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 Ana also found Mr. Grey’s unknown side — that 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 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 raise huge worldwide repercussions. As a country where sex keeps being a concealed topic while Fifty Shades of Grey has been one of the first movies that contains a relatively high amount of sexual scenes, the movie has raised a huge influence in China, especially the attention of middle-aged women. The reason why Fifty Shades of Grey raises such a huge influence in both markets in China and America, not only is the magnificent and aesthetic sexual scenes that raise Chinese people’s concealed appeal to sex but the representation of an ideal form of romantic relationship in this movie that signifies a Chinese women’s escape from the gender role and pursuit of the freedom to express their physical and sexual desire.
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.）In China, under the influence of the Great Cultural Revolution, the Chinese society is in a social environment that is shameful of mentioning sex at the end of the 20th century, and people even pursuing asceticism.（Li Yin He Xing Xue Xin De) However, when entering the 21st Century, Chinese society experienced a big change in sexualism: sex gradually become a topic that can be discussed in the public, and is becoming more publicized when the advertisement of 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. (the transition between this paragraph and the next?)
Somebody may claim that it is the sex 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 displays a relatively large amount of sexual scenes. However, Fifty Shades of Grey is more like porn for women which makes it especially accepted by Chinese women. In the whole movie, the sex scene is no longer than in the total of half an hour, and there 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 to the whole scene but choose to feature certain reactions of the female character’s other body parts like feet or her facial expression, 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, the director will also choose to only reveal the sound 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 get 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 their 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 said shamefully to discuss sex. But at the same time, the came of 21st century encourage female to express themselves bravely, and they should maintain the same status with their husbands. In this way, we can say that the middle-aged woman in China is a group of people with a combination of conventional thought and the willingness to get out of the cage. So Fifty Shades of grey not only fulfills the sexual desire of women but also does not directly reveals those scenes that allows women to freely imagine without being shown with direct shots, which 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 preference of Chinese women.
More importantly, besides the obvious sexual element, 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, 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 control 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. For the women in China who is suppressed in both family and in the whole society, the relationship depicted by Fifty Shades of Grey granted female a right and a way to imagine and pursue the relationship that enables them to express both their physical and emotional wants.
In the last part of the movie when Anastasia decides to leave Christian pushes the movie and the female audience’s emotion to another climax. The decision of leaving a good partner due to her own unwillingness to do the things she doesn’t want 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’s real flies away from the cage, which will help women to reach self-independence.
The reason why Fifty Shades of Grey wins over other romantic movies is that it is a movie that successfully combines romantic love and sexuality. This movie 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 to the relationship. The form of 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 New York time: “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 perfect relationship, not to mention women who have been suppressed for a long time.
The coming up of Fifty Shades of Grey is a key for Chinese women to go out of the cage 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 of global feminism that women step out to freely pursue their own physical and mental desire, which made the movie a big success all over the world.
References
He, Li yin. Li Yin He Xing Xue Xin De. Shi Dai Wen Yi Chu Ban She, 2008.
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.
