My first taste of Fifty Shades
Sex-negativity and regressive mores laid the groundwork that turned E.L. James into a titan… and a monster
Throughout my professional career, I’ve been a bit of a jack-of-all-trades (something true of more than a few Content Strategists, I note).
For a time, I covered movies/entertainment for The Daily Cougar and BackStageOL, which primarily consisted of attending advance press screenings and writing reviews.
I got a taste of my old life again Thursday night when I attended the Sly Fox #FSFHou screening of Fifty Shades Freed at the Edwards Grand Palace in Greenway Plaza (terrific venue, btw — highly recommend).
It was a packed house, thanks to at least 40 or 50 104.1 KRBE contest winners, plus the bloggers and reviewers from the various media outlets, and the energy in the room was intense: a giddy, throbbing hum of… something. Nervous energy?
Over the course of the next 105 minutes, as I encountered E.L. James’ opus for the first — and last — time, I was perplexed by how the house and I could have such radically different reactions to the material.
Baffled.
I pretty much knew I wouldn’t like the film. I also knew the franchise had a devoted, passionate fan base.
But it wasn’t until I was sitting in the theater, reacting so differently to the same stream of images and sound, that I felt the enormity of that divide. Were we watching the same movie?
And, just as importantly, what does it mean that we, as a consumer-culture, have compensated James to the tune of nearly $100 million for her Fifty Shades franchise?
Some pre-reading readings:
You needn’t read these to appreciate what I’m about to say, for the record. They’re well worth reading anyway, though.
I was a Creative Writing major in college, which is probably why I feel like no discussion of Fifty Shades of Grey can start anywhere but here:
I sincerely never understood what the Fifty-Shades fuss (#FiftyShadesFuss) was about. Erotica has been around for, like, a while, and not only did James not reinvent the wheel with Fifty Shades, she stole the wheel, then didn’t bother to affix her own name and branding to it until it had already lived for several months as an X-rated tale of Twilight’s Edward and Bella penned by one (not making this up, I swear) Snowqueens Icedragon*.
While we’re on the subject: Names are definitely not James’ strong suit; what is her strong suit is unclear. Branding and merchandising, maybe.
Maybe I’m a snob (fine with it), but I think the discussion of Fifty Shades of Grey as literature, fiction or a creative endeavor begins and ends with the fact that Fifty Shades is not (really) James’ intellectual property (not that Stephenie Meyer should be especially proud of the Twilight IP, per se, but at least it is her IP).
I’m not at all opposed to fan fiction for what it is. Go nuts! In fact, if erotic fan fiction is what you’re after, I have great news: Literotica and ASSTR are still up and running (looking much the same as they did in the late 90s):
Are they great-looking sites? No.
But ‘Master of the Universe’ by Snowqueens Icedragon (…) wasn’t exactly blowing anyone away with its design philosophy, either. Didn’t exactly boast Avatar-level production quality. Was objectively rougher and less-professional-looking in every conceivable way than the website I designed in my middle-school gifted-and-talented class (I wish I could find it so badly — I’d happily link to it or post screenshots; it was Gundam Wing-themed, to give you a little peek into how great it would be to see it now).
You get my point. It seems like those are things we really don’t require of textual erotica**. I don’t know about you (yet! feel free to leave a response and correct that), but if I’m seeking out erotic fiction or other text-based erotica — which I definitely do, by the way, and not infrequently — I don’t especially care about the bells and whistles. If I wanted gloss, shine, crystal-clear resolution, etc., I could just choose from any of a functionally-infinite stream of HD pornographic video (by one Redditor’s curiously-detailed calculations, roughly 10,000 total years).
**Textual Erotica: great band name. You’re welcome.
What I want from erotic text is… well, eroticism. And that’s one of my biggest issues with the Fifty Shades franchise, at least as I understand it. I don’t find anything I’ve seen or heard particularly titillating.
I can only speak for myself, of course, but I found the film to be decidedly un-sexy. The sex scenes (which were legion and felt obligatory and/or perfunctory) were so joyless and rote, I found myself checking my phone, going over my notes (look for the photos of my actual notes at the end of the story — it’ll give you some insight into my state of mind Thursday night), etc., during sex scenes, and I’m not someone who blushes and looks away, as a rule. Quite the opposite, in fact. I definitely wasn’t averting my eyes...
I was just flat-out bored (“How LONG is this movie??” near the end of my notes is a dead giveaway).
And maybe I’m way off base here, having just seen the one movie, but…
THE ACTUAL SEX IS SO VANILLA AND TAME!
