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Extreme vs. Obscene Part II: Till Death Do Us Part

By: the phfraze

So what do we consider "extreme pornography"? In part one of this little series I pointed out what the British Parliament thought extreme porno was, and how they have even gone through the lengths to make it illegal to practice it in any way. Next objective for me, of course, was to search the World Wide Web to try and find some of this stuff. I went out to look for things that specifically addressed the "concerns" of the British Parliament, and from there consider the issue and determine if the label of "extreme" fit the bill.

Again, my observations are not the gospel on what constitutes extreme porno. There are tons of things out there that deal in shock value pornography, which totally fits the genre at hand. This eliminated the obvious choices; fucking horses, shit play, or dressing up as Howard Cosell and letting your lover, dressed up as John Madden of course, have his way with you with an electronic headset on. Yes, I'm wondering where the hell that came from as well. No, I wanted to find something that was truly on the edge, at least from the mainstream perspective, and also was in accordance with the Criminal Justice and Immigration Bill of 2007, as per the English Parliament. Let's look at a few things the Bill deems extreme, shall we?

• An act which threatens or appears to threaten a person's life.
• An act which results in or appears to result (or be likely to result) in serious injury to a person's anus, breasts or genitals.
• An act which involves or appears to involve sexual interference with a human corpse.
• A person performing or appearing to perform an act of intercourse or oral sex with an animal.

The link clicker that I am, I somehow found my way to a website that had a write up on a story that was definitely edgy and most definitely illegal when it comes to English law. The website was www.trashcity.org/ARTICLES/DEATH.HTM, and the article was Love, Death, and the Internet (And interesting Combinations Thereof), written by a "William Blake". The article, or blog if you will, touched on a fetish that isn't always talked about, and most of the time never written about. This fetish is called "death-play" or "death-fetish". As we can see in the first law proposed above, any act that threatens or appears to threaten a person's life is considered illegal. Sounded like the lick, so I read on. The further I read, the more I found that our lawmaking friends on the other side of the pond would not like this at all. What this fetish entails is exactly what it says in its name, death-play. Key terms being death and play. Now it is important for me to stress here that this fetish does not include the actual killing of any man, woman, child, or animal. It merely consists of people who simulate death to satisfy the fantasies of both themselves and their partners. It warranted looking into.

It seems this fetish got its humble beginnings in the mid 1990's as a news group and has blossomed into various websites out there such as necrobabes.com and femmegore.com. As a matter of fact, as the genres within Death Play expanded into killing fetishes, so did the population of overall users. The above-mentioned websites, however, deal with acted out and very fake deaths. Now as Mr. Blake explains, there are many different levels to this fetish and one should not go into it thinking all people who are into Death Play like the same things. There is a wide range of people out there with even wider ranges of imagination. Some people like to walk in on their mates and find that they have had a terrible accident and slipped in the tub, knocking themselves unconscious and bleeding to simulated death in waist high water. At which point they take their lifeless bodies and make love to them as a final memento or goodbye. While others like to act as a burglar and break into the house, asphyxiating their victim and then making love or manipulating their bodies in some way. In explaining what this fetish is about, it is important that none of my little readers get this twisted with necrophilia, which consists of having sex with someone who is actually not living. It was interesting, however, that most people who participate in online forums are shrouded behind aliases and are very private people who don't care to have their identities known.

While there are many ranges within this genre/fetish, none of them are in line with being legal, at least in England. The law was introduced in 2003 after a woman by the name of Jane Longhurst ended up dying after consenting to be asphyxiated while having intercourse with her then lover, Graham Coutts. Coutts was found guilty and ordered to serve 26 years in prison for her death. Even though Death Play is a simulated death, or an acted out one, it is still illegal under the English statute. We aren't here to argue legal issues, though, or whether the conviction was right, wrong or otherwise. So I'll move on.

What holds interesting about Death Play is not so much the people who like to come home and find their mates dead, but the mates that play dead. I went to the website of one of the supposed starters of this Death Play thing, Vicki is her name, and found that much of the thrill of playing dead comes from the people who actually play dead. She said that she's even had multiple orgasms while not moving a limb in her body when her boyfriend would have sex with her lifeless body. Now that takes talent! Yes, she does yoga. Surprised? She also fantasizes about killing people and playing out in her mind what that would be like. Now to most people this borders on being slightly mad, but that is why this is considered edgy and slightly on the fringe, even in the fetish world. Let's just hope she keeps those little voices inside her pretty little head and doesn't ever let them manifest!

No matter what your stance is on Death Play, one thing can be agreed on- Death Play shows humanity's perpetual infatuation and utter curiosity with the realm of death. There is something about the lifeless gaze of a fallen person that draws us in. Whether it be going to view a body of a loved one at a wake, or someone going to the local video store and picking up an old dusty copy of Faces of Death, death is a part of our everyday lives and is always in the back of people's minds. So the next time you go out to lunch with your co-worker, say to yourself; when he/she gets home, his/her spouse may end up coming home to their dead body and making love to them! Freaky stuff eh?