Undercurrent's Hidden Message On Open Relationships
Daniel and I watched a documentary entitled Undercurrent on HBO. The story is about the horrible murder of a female journalist and an (supposedly) eccentric guy named Peter Madsen. Madsen, who tried to build rockets, eventually built a submarine. Even though he was a strange guy many of those around him thought he was a genius.
Madsen was obviously a narcissistic psychopath who had little respect for others. The problem I have with the documentary’s storyline is that at Madsen’s trial it came out that he and his wife were in an open marriage. It also came out that he had written about the constraints of monogamy.
The underlying theme proposed by the documentary was that his non-monogamy led him to become a sexual deviant which in turn made him the psychopath who killed the journalist while on his submarine.
It also became obvious that he formed an addiction to snuff films–those gross, horrible films that depict a terrible act of violence which is often real. What gets lost in the documentary is that these are two very separate things.
Open relationships do not lead to watching snuff films. As much as I am a proponent of free speech, I do believe snuff films should be illegal–especially if they depict real acts of violence.
The documentary almost implies that there is a thin veil between being in an open marriage and the watching of disgusting material. And that is the problem I have with most documentaries–there always seems to be an underlying “moral” message that the producers want to get across. In this case, a desperate, insane criminal was helped along by his unwillingness to remain in a monogamous relationship.
As Daniel and I very much know, non-monogamy should, and for us, will always be, among consensual adults. It should be pleasurable, and it should never inflict harm on another. A life of pleasure requires that. And just because a man or a woman chooses to have multiple sexual experiences that are outside the social norms does not in any way make them deviant.
Peter Madsen was a madman, a criminal, and a murderer. What he did to Kim Wall, the female journalist, on his submarine is the real story here. Wall seemed to be a wonderful woman with great promise. The fact that Madsen took that promise away is the story and the fact that he and his wife had sex outside of marriage is not.
xoxo, Anna, The Flourishing Hedonist