The next shredding session is scheduled! This may sound as though it has been taken straight from the report of a serial killer shredding their victims, or an office pep talk gone awry, but instead it is from the user of a fetish forum focused on the destruction of raincoats and other outdoor wear. Specifically, these users are interested in PVC rainwear, how it boils or burns, stretches and shreds. Some of them want to wear the clothing before it is destroyed, whereas others see this as sacrilegious. There is no one way to destroy the rainwear, but one thing that unites the purveyors of this fetish is that they find the height of the eroticism, the point of climax, to be seeing a raincoat, or other rainwear, get destroyed.
My awareness of this fetish started when my partner showed me images of raincoats inside one of their porn magazines, which they collect. They were particularly drawn to images of people wearing full latex outfits, which obscured their face as well as body, with a raincoat over the top. They took me to the Rain Time exhibition at Horse Hospital, and were enamoured with the look of the coats. I must admit, though, I didn’t get it. I understood the aesthetic appeal, but did not see how this clothing could be erotic. Everything thus far had been about the wearing of the clothing, and aesthetic appeal which I could understand only as being similar to a latex attraction. It was only when they showed me a porn DVD, titled RainCoat Destructions, that I began to understand, and take inspiration from, those within this community.
RainCoat Destructions can, perhaps, be best thought of as a series of vignettes. There is no traditional plot, but instead a series of scenarios in which raincoats are destroyed with an axe, hammered or blown out of a cannon. Though the images were intense, I was immediately drawn to the sounds of the raincoats. The filmmaker makes sure to capture the sound of the coats rustling, being dragged through the leaves, the sound of the raincoats as they are being shredded or hacked to pieces. The actual wearer of the coat is not important, even though she is credited, and instead the camera zooms in close on her boots, her coat and her gloves.
Watching this DVD, I was almost overwhelmed by the noises and I understood that this side of the fetish is not based simply on the look of the coats but also the feel and the sounds that they make. As the woman shuffles through the woods, the coat rustles and the leaves below her crack and what she is destroying is heard loudly and erotically.
Voice Pig, my upcoming audio documentary, revolves around interviews with a dominatrix who uses auralist techniques to control her submissive. Using both her voice and interviews we have conducted in spaces such as pubs and the side of a road, I want to explore the control that can be audited through fetish voice play. Particularly, the raincoat destruction fetish community has struck me because of how intensely the community relies on sound for their pleasure. The rustling, the tearing, the shredding, the crackle of the fire as the PVC burns: this is as erotic and as perverse as the touch of fingers or licking of the tongue. How do these noises not only appeal to a listener’s most primary sensory urges, but can be used as a form of control through the erotic and the sound of fetish.