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Fifty Shades of Feng- some notes on House of Cards 2, ep5


A couple of years ago I was in Washington, looking for the story of Archie Bunker's iconic chair from the fantastic seventies-show All in the Family, now a museumpiece at the Smithsonian. It was a great trip and the chair turned out to be a good story. But that's a different matter.

During that trip, I stayed in a hotel in the best part of the city. I could see the White House from my window. Outside, shiny, chic, chauffeured cars passed by, transporting a politician or some other hotshot.

Inside, in my hotelroom I discovered that not all of the amenities of this hotel were mentioned on their website. The room came with a bonus.

In the little hallway there was a huge pile of leaflets. Really a strikingly big pile. Some of hem were for theatreshows. But most of them were advertisements for a different branch of the entertainmentindustry: sex.

I have stayed in a lot of hotels, but in most cases such ads are hidden from plain sight. Not in Washington.There were way more sex-ads here than for pizzadelivery or Chinese takeaway.

Mistresses clothed in black leather and moustached guys with black leather caps were staring at me from every page. It was all SM, bondage, and other refined delicacies of this nature combining sex with some sort of aggression.

So to say that the bondage scene involving a Chinese captain of industry named Xander Feng and two American sexworkers in Episode 5 of House of Cards 2 came as a surprise? Nah.

It was a good scene though, and an even better opener of the episode. All you see as the episode starts, is some guy trying to breath through a plastic bag. Could be anything, right? Could be a murder, an attack - and to whom? You can't see. Then the zoom out gradually reveals what is going on here. It's masterly well done.

The connection between sex and power is as old as the world itself.
It's also a strong Washington reality, and House of Cards reflects that, notably in this episode. The sexworkers were sent to the Chinese as a, well, lubricant, for the relationship between the Chinese and Francis Underwood. Fifty Shades of Feng, New York Magazine's Vulture playfully called it.

The sexworkers in House of Cards remained anonymous. They are not important here, they're mere decoration to the story. Still, thinking of that pile of sex-ads, you wonder whether that is justified. How much of politics is done at night, between the sheets? Or whipped to conclusion by some Mistress clothed all in leather?
It adds a whole new meaning to the word majority-whip.