Anya Stanley
There are plenty of erotic films that purport to represent subcultures, but few are more accurate than Steven Shainberg’s Secretary. Released in 2002 and expanding upon a short story by Mary Gaitskill, the story concerns a young woman struggling with mental instability who begins a sadomasochistic relationship with her boss. This sort of dynamic usually orients itself within the erotic thriller or as a deviant aside in crime fiction but, similar to J-P Valkeapää’s 2019 black comedy Dogs Don’t Wear Pants, the picture contains a rare and welcome good-faith look upon non-vanilla romance.
Lee Holloway (Maggie Gyllenhaal) is released from a mental health facility and into the care of her well-meaning but dogmatic parents. She dates a mild-mannered man named Peter (Jeremy Davies) and functions well enough in the world, but she finds it artificial and strange until she finds a job as a secretary for E. Edward Grey (James Spader), an attorney who runs a tight ship and has little tolerance for incompetence. At first, she has trouble adjusting to her stern boss, but soon enough she enters into a symbiotic submissive rapport with his natural dominance. Their relationship is qualified by SM 101 author Jay Wiseman as sadomasochistic (S&M for short), specifically, “referring generally to fantasies and experiences regarding the introduction of domination, submission, bondage, sadism, masochism, humiliation, and related activities into erotic play” and beyond.
A key sequence in Secretary establishes the dynamic entire. After finding a typo in a letter he dictated to Lee, Grey instructs her to place her palms on the table and to read the letter aloud. During the reading, Grey proceeds to spank his secretary to the point of sexual exhaustion. Following the tightrope-taut moment, an insert shows Lee gently stroking Grey’s hand with a feather-light graze. The connection is more than physical; Lee indicates that she drew value from the exchange and enjoyed it. This blink-and-you’ll-miss-it moment is paramount to understanding her willingness to participate in Grey’s sessions. Later, Lee quietly but assuredly prepares a dinner plate for herself according to her boss’ strict specifications: a scoop of creamed potatoes, a slice of butter, four green peas, and “as much ice cream as you’d like to eat.” The moment doesn’t come off as disconcerting so much as it identifies with and understands her need for control—her orgasmic eyes as she hears his instructions say it all. This need is not involuntary, it is merely looking for the properly-qualified, firm hand to enclose her own. Further, the need isn’t only for Grey’s pleasure, as he demonstrates by talking to Lee about her self-harm and commands her to never cut herself again. The “No, Sir” that follows his “Will you?” is the most confident assertion that she utters up to that point in the film— through kink, Lee blossoms.
At one point, Mr. Grey’s ex-lover lets off a volley of shade and calls Lee “submissive,” which the demure assistant answers by unleashing her assertiveness at a telemarketer, highlighting a monumental cornerstone of the dom/sub dynamic: the dominant partner does not take control, the submissive partner willingly relinquishes it. By putting Lee at the helm of her own sexuality and showing her choosing when and how to be tough, the film avoids the routine portraiture of a damaged, buxom deviant who non-consensually endures pain and degradation in order to “earn” love. Grey doesn’t get to place a saddle and head harness on his partner because he just wants to; Lee trusts and permits him to do so, and she stands tall within the power dynamic.
Within that relationship Lee is a complex, walking subversion of the male gaze, both visually and functionally. Donning flowy long-sleeve blouses and snug but modest pencil skirts, Lee does not need to be presented as a sexual object in order to present herself as a sexual creature. For starters, the casting of Maggie Gyllenhaal, a brunette with little of the come-hither Lolita-ness seen in erotic genre pictures like Mario Bava’s The Whip and The Body (best described as a Bronte tale with whips and bondage), is a stellar choice in bringing an authentic, fleshed-out femme character to life. Her wide, ever-expressive eyes shoot daggers and roses alike with ease, ensuring that her bewilderment and enjoyment come through whenever the dialogue doesn’t make her feelings explicit. There’s an active agency in her sexualization that shines the brightest in her insistence upon maintaining the relationship and all that it entails, not in nude scenes or sensationalized kink play. One of the most beautiful scenes, in fact, is of Lee fantasizing about her partner and masturbating, clothed in an old fashioned knee-length nightgown, laying on her stomach like many vagina-having people do! As she climaxes she exclaims, “I’m your secretary!” and lists the items he instructed her to eat at dinner earlier. It’s not the foods that get her off—it’s the dominion she lets him hold over her. The nudity that does come about is delicate, as Grey provides aftercare and quietly bathes his partner. As the story unfolds, the heroine comes into her own, not from porn-esque skin and sin, but as the direct result of finding a partner who gets her as much as she gets him. Their relatability, while non-traditional, provides safe harbor in the cold, fake world they both inhabit.
All of this isn’t to say that Lee craves abuse; far from it. One of the biggest hurdles to the success of the narrative lies in respectfully navigating Lee’s mental illness and coping methods. Her institutionalization is prompted by self-harm; she cuts herself when her world becomes overwhelming. A lesser storyteller might conflate that self-harm with a desire to be anyone and everyone’s doormat, but instead Shainberg takes pains to put Lee’s agency on display. Her typos, previously punishable by spanking and humiliation, become intentional in a bratty attempt to get her spankings when she wants them. She places worms alongside her assigned work to earn the discipline she craves from him, and it is solely him that she wants. She breaks things off with her less sadistically-inclined man and her attempts at dating other dominant men fall flat because she considers Grey to be the only one who has earned the immeasurable trust that is built within a healthy S/M relationship. As Wiseman points out in his book, many submissive are “particular” about the type of pain they revel in, only allowing it “under controlled, consensual circumstances.” For Lee, Mr. Grey knows how to walk that line while maintaining his dominance and still showering tenderness upon his lady.
Secretary not a perfect representation of the dom/sub kink. The pair’s no-nos include a failure to establish consent and scope before letting the spanking hand fly, and a moment of assault. When Grey tries to set boundaries by instilling a no-contact rule and firing his employee, she gives his cheek a more powerful slap than any that had previously landed on her backside. While the story has its imperfect depictions, it certainly cuts a better silhouette than a certain other series of media starring another, more “shady” Mr. Grey. A gentle reading can call it all collateral damage in the campaign to invert gender norms, which is bound to get messy as it unpacks and interrogates the roles we play with and for each other. With Secretary, Shainberg crafts a fresh, singular sketch of the complexities of sex, love, and power as they relate to women. 
“Secretary” is currently streaming on Peacock.