Now, there is absolutely nothing wrong with vanilla/tame sex — and much that is right — but consider the tone of all the cross-promotional, Fifty-Shades-branded sex toys, BDSM accouterments, clothing… Wait, hold that thought. Oh my god. I just realized…
E.L. James is erotica’s George Lucas. What he did within the realm of science-fiction, she’s doing for porn (i.e. producing a bloated, over-marketed, creatively-bankrupt [credit to Red Letter Media’s Rich Evans for the turn of phrase] franchise that exists purely for the purpose of raking in as much money as possible for as long as possible).
Wow, that blew my mind…
But back to my point: the Fifty Shades movies are billed, marketed and discussed as edgy, erotic, boundary-pushing, etc.
They’re not. Not even close.
Similarly to the way Elvis (along with Sam Phillips) was celebrated as an innovator for what essentially amounts to unabashed, for-profit cultural appropriation, James is often written about as though she’s tackling tough subjects, fighting on the fringe, saying important things, being loud and agitative and activist about sexual freedom, etc.
Make no mistake — she’s doing none of those things. Not with Fifty Shades, nor through any other medium, as far as I can tell.
Consider the 1995 Paul Verhoeven film, Showgirls.
Now, Showgirls is not a good movie (22% on Rotten Tomatoes, which seems generous), but Fifty Shades Freed makes it look like Citizen fucking Kane by comparison.
There are a number of distressing parallels between Showgirls and Fifty Shades, but both are bad examples and both have made tons of money for their creators. You’ll not go poor catering to the lowest common denominator, it seems.
Though Showgirls was officially a box-office flop (the only American wide-release of an NC-17 film; a major reason why studios go back and forth with the MPAA over mere seconds of footage to ensure an R-rating), it enjoyed a profitable second act on home release, and is now one of MGM’s top-20 bestsellers. I’ve previously alluded to E.L. James’ fortune.
Showgirls, which pits women against one another, depicts a violent sexual assault, gleefully puts its protagonist in sexual harm’s way and revels in putting the many women it employed on display, was made for a budget of $45 million in 1995, roughly $74 million adjusted for inflation. Fifty Shades Freed had a $55 million budget.
Showgirls’ Joe Esterhaz was advanced $2 million for the idea he scrawled on a napkin (“JESSIE FROM SBTB AS A STRIPPER,” I presume), then handed another $1.7 to complete the script, a total of about $6 million adjusted for inflation.
And for what?
Y Tu Mama Tambien and Swimming Pool are two very good movies, both intensely erotic (your mileage may vary). They sit at 92% and 84% on Rotten Tomatoes, respectively, and though they have their flaws and detractors, they’re generally regarded as fine films. They combined to earn $36 million.
Twilight’s five films (and we’ve already established why Twilight and Fifty Shades are, shall we say, ‘comparable’) had budgets totaling $385M, which they turned into more than $3.3B (with a b).
There is a lot of money to be made capitalizing on — and perpetuating — patriarchal modalities.
And to return to my earlier point: they’re not that sexy!
I think Dakota Johnson and Jamie Dornan are perfectly nice to look at, for what that’s worth. Dornan is definitely the eye-candy in the third film, which jibes with the target demo, and he looks gorgeous (even off-puttingly so if, like me, you’re not as fit or body-positive as you’d like to be), with the glistening, toned physique of a swimsuit model.
But I don’t consider Swimsuit Illustrated to be especially erotic, either. The models are incredibly attractive, of course (credit to ESPN for their Body Issue — not because it doesn’t objectify its subjects, which it definitely does, but because it does so in as close-to-equal a fashion for men and women as I’ve seen), but there’s a lot of daylight in between ‘that’s an attractive person’ and ‘wow, I’m turned on…’ and it’s the spaces in-between where Fifty Shades and E.L. James flounder most spectacularly.
The characters seem to fuck right on schedule, as though some script supervisor with sex-it-up marching orders went through with a red pen and made certain there was some kind of sex scene every 10 pages. And he was probably considerably more passionate and worked-up in doing so than Dornan or Johnson were while naked on-camera together.
We’re never really given any buildup or motivation or explanation for anything that happens. Whenever I realized we were back in the Red House of Pain or whatever he called his dungeon, I’d think, ‘oh, must have been a while since the last sex scene,’ because there was usually no other discernible, intelligent reason for them to be there.
That’s a pretty basic plotting problem: what are the characters’ motivations? I was asked that constantly in my undergraduate CW workshops, and to anyone who has spent time honing their craft with other competent writers, it’s pretty second-nature to always, always have those motivations and wants and drives in the back of one’s head as one writes.
Pardon my french, but who the fuck exactly is Anastasia Steele?
