Submission Possible: more new age than leather

REVIEW by Drew Rowsome

23 Jun 2019

Submission Possible is the creation of Madison Young, billed as the "Queen of Kink." She sets out across the US to explore how different communities and their cultures affect and influence the kinks, fetishes and sexual habits of the people who live there. Young has a lofty and important goal describing Submission Possible as a "dare":

A challenge for us to shift the narrative. For us to celebrate our differences and our sameness, our connections. It is a culmination of my deep desire to gather women, POC, queers, trans folk, non-binary community, femmes, butches, sex workers, kinksters around the kitchen table, around the fire, to share our stories, of who we are as sexual beings. Because our desires matter. Our stories matter. We are claiming our space. This is the time. It is time for us to talk loudly and boldly about our orgasms, our pleasure, our kinks, our fetishes, our desires, our relationships.

The word "submission" in the title and the opening and closing credits which contain lots of BDSM-lite featuring Young writhing with an unnamed apparent dominatrix, set the series up to be a journey into the fascinating underworld of kink. Submission Possible may very well get raunchy and explicit but, judging from the first episode, Young is more new age than leather or dominance/submission.

The first episode is set in New Orleans and Young tells us she is fascinated and aroused by voodoo, cemeteries, sex magick and spectrophilia. She visits a new Orleans leather bar, The Phoenix Bar, and interviews Mx Phoenix aka Elyse the Beast. The beast is a pussycat and talks about her mission of "unity, positivity and safety awareness." Young looks longingly and wistfully at the BDSM paraphernalia scattered around the well-lit bar, but none of it is used or explained. Or unique to New Orleans.

The next stop is more of a drive-by as Young rambles on about the erotic appeal of ghosts, haunted objects and haunted spaces. She stops outside Cafe Lafitte in Exile the oldest gay bar (established in 1933) in the US and reputedly haunted. Young breathlessly tells us that the ghost of Tennessee Williams even makes appearances but, just as we get intrigued, Young skips right by without investigating.

A woman on the street claims to have had non-consensual sex with a ghost, as does the sole identifying as male interviewee. Instead of following up that interesting angle, Young sits down with an ecosexual sex magician who claims to be able to alter the weather by mindful masturbation. Young invites her to a sex magik seance later that day and the two hug. More credible is a herbal alchemist with whom Young smokes aphrodisiacal joints composed of herbs that improve circulation and relax inhibitions. It must work because Young is inspired to dress to roll around on the grass in a cemetery, mindfully masturbating through her Laura Ashley dress. The weather does not change.

A "kinky witch and tarot reader" offers the wonderful observation that, in terms of ritual, "Cunts are amazing, cunts are powerful, cunts are scary because of that power." She also hawks crystals and reads Young's tarot. The sex magik seance brings all of the above together in a circle of candles, dildos, crops and voodoo dolls for more wistful and longing gazes. Young even does a bit more writhing on the floor before pronouncing that "Kinks and fetishes are normal and being your authentic self is self-empowering." Then she submits again to the unnamed apparent dominatrix for the closing credit sequence.

Young is very amiable and wide-eyed but I'll be curious to see what happens if she encounters someone who is genuinely deviant. Where was the grizzled old leatherman who actually had spectrophiliacal sex with Tennessee Williams' ghost? Is New Orleans' sexual underbelly so tame that crystals and herbs qualify as taboo and shocking? Will she have tea with Lady G when she gets to Washington DC? The first episode of Submission Possible teases but doesn't titillate, let alone leave any welts.