By Jackie Shannon
Do you know what a “mental humiliatrix” is? No? Don’t worry, neither did we. Well, in the increasingly complicated and bizarre world of online fetishism, a “mental humiliatrix” is an attractive young lady that men pay to basically ruin them, in a financial sense. Yep, for a tidy sum, your mental humiliatrix will buy expensive shit with your credit cards, or keep you on hold on the phone for hours on end…if you can afford it!
You can learn all about this off-centre form of employment in the new film, Ruin Me, which comes courtesy of occasional FilmInk contributor and acclaimed filmmaker, Julian Shaw, whose previous documentaries include Darling! The Pieter-Dirk Uys Story and Cup of Dreams. Shaw’s entry into the world of the mental humiliatrix is through Oregon-based Ceara Lynch, one of the world’s foremost proponents of the fetish. When he hit Skype to ask Ms. Lynch if he could make a doco about her, she said yes, and Sydney-based Shaw packed his bags for the US. Once there, however, he got a little bit more than he bargained for. “I started to realise that the line between fantasy and reality in Ceara’s work was not as clear as I originally thought,” the director says.
Intrigued? Well, Julian Shaw and his producer, Jonathon Green, need your help to finish the film, and are running a Kickstarter campaign right now to make Ruin Me a reality. “This story has a lot going on: sex in the internet age, the re-definition of the American dream, plus a whole host of moral questions that I know cinema audiences will enjoy debating,” says Shaw. And if you’re thinking that this campaign might actually be a complex ruse pulled by the mental humiliatrix herself, don’t worry – FilmInk will back Julian Shaw on this one. He’s a prodigious talent, and Ruin Me could be a truly profound and bewitching film.
To find out how you can become involved with Ruin Me, head to the film’s Kickstarter page.
