Voluptuous Panic by Mel Gordon
If one were to pay the slightest attention to our beloved religious right, the all-hallowed Moral Majority, it’d be easy to get the impression that we live in the most debauched and depraved era of recorded history. In our day of almost-legal gay marriage, marginally accepted fetish culture (with fetish-influenced fashion) and Playboy-like popular magazines (I’m looking at you, Maxim) you’d think that we’ve descended further into the more “sordid” depths of human sexuality than any other age or culture.
You’d be wrong, though, and Mel Gordon’s Voluptuous Panic is the ideal book to show you—and them—just how wrong they are.
The exponentially exploding product of dramatist Gordon’s research on Anita Berber, whom the author calls “the most glamorous decadent personality from Berlin’s Golden Twenties,” the book delves lovingly and meticulously into the highly complex, weirdly codified sexual world of post WWI Germany. With chapters exploring everything from brief sociological theories on why Berlin came to be a “City of Whores,” to the flourishing sex magic underground, to the roaming packs of outlandishly adorned homosexual Wild Boys, the text is both well-researched and detailed—yet Gordon neatly avoids the academic tone that would have meant death to his subject matter. One back-cover blurbist likens the book to “a Fodor’s guide published by Taschen,” and it is an apt description. Were time travel to become possible tomorrow, 1920s Berlin would be my first destination, and this is the only guidebook I’d pack. Besides being well-written, it also contains a sort of map of the stars marking the locations of all the most infamous sex clubs and streetwalker neighborhoods, and supplements this with extensive descriptions of the specialty offerings, mood, decor and regular customers to be found at each site.
But there’s more! Gordon’s research centered on visual as well as textual culture, and the best of his findings litter the book. Every page is packed with artsy fetish photography, pornographic sketches by both renowned artists and enthusiastic amateurs, playbills from actual cabaret performances, even one delightfully blasphemous stained-glass fantasy depicting a haloed dominatrix and her prayerfully kneeling subs.
In short, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s a beautiful example of artistic erotica, a detailed but not overwhelming sex history and the perfect coffee table book for the openly kinky. Be sure to have it out the next time the Jehovah’s Witness’ ask if you have a moment to chat.
