Love And Leashes pushes boundaries with provocative BDSM romance
50 Shades Of Grey, step aside.
Never would I imagine that the ultra-conservative South Korean K-drama scene would push through with such a risque drama such as Love And Leashes, all largely thanks to Netflix.
Love And Leashes drops 11 February on Netflix, and the official trailer which was released on 27 January elicited a gush of anticipation from netizens from the masochistic dialogue from the show's main cast, Seohyun (Girl's Generation) and Lee Jun-young (U-Kiss).
In the official trailer, the latter is a fresh-faced office worker Jung Ji-hoo, who finds himself inadvertently entwined with a senior colleague Jung Ji-woo after she accidentally intercepts a parcel for him, containing a very racy looking collar with studs and spikes on it.
He tries to deflect, making excuses that the collar belongs to his 3-year-old poodle, Miho, but is found out in the end.
Their romance progresses as Ji-woo starts discovering more intimate details about her colleague, involving lots of toys and requests for domination.
To provide brief background for those not already in the know, the term BDSM stands for and can be sub-divided into 3 categories; bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, and sadomasochism (S&M).
Love And Leashes plays into all three, with Jun-young as the experienced submissive-slave type and Seohyun as a new dominant-master just learning the ropes, literally, which makes for a very interesting archetype.
It will be interesting to see how this K-drama plays out, as such BDSM themes are generally not addressed by conservative Asian societies openly, and are mostly confined to the bedroom.
Hopefully, it will not skew the idea of BDSM as something that the movie 50 Shades of Grey inaccurately portrayed as an act which involves pain and torture.
In fact, BDSM is an intimate agreement between two parties, where two people (or more) agree on the acts performed, be it bondage (the tying up of an individual) or discipline (where submissives are ordered about and perform certain acts which may be degrading to the individual).
There are also safe words involved, which are employed when the session gets too intense or if the dominant-master gets too carried away.
It pleases me that South Korean K-dramas are exploring more risque topics at the risk of being cancelled in their own countries.
Unlike American and Western shows which have mostly turned sex into a meaningless act which proceeds at an artificially fast and mechanical pace, South Korean dramas have tended towards exploring the intimacy of the act; Love and Leashes is poised to be at the forefront of this vanguard.
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