Smut and the Sociologist: A New Study of Fifty Shades of Grey 

Review of the book Hard-Core Romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Best-Sellers, and Society by Eva Illouz 

I am not really up to speed on soft porn. Therefore, I may be the only person in the English-speaking world who has not read the now notorious bestseller Fifty Shades of Grey. But I was curious as to why so many people (mostly women, apparently) have. Therefore, I have just devoted the roughly 90 minutes it takes to read the book by the sociologist Eva Illouz about it called Hard-Core Romance “Fifty Shades of Grey,” Best-Sellers, and Society.

Illouz makes a quite convoluted argument in her book that female readers like Fifty Shades of Grey because male-female romantic and/or sexual relations are so fraught with uncertainty nowadays that women find depictions of BDSM practices (i.e., bondage and discipline, dominance and submission, sadism and masochism) to be somehow comforting and empowering. All I can say is, ugh.

Weaknesses of the Book

Let’s start with the weaknesses of the book.

My confidence in Illouz as a guide to literary history and of the publishing industry was shaken at the start of the book by her statement about the publishing biz in the immediate aftermath of WWII, “This period marked the first time that publishers began operating as real businesses…” Well, so much for the great publishing houses of Victorian Britain or the vibrant publishing scene in the US from around 1920-1945. I guess Scribner’s, Knopf, Random House and Doubleday weren’t “real businesses.”

As a somewhat intelligent woman, I also found much of the book surprisingly sexist in tone, depicting women as hyperemotional nincompoops. Illouz writes, for example, “Fifty Shades of Grey represents the ultimate triumph of a female point of view in culture, preoccupied with love and sexuality, with emotions, with the possibility (or impossibility) of forming enduring loving bonds with a man, and with the intertwining of pain and pleasure in romantic and sexual relationships.” Speak for yourself, sister.

The most important weakness of the book is to be found in its major argument. That is, again, Illouz’s contention that reading about or participating in BDSM is a pathway to personal fulfilment for women. Coming from a rather sheltered background, I can’t really speak from experience on that topic. But Illouz’s argument does seems to me to be dangerous rot. Illouz tells us, “BDSM is thus the center of a narrative formula in which it is in fact a form of sexual self-help, which in turn makes reading Fifty Shades a supreme act of modern selfhood: an act of self-empowerment and self-improvement.” Getting enchained is an act of self-improvement?

Ironically, the rest of the book only weakens Illouz’s argument. How? Because she does a marvelous job telling what the main characters are like and what they spend their time doing. Ana is a rather blah young woman, apparently, who falls for the incredibly wealthy, highly controlling Christian who likes putting Ana into handcuffs and so on. Ana, according to Illouz, blossoms as a result of this treatment and becomes a more confident, ever more accomplished woman and Christian remains incredibly wealthy and becomes a sort of sensitive New Age guy who, nevertheless, seems to want to monitor Ana’s every move. Illouz is a serious scholar and dutifully cites thinkers as diverse as Pierre Bourdieu and Malcolm Gladwell. And yet she seems to endorse the sick-making argument of Fifty Shades of Grey that the path to professional fulfillment and true love for women is dotted with whips, chains and a wide array of sex toys of the man’s choosing.

Who Should Read This Book

There are several possible audiences for this book. Certainly, devotees of Fifty Shades of Grey will find it interesting as will those interested in pop culture and best sellerdom in our day. Librarians and teachers of literature will find much of interest in it, particularly in light of the news that Harlequin will soon become a division of News Corp.’s HarperCollins. Romance novels (which Fifty Shades of Grey basically is) are big business and fanfic (which is how Fifty Shades of Grey got its start) is starting to garner scholarly attention. Therefore, those interested in publishing trends will want to read this book (which is only around 97 pages long). I didn’t (as you may have gathered) much like its characterization of women. But women I know and respect have read Fifty Shades of Grey and Illouz does have some interesting things to say about how complex matters have gotten for heterosexual women in terms of finding mates who are loving and desirable as life partners. And serious studies of wildly successful trashy books merit our attention vis-à-vis because of what both indicate about the state of our society and culture.