[Not A Fiction] On Fifty Shades of Grey
A popular occupation is arguing about Fifty Shades of Grey without having read it. I also haven’t read Fifty Shades of Grey, because I am aware of the briefness of life and the inevitability of death. However, I’ve watched two of the movies, which I understand to be faithful adaptations of the novel (very much against the will of the directors and actors). So I can say confidently that everyone is misunderstanding the plot.
The plot of Fifty Shades of Grey is not that a billionaire whisks an ordinary woman away to be his sex slave and then has lots of hot, dubiously consensual kinky sex with her. Many books that actually have this premise exist; some of them are quite good. Fifty Shades of Grey is not one of them.
A very common plotline in romance novels and shippy fanfic goes something like this: There exists a Man. He is very Sad. Perhaps the only woman who ever loved him died. Perhaps he has been falsely accused of a crime he didn’t commit. Perhaps he simply had a very bad childhood. The Sad has caused the Man to be, in some fashion, an Unsuitable Boyfriend. Perhaps the Man is unable to open up his heart to love, for fear that he will be hurt again. Perhaps he is bitter, angry, and mean. Or perhaps he simply has post-traumatic stress disorder.
But wait! Here comes a Love Interest. He/she/they love the Man with a love that is selfless and pure. The power of the Love Interest’s love is so great that it fixes the Sad. Now the Man can speak about his feelings! Now the Man can cope with his flashbacks through the power of the only grounding technique fanfic authors know! Now the Man doesn’t fly into rages! Now the Love Interest and the Man have a glorious and multiply orgasmic sex life together!
Fifty Shades of Grey has that plot. Christian Grey had a traumatic childhood. When he was fifteen, he had a relationship with an older woman who introduced him to BDSM. BDSM allowed him to control the rage and out-of-control emotions he had because of his childhood. It allowed him to have sexual relationships in a regimented way, where he didn’t have to worry about feeling emotional intimacy that made him feel unsafe.
And then he meets Ana and he drops all her rules for her. She is so special, and the power of her love is so great, that he’s willing to have vanilla sex with her. That he has a relationship with her even though she hasn’t signed the contract. That he can’t bear to be without her, so he stalks her. He tries to control her as part of a desperate attempt to maintain the emotional distance that protects him. He sexually assaults her to return the relationship to the sub/dom footing that he feels comfortable with. But Ana loves him so much that he realizes that he doesn’t need BDSM contracts and sexual assault to be safe. He’s safe just being with her.
Christian Grey’s abusiveness1 and his kink are, to E. L. James, the same thing: the need to obsessively control his relationships so he can’t get hurt. Christian Grey’s kinkiness isn’t desirable. It’s a sign of how broken he is. The fantasy isn’t living a life of decadent perversion; it’s being able to fix a man’s sexual fetishes through the power of your magic healing vagina.
Ana goes through her own arc. She begins absurdly sexually repressed. Christian Grey introduces her to the world of BDSM. She rejects most of it—understanding that most BDSM is a substitute for emotional intimacy—but discovers that some BDSM is actually hot. Christian Grey sexually awakens her, even as she cures his kinkiness. They wind up at the objectively correct level of kink: light bondage and a bit of spanking. This kind of parallel arc—one person is too X, one person is too Y, they meet in the middle—is extremely common in romances of all kinds.
Understanding the plot of Fifty Shades of Grey clarifies numerous points that people are mystified about, such as Christian Grey’s abusiveness, Ana’s lack of interest in kink, the series’s equivocal attitude towards BDSM, and the fact that none of the sexual assault scenes are especially hot. I hope that this blog post will improve your future arguments about a book series you haven’t read.
Except the stalking, which is because he loves her so much that he can’t leave her alone.