Why Does Mickey Rourke Give Pleasure?

Abstract

“‘You’re going to do everything I say, you’re going to do everything I tell you, and you’re never going to disrespect me in front of the crew. . . . And I can’t pay you.’”1 Pimp to ho? Frankenstein to monster? Or indie director to fallen bad-boy star? Mickey Rourke loved to tell the story of his degradation at the hands of Darren Aronofsky while making The Wrestler (2008). He left no doubt that he was the bottom, there to be beaten up, stapled, gigged, and sent to the hospital between takes. The dynamic was captured in Annie Leibovitz’s portrait of the sadistic director and his battered muse, Aronofsky bursting from his cheaplooking suit, his close-cropped hair and mustache that screamed masculinity crisis, his confrontation with the camera, and Rourke crouching in the background— half-naked, long-haired, smoking, bruised, and tattooed—as though there was nothing left to do to him. He looked like a boxer in his corner—a pornographic, existential boxer wearing tight jeans and velvet shoes (fig. 1). The photograph appeared in the wake of Leibovitz’s bare-backed portrait of Miley Cyrus, and satirists joked that she had taken advantage of Rourke, too, that there would be