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Review - 'Fifty Shades Of Grey' Is Abusive Gender Roles Disguised As Faux-Feminism
2/13/2015
Mark Hughes
50 Shades of Grey, adapted from the novel of the same name, brings us a decidedly strict definition of “be mine.” The novel started off as erotic fan fiction based on the Twilight series and evolved into an original story that gained a massive audience. E.L. James’ best seller is adapted here by director Sam Taylor-Johnson, using Kelly Marcel’s screenplay.
Taylor-Johnson is an artist with one other feature film, the impressive Nowhere Boy, about John Lennon’s early life. Marcel (working with Sue Smith) wrote a fantasticscript for Saving Mr. Banks, full of adult emotion and characters who win and break your heart. With 50 Shades of Grey, Marcel was smart to discard a lot from the book, but she still had to rely on the source material, and the studio wanted a direct adaptation. So, as you read my review, keep in mind everyone involved worked with what they had and they’re talented people whose other work greatly impresses me.
Opening weekend is going to be big, as we’ve known for some time now. Just how big remains to be seen. Its Thursday take was nearly $9 million, a big sum and a sign that the weekend and four-day totals will be impressive. You can read Scott Mendelson’s full report on the early numbers here, and he offers a great assessment of the different possible scenarios and comparisons.
Current estimates are between $60-65 million in North America alone for the weekend. There’s a chance it might go higher, since buzz is building and many uncertain folks will end up turning out. Advance ticket sales are overwhelmingly dominated by female viewers, and there will likewise be additional female viewers who show up on opening weekend with other female friends or with significant others, making the overall turnout probably 65-70% female this weekend.
It’s Valentines Day weekend, too, And it’s a long weekend, remember, since Monday is a federal holiday. So I won’t be surprised, then, if the final figures come in closer to the $70 million range domestically for Friday through Sunday, and it’s likely to top that number over the entire four-day period. With foreign release coming over the same four days, it’ll more than recoup its $40 million budget this weekend, and likely pay off its marketing bill by the end of the second weekend, if not mid-week, depending on how well it plays overseas (remember the overly simplistic but useful generalization is, the studio gets about half of the box office from ticket sales).
What kind of legs it develops depends largely on word of mouth, and it’s probably fair to say at least a sizable portion of fans of the novel will enthusiastically recommend the film and even go back for a second viewing. So I think it has fairly good odds of having a strong run overall. That said, I also think the bad reviews plus the likely negative word of mouth it’ll get from a lot of non-fans, and from some fans who don’t like the changes from the book (or who are bothered by the simple fact their own imagination isn’t adequately represented on screen), will be a factor that limits just how high it can climb up the box office ladder. And there’s a lot of reason for that bad word of mouth, which I’ll get to in a moment.
All told, then, I’d say we’re probably looking at a final box office tally in the neighborhood of perhaps $150-180 million domestically, and about $300 million worldwide, