away with is that it's "okay" to entrap a man if it stops him from doing what he is doing. Perhaps she is saying that David wasn't a bad man, that it is in fact society that is sick and David is exposing that sickness. In that regard, it is Dana that is the hypocrite, and not David. In fact, David was almost completely honest with Dana, while Dana was anything but honest with David. If one looks at the film that way, it seems as if Lizzie is saying that David is the only honest person in the film and David must be destroyed because he exposes that hypocrisy. As I said, it would be very interesting to interview Lizzie to see how much of the film's content was dictated by the studio and what she would have done given a free hand. Still, there are some very interesting themes in the movie that are much more sophisticated than many people see at first glance.

"...nothing is left of me, each time I see her..." - Catullus