Part of the fascination is that the people who are usually all "BUT THINK OF THE CHILDREN!" are talking about how excited they are for the release, while some of the other folks who usually oppose the censorship crowd have gotten all bent out of shape about it. And on the surface, their arguments do have legitimate concerns.
It's seen as glorifying rape. The BDSM crowd sees it as a poor depiction of their community. Throw in the usual forces that will always oppose films made by women for women, and there is quite an outcry.
But here is the thing: we are talking about a piece of fantasy... and that changes how the piece is to be approached. And it is something that is routinely missed by all the articles that bash 50 Shades. It is an extreme version of Romantic Comedy behavior... perceived in Real Life, the behavior of Christian Grey is criminal, full stop. But how is that any different than, well MOST of the "fantasy romance" films that you can find on the market at any given time?
50 Shades is a fantasy piece. Christian Grey does not EXIST separate from that fantasy. When the protagonist wants him to keep going regardless of what she says, he does, because he is literally controlled by those desires. In BDSM terms, it is the best kind of "scene" there is, because everyone participating knows exactly their role and plays it perfectly, so that the vocalizations are just window dressing. There is no real risk... it's all in the head, and (mostly) everyone knows it. You may as well say that Superman comics are a risk because people might think they can fly.
Now typically I would be very (and I mean VERY) nervous about this form of argument. "It's just in fun!" is dangerous reasoning, and a kind I often condemn. And I don't here, and here is why:
50 Shades of Grey was written by a woman, for women, and is (hugely) popular almost exclusively among women. I find that difficult to argue with. Were this a piece written by a man for men, then it would be HUGELY problematic, because then it becomes rape apologia. But it isn't, and we KNOW that, because rape and sexual assault is a threat faced by every woman, every day. And if the women who read this were comfortable reading it (or even found it exciting,) then it is clear that Rape Glorification is NOT what is actually going on here, even if, when you parse it out, that is what would be happening if this story occurred in the real world. For whatever reason, this fantasy worked for a lot of people because it was fantasy, not Rape apologia (which the female audience would not have stood for) or BDSM marketing (which it wasn't sold as or really read as.)
Now none of this makes 50 Shades good. It can still be a bad movie based on a bad book. But people like bad movies and bad books all the time, for their own reasons. It is time to recognize that our differences over 50 Shades are ultimately based on taste, not on the inherent "danger" of the piece.
There are lots of works of fantasy out there. And while 50 Shades very definitely isn't mine (or lots of other peoples on the forums I inhabit) the articles I have read that condemn it for reasons outside of taste do so in ways that portray the books and movie to be something that they're not. Breaking down the actions of Christian Grey to show how it's really all just rape ignores the core premise of 50 Shades... which is that as the story was written by a woman, for women, with a predominantly female audience, it is actually E.L. James (and her author surrogate Ana) who controls every moment of every scene. Christian is HER toy, not the other way around, and through her, the toy of every woman who enjoyed the books and movie.
We may not like the scene she had him play out, and that is our choice. But pretending that it wasn't her choice to play it in the first place is a step in the wrong direction for people who value female agency in media.
No comments:
Post a Comment