Starz’ Outlander [S1E9] Review: ‘Erotically Charged Scenes’
Thereās been a lot of anticipation for the spanking scene. When you shoot something that you know the fans are waiting for, do you feel an extra weight to filming those moments, or do you try not to think about that, at all?
HEUGHAN: You try not to think about it or make it too big, but we were all very aware of those moments. If you go on any social media, you can see people talking about it. The writers and producers are also very aware. As an actor, you rehearse those moments and discuss it. You have to trust that the script is right and be comfortable with everything, and then you just have to go for it and disregard anything youāve previously heard or felt about it. I think thatās why it will be surprising for people. People who have read the books know what happens. Sometimes they talk about it quite lightly, but I think itās actually going to be surprising for people to see these moments fully realized and played out. I think itās going to challenge people, and I relish that.
Donāt think too hard about these tendrils of plot, because this is essentially the formula that gets played back and forth for much of the rest of the series. Claire rescues Jamie; Jamie rescues Claire. Mostly, Jamie rescues Claire. And if you think makeup sex is good, wait until you see post-rescue and makeup sex combined, which brings us to That Scene, which arrives pretty quickly in Saturdayās premiere and will be receiving a lot of attention when it airs.
My feeling is this: what happens between Jamie and Claire is essentially stylized, historicised BDSM for a modern audience, slightly rawer but less creepy than anything in Fifty Shades of Grey. Be prepared for the onslaught of a thousand comparison thinkpieces next week. The fighting, hitting and fornicating these two do is made more urgent by their constant standing on the precipice of survival, by the morals of Jamieās society, and their genuine and deep love for each other which is growing before our eyes. Thatās ultimately a good thing, because witchcraft trials, duels gone bad, intra-clan feuds, and some really brutal assault and torture scenes that I wish werenāt part of the narrative are on the threshold for these two, threatening to tear them asunder – not to mention the fact that Claire hasnāt yet told Jamie the truth about where she comes from. We are truly fortunate, fellow viewers, that the showās formula apparently guarantees us a very feminist-friendly sex scene for every, um, climax in the action. (Balfeās Claire may not be quite as warm and funny as the Claire in my mind, but she has excellent panting, moaning and heavy breathing skills).
To me, the almost unprecedented female-centric focus of all the sex, and Claire and Jamieās eventual reactions to his onetime belt-wielding administration of justice, renders the spanking less problematic. Essentially: weāre having our Scottish S&M shortbread and eating it too, dunked in a steaming hot mug of feminist tea. Outlander taps into the same social and sexual currents, the same tropes about domination pursuit and fantasy, as Twilight and Fifty Shades while being freer, more equal, less aggressively regressive. Itās the same fun with about half the guilt about being seduced by the patriarchy.
The first new episode, The Reckoning, hinges on the most famous and controversial scene in Gabaldonās books. A scene in which a husband spanks his wife for disobeying him. It is a sensational hour of drama ā fraught, tense, erotically charged, emotionally raw and hair-raising in its ferocity.
There are four key scenes. The rescue. Then an argument, which, in its viciousness, is like a slap in the face. There is then the infamous, much anticipated scene of punishment (called ātawsingā in the books) that plays out as a tangle of interlaced limbs to a soundtrack thatās a cacophony of coarse language and emotional fury from both parties. Finally, there is the scene in which Claire makes it crystal clear what she will not tolerate. To say more would be to diminish the shocking sexual wildness of it.