Fifty Shades of Grey: A Gender Revolution of Chinese Women
Fifty Shades of Grey, a romantic movie that came up to the theatre around the world on February 13, 2015, a day before Valentine’s. This movie talks about a college girl, Anastasia Steele (Ana) is crushed by a young and successful entrepreneur, Christian Grey. They soonly fell in love, and Christian maintained a good boyfriend and treated Ana well. But in their relationship, Ana found Mr. Grey’s unknown side — he is obsessed with BDSM (a variety of often erotic practices or roleplaying involving bondage, discipline, dominance and submission, sadomasochism, and other related interpersonal dynamics). In the beginning, Ana tries to conform to Christian’s BDSM practice to her, but later she found this is not what she wants from a romantic relationship, so she asks for a breakup with Mr. Grey. When this movie first came to the theatre around the world, it raised huge worldwide repercussions about the sexualism and romantic love in this movie.
China is a country where sex keeps being a concealed topic, and Fifty Shades of Grey has been one of the first movies that contains a relatively high amount of sexual scenes. However, the movie has surprisingly raised a strong influence in China, especially draw the attention of middle-aged women. Why does this seem to be a movie that cannot be fitted in drew such much attention and especially to this specific group of people? The reason not only is the magnificent and aesthetic sexual scenes that appeal to Chinese people’s concealed attraction to sex but the perfect combination of ideally romantic love and sexual relationship in this movie signifies a Chinese women’s escape from the gender role and pursuit of the freedom to express their physical and sexual desire. Fifty Shades of Grey creates a new form of love — “sex on bed, love off the bed” (http://ent.163.com/special/grey/) that caters to the be-oppressed Chinese female’s ultimate imagination relationship. The unique form of the movie enables the audience to enjoy both visual shock and imagination of a perfect partner and relationship that can fulfill their desire. Just like what is being said by the New York Times: “A fantasy that even many of its critics want to believe in, and the utopia that our society deserves,” that all people around the world can’t stop themselves from a free imagination of the perfect relationship described in the movie, not to mention women who have been suppressed for a long time.
Somebody may claim that it is the sexual scene in Fifty Shades of Grey that attracts Chinese people’s attention. Yes, we can’t deny the truth that this movie is one of the few movies that display a relatively large amount of sexual scenes. However, Fifty Shades of Grey is more like porn specially made for women. In the whole movie, the time span of sex scenes is no longer than a total of half an hour, and they are sometimes not direct at all. For example, at the 43 minutes of the movie when the two main characters first had sex, the director didn’t give a panoramic view of the whole scene but choose to feature certain reactions of the female character’s other body parts like feet or her facial expression like frowning, the shot is also under a dark environment that gives people a hazy feeling that enables people to explore their imagination by themselves. During the BDSM scene, especially, the director will also choose to only play the sound of a whip or the groan with the feature of feet tension or facial expressions of the characters instead of a direct shot. This movie is commented by some male audience that “This is what you show me when I already get my pants off?”
However, things are totally different for women, especially middle-aged women in China. Compare to Americans’ openness to sexualism at a young age, females in China, especially middle-aged females, who were born from 1960 to 1980, are taught to follow the “Women’s Moral Code” that has been hands down from generation to generation in China for more than a thousand years. The “Women’s Moral Code” mainly includes “never fight back against the beat and scold from husband, always conform to the husband, and never get divorced”(Southern Weekly), and they are also not allowed to show their body and will be regarded as shameless to discuss sex. But at the time when Fifty Shades of Grey came to the Chinese society in 2015, the Chinese society is experiencing a huge social transformation. (Xing Zhi Bian: 21 Shi Ji Zhongguo Ren De Xing Sheng Huo.) When entering the 21st Century, Chinese society went on a big change in sexualism: sex gradually became a topic that can be discussed in the public and is becoming more publicized when the advertisement for female hygiene aid and sexual medication is displayed repeatedly during prime time on TV. Meanwhile, women’s status is also being lifted when people start to focus on women’s life qualities. Women are going from being concealed in the family and blamed for expressing themselves to bravely showing their bodies in the public and pursuing their own physical and psychological desire in Chinese society. So Fifty Shades of Grey not only fulfills the sexual desire of women but also does not directly reveals those scenes, which allows women to freely imagine about sex without being shown with direct shots. Hence the filming style is in along with Chinese conventional idea. We can say that Fifty Shades of Grey is like “porn for Women” that exactly caters to the personality and preferences of Chinese women.
More importantly, besides the obvious sexual elements, the movie Fifty Shades of Grey portrays an ideal partner and romantic relationship for females in China. In the movie, the male character Christian Grey represents a perfect partner that probably exists in the dream of every woman: handsome, rich, maintaining a good fit, caring, performing well both on the bed and off the bed. He is a dream partner even just standing there without doing anything. Even though in their relationship, Christian seems to be the one leading and bossier, and he also plays the dominant role in their sexual relationship, the female character Ana is the one who “enjoys the service”. In their sexual relationship, moreover, for example, although Ana is the one who bears the punishment and tries to accept a concept that she never experienced before, on the other hand, Ana is also the one who actually controls the relationship since she has the right to stop whenever she is uncomfortable, and she can freely express her sexual desire while Christian will answer almost all of her request. In daily life, also, Christian always takes care of Ana, and his bossy side will actually gain females a sense of safety. A bossy and rich man that so much cares about and obsessed with a college girl is relationship is already in against with conventional “man leading” love relationship. For the women in China who is suppressed in both family and in the whole society, the relationship depicted in Fifty Shades of Grey grants female a right and offer them an opportunity to imagine and pursue the perfect relationship to express both their physical and emotional wants.
In the last part of the movie, when Anastasia tried the BDSM practice of whip which Christian usually did before, she found that this practice gives her nothing but pain, and this is not the form of relationship that she wants or even bears. Thus, although she is in love with Christian, Ana decides to leave for her own feelings and happiness. This decision pushes the movie and the female audience’s emotions to another climax. The decision of leaving a good partner due to her own unwillingness to do the things that she felt bad about represents that female has the right to reject the things they don’t want, which is extremely important for Chinese women who have long been taught never to fight back against their husband. This rejection means a woman real flies away from the cage of gender roles and stereotypes in the relationship, which helps women to reach self-independence.
The coming up of Fifty Shades of Grey is a key for Chinese women to go out of the prison that is built by Chinese conventional ideas and the gender role that constrains all women’s freedom to express themselves. The huge influence of the movie around the globe also signifies a milestone for global feminism. The research found that after the came out of Fifty Shades of Grey, female audiences tend to “had higher levels of ambivalent, benevolent, and hostile sexism” and think that “women should be cherished and protected by men”(Altenburger, Lauren E., 2016). Instead of strengthening stereotypical gender roles, this change in mindset represents females gaining a more open attitude toward sexualism and their physical and mental desire. In this way, female rights and status are further empowered around the whole world and represent women’s step further to escape the cage of gender. This is what really makes the movie a big success all over the world.
References
Altenburger, Lauren E., et al. “Sexist Attitudes among Emerging Adult Women Readers of Fifty Shades Fiction.” Archives of Sexual Behavior, vol. 46, no. 2, 2016, pp. 455–464., https://doi.org/10.1007/s10508-016-0724-4.
Pan, Suiming, and Yingying Huang. Xing Zhi Bian: 21 Shi Ji Zhongguo Ren De Xing Sheng Huo. Zhongguo Ren Min Da Xue Chu Ban She, 2013.
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