Three years ago, I was at the dog park and saw my friend Colleen eagerly reading something on her phone. I asked her what it was. “Oh my God, this book is incredible,” she gushed. “50 Shades of Grey. You have to read it, Trish.”
I asked her what it was about. She handed me her phone and I reads a steamy passage about a young woman in a sadomasochistic relationship with a handsome man who was, of course, a billionaire. A hackneyed plot. I passed. Then a couple of days later, I read on the Internet that the author of the book would be doing her first signing at Books & Books in Coral Gables, one of the best independent bookstores left in South Florida. I learned that the book started as fan fiction for the Twilight series and got so many downloads that a major publisher had picked it up for an exorbitant amount of $ and thought, Okay, I need to take a look.
I downloaded the book and got through half of it before I put it aside. I thought the female protagonist was kind of an idiot and that the billionaire guy had some major psychologist issues. Erotic fiction is tough to write and the author has to have the soul of a poet – like Anais Nin, in her novel Henry & June, about her affairs with author Henry Miller and his wife, June. That novel is brilliant because Nin was able to dig deep into the psychology, spirituality, and inner lives of her characters. 50 Shades is, ironically, completely lacking in shading, in nuance.
All that said, the book went on to sell zillions of copies, and became a movie that opened over Valentine’s Day weekend here in the U.S. As a result of my review about 50 Shades three years ago, we had a sudden uptick of hundreds of hits on our blog. Many of these hits came were the result of the query phrase: the deeper meaning of 50 shades of grey.
Huh?
I went back and looked through the first book – and the second, which I eventually downloaded – and I just don’t see any deeper meaning to this title. The premise is simple: young woman meets billionaire with control and S&M issues. She submits. They eventually fall in love. The premise was explored in the book and movie 9 and ½ Weeks (1986) 5/ with Mickey Rourke and Kim Basinger, but the 21st century version is more graphic.
The movie reviews of 50 Shades have been pretty bad, but for probably the wrong reasons. Is sex supposed to be a war? A torture chamber? A platform of domination and submission? Are we so messed up as a society that sex is the final summary of who we are as human beings and as a species? Is sex the personal equivalent of endless war?
My sister visited recently and I asked her if she’d seen the movie. She hadn’t, but her son and his wife had. They hated it. I asked if she’d read the books. Yes, she had, all three of them. What did she think?
“I liked them. I thought they showed the evolution of their relationship.”
On its opening weekend, the movie grossed more than $80 million.
So what the hell do I know about what appeals to a mass audience? Well, apparently not much!!
At my hair salon, lots of the women have been discussing the book, with varied responses to it. My hairdresser read all three. She had mixed emotions about the books, but said she needed to read them to be able to know what her customers were discussing with her. I picked up her copy of the first one, began to read it, and simply could not go on. I very rarely stop reading a book once I start it. Just a quirk of mine to muddle thru unless it’s just impossible for me to finish. This was one of the “impossibles”. I’m far from being a ‘prude’, but gosh…..I found myself wondering how millions of people, women in particular, embrace this material. I definitely wouldn’t be able to watch the movie. I suppose I’m a hopeless romantic, and found nothing ‘romantic’in the 50 Shades. Just as a comparable note: my own taste for something extremely erotic is the scene in the movie THE BRIDGES OF MADISON COUNTY, when Meryl Streep and Clint Eastwood are slow-dancing in her kitchen, and the scene lasts several minutes before it then shows them laying in front of the fireplace together, covered by a blanket and quietly whispering in the after-glow of obviously having made love. That dance in the kitchen….WOW. For me, THAT is eroticism at its very best: beautifully romantic and leaving the “unseen” to the minds of the watchers. For me, there is “having sex”, and “making love”…..two very different
acts, and for an old romantic like me, ‘making love’ in books and/or movies gets my juices flowing………..guess this falls under the old adage “different strokes for different folks”, no pun intended. Or maybe…….
That book is pure fiction, meant for enjoyment, but obviously controversial, thus the very varied public reactions. I enjoyed it, a good mid-Summer read. The movie? Nah! I prefer the people and places I created in my mind, don’t need to see the picture….
Mental pictures, Shadow!
I too am mystified by the popularity of this series; my inner goddess retched reading the first book and I had to put it down. What does this say about the national feminine psyche? Ay, yay, yay…
I think one news woman summed it up, to my horror, when she said ” it’s every woman’s fantasy, like the Cinderella story, she’s a virgin, he’s rich and more experienced and well you know.”
It’s about S&M and from what I understand he doesn’t respect her much.
But, on Valentine’s Day I saw that “Pretty Woman” was voted a top “romantic” movie pick!
Karin had the first book and I did try to read some of it – but gave up! Someone we know went to see the movie and said it was great! So the critics must have got it wrong!!
I like the history of the book though, how the author made zillions out of it. The formula for success with any form of sales seems to be: give people what they want, not what we think they want, or should want. QED
I like the history of it, too. Have heard mixed opinions about the movie.
But what about writers who write literary fiction about important topics? The taste of the masses are often pretty pedestrian and crude.
Its weird that so many women like this book series. Had it been written by a man, would they have read the book or would the male author be criticized in the media for being a misogynist peddling bad literature that demeans women?
It IS weird that so many women like the series. And good question about the reaction if a man had written it!
Mike,do you realize that the female director of the film “Fifty Shades of Grey” ,
Sam Taylor-Johnson was born on March 4, 1967 ?
That’s ’67 Mike. 😉
Darn, I read some brilliant articles on Facebook denouncing this film by all kinds of psychologists, feminists, and people dealing with domestic abuse as 1) a glorification of misogyny and domestic abuse that is very damaging to young women, 2) all about a sociopath and the predictable manner in which men like that come to dominate and destroy the spirits of women, and 3) a sad reflection of the backlash against feminism, which can also be seen in such events as the shooting of college students in Santa Barbara by a young man who felt “entitled to sex”, etc. and 4) what does it mean to us as a society that we consider humiliation, torture, and violence “sexy”?
Here’s a powerful one: https://www.mamamia.com.au/rogue/fifty-shades-of-grey-review-rosie-waterland/
I also saw a great photo of Colin Firth in all his Edwardian glory, and the subtitle said:
“you can keep Mr. Gray – I’ll take Mr. Darcy”!
Thanks for the link. I’ll check it out!