The names are a definite problem. Anastasia Steele, Christian Grey, Boyce Fox, Mia Grey, Rhian Flynn, Elena Lincoln, Jack Hyde… I get the feeling James is of the Ginsberg first-thought, best-thought school of ‘spontaneous and fearless writing.’ I will definitely affirm that James’ prose feels ‘spontaneous.’ And given she had the audacity to pull her 900-page Twilight-themed PDF off the hosting site, barely scrub over the names, and walk away from Sony’s $5M offer like she was insulted, I’d say ‘fearless’ is accurate, too, though I might term it ‘brazen.’
I’m going to ‘spoil’ the hell out of Fifty Shades Freed, to the extent one even can. Heads up, and look alive.
At the risk of jumping around, there’s a moment that might seem insignificant, but it blew my mind: Ana asks Christian if she can drive his ostentatious sports car (evidently an Audi — for some laughs, check out how the comments spiral into absurdity on this Cars in Fifty Shades wiki post), and he says no.
She gives him ‘that look,’ and doubles down: I said, I want to drive.
Smash cut to:
It’s ALWAYS the person getting their way. That’s a very classic setup-punchline structure. It’s the whole reason to have the argument/debate/conflict leading up to that moment where the ostensibly more powerful/authoritative character definitively puts his foot down…
And the next shot’s joke is that it doesn’t matter when he puts his foot down.
BUT CHRISTIAN IS DRIVING AFTER THE SMASH CUT.
That was the first of numerous (too many to count) moments that prompted me to ask, in retrospect, ‘okay, what was the point of everything leading up to this, then?’
Answer: unclear.
Adam White’s piece for The Telegraph starts out precisely as I prescribe: by delving into Fifty Shades’ (pardon me) shady past.
When EL James thrust her Twilight fan fiction into the laps of erotically-malnourished readers in 2011, spurting all kinds of wonky metaphors and baffling inner monologues into the literary world, she created a monster.
‘Monster’ works on several levels, including as a description of James, herself. She demanded full veto power of director, writer, casting, marketing and locations, and signed with Universal Pictures and Focus Features because Focus’ ‘back catalogue of prestige adult drama… mirrored her novels.’
Bold. The aforementioned Swimming Pool is a Focus Feature adult prestige drama, and James evidently considers Fifty Shades in that class.
There’s plenty of evidence that isn’t the case:
“I wanted to remove a lot of the dialogue. I felt it could be a really sexy film if there wasn’t so much talking in it.” -Kelly Marcel, Fifty Shades of Grey screenwriter
Marcel and James reportedly clashed over numerous issues, with the Fifty Shades author fighting to keep the so-called ‘used tampon’ scene (maybe the best example of Ana’s distressing lack of agency, with Christian deciding he wants to have sex and yanking her tampon out so he can).
James even advocated for Robert Pattinson as Christian Grey after Ryan Gosling — the studio’s pick — passed. Famously, Charlie Hunnam (of Sons of Anarchy) wanted to make major changes, and Marcel’s quote is hilariously telling:
“I know that Charlie had a lot of notes,” Marcel has said. “I know that he felt that the character of Christian wasn’t there for him in the way that he needed him to be.”
No kidding.
For that matter, neither is Ana. As HuffPo’s Carey Purcell writes:
In order to be Christian’s submissive, Anastasia is expected to sign a lengthy and detailed contract that, amongst other requirements, requires that she exercise four days a week with a trainer that Christian provides (and who will report to Christian on her progress), eat only from a list of foods Christian supplies her with, get eight hours of sleep a night and begin taking a form of birth control so Christian will not have to wear condoms. Anastasia negotiates a few terms of the contract with Christian (she only wants to work out three days a week, not four), but all of her negotiations are only within his framework — none of the terms are hers independently. Nothing in their relationship is hers as an independent.
The question that I kept asking myself as I read the books was why Anastasia stayed with Christian, and the answer I found was that she has absolutely no sense of self worth. She only feels sexy when he says she is, and when he insults or patronizes her, she accepts what he says as the truth. One of the passages that disgusted me the most was when Anastasia was at a club with Christian, dancing and thinking to herself that she never felt sexy before she met him and that he had given her confidence in her body. Yes, being with a partner who frequently compliments you can increase your confidence, but Anastasia went from zero to one hundred thanks to Christian. None of that came from within herself. Because of his influence on her, nothing in her life came from herself — her job, her home, her way of life, or even her self-esteem.
Annoyingly, when Ana discovers that she is pregnant — against Christian’s wishes — there is never a thought given to terminating the pregnancy. In the universe the movie posits, it would seem it’s not even an option. Nope. It just happened to her, and that’s that.
One critique I see a lot is that, ‘Christian Grey doesn’t view Anastasia Steele as a person’ — but, honestly, how could he? She isn’t. Not remotely.
Look, I’m not here to tell you not to enjoy Fifty Shades. I am here to tell you that every facet of it, top to bottom, is objectively bad, and of exceptionally low quality. But if you can wring some pleasure out of a product, despite its poor quality, then who am I to stop you?
But please don’t think that Fifty Shades represents or promotes anything edifying, worthwhile or exciting — it’s a rehash of a very-common 1950s-style head-of-household power-exchange dynamic, rooted in the same sort of ‘when men were men and women were women’ nostalgia that won us our current president.
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with having those styles of fantasies or acting out those types of fantasies — whether you’re alone or with willing partners, I’m all for it! (‘Sex-positive’ is the most consistent keyword/descriptor in my employer Mystiq’s corporate mission statement, values, etc. and I should know — I put it there)
What’s uncomfortable for me, personally, is the enthusiasm and delight I saw from the crowd at Edwards Greenway Palace Thursday night, and the underlying assumption (whether implicit or explicit) that what they were celebrating was love/romance.
It isn’t.
I know plenty of kinky people, if you want to use that term (I don’t self-identify as such, but by most folks’ standards, the shoe probably fits). My social and professional circles aren’t exactly prudish. Trust me, it’s not the BDSM or the chains, whips, blindfolds or ball gags that trouble me (I’m with Rihanna on this one) — it’s the infusion of their structured, performative sex play into their marriage and day-to-day dynamic, and the WAY it was done (ineptly), that bother me.
Who is Anastasia Steele? It feels ridiculous to ask, and not just because of her name. Keep in mind that I’m judging the character based on one (torturous) viewing of Fifty Shades Freed and stuff I’ve read and heard, but I doubt if I cracked open FSoG and successfully made it through what I imagine is the literary equivalent of cross-country skiing that James would pleasantly (or ever) surprise me.
Sure, Grey is wealthy. Ana benefits from that constantly (and passively), and I intuitively grasp why elements of her lifestyle would be attractive. I have no problem with putting myself in the shoes of a female protagonist (figuratively or literally, hey-o!), except that these shoes are tiny. There’s too much of me — a real, thinking, breathing human being — to fit into whatever Ana Steele is.
She’s a boring, flat cartoon. Showgirls’ Nomi Malone was garish, coked-out and hyperactive, yes, but still a cartoon, and had the same problem.
Honestly, it’s our problem. In a capitalist economy like ours, the votes we cast with our dollars could be fairly said to outweigh those we cast at the polls.
That could be good news. The future of film probably doesn’t lie with the studios and the silver screen. While Hollywood box-office revenues dropped (to somewhere between $11.1B and $11.2B), Netflix’s soared (to $11.69B). According to Barron’s, Netflix will make more movies in 2018 than the six major studios combined.
“It’s not a sea change, it’s a tsunami,” said Jeff Bock, an analyst with Exhibitor Relations.
And Netflix (Stranger Things, Orange is the New Black, GLOW, I could go on…) has a better record of bringing compelling, whole female characters — both girls and women — to the screen than the major studios. Quite a better record.
It makes sense that an outdated, dying medium — the crowded, sticky-floored, teenaged-staffed movie theaters and the fatcat, sexual-harassment-prone studio executives that pump middling content onto the screens to fill them — would cling to outdated, dying stories and ideas with its last gasps.
But, given I saw a press-and-contest-winners screener of the film and have never otherwise engaged with it as a consumer (beyond flipping through a few pages at a Barnes & Noble, aghast), I haven’t contributed a dime to Hollywood’s (or the patriarchy’s) life support fund. And I’m a little proud of that.
Look, don’t feel bad if you really enjoy getting off to Fifty Shades. We all really enjoy getting off. If we were more open, unassuming, unguarded, nonjudgmental — more sex-positive — as a society, we would probably have better wide-release options for you. Fifty Shades, like 1995’s Showgirls, is something of a phenomenon because there really isn’t much else designed to titillate with the kind of reach James’ franchise has.
That’s sad, to me. One of my favorite tweeps, Dr. Liz Powell (follow Mystiq and me, while you’re at it), is known for saying, ‘Great sex can change the world.’
I believe that, and I also believe it needs changing.
That’s why The Sex-Positive Post exists. We want to find and celebrate progressive and dissenting voices, to amplify and accelerate the kinds of discussions we know that this world — and this country, in particular — has to have.
We hope you’ll join us. You can start by clapping and/or commenting here, then subscribing by clicking the image below.
We can’t have these discussions alone.
[I left my notes at home this morning — I know I promised photos; will edit later today and get them up here, so check back if you’re curious]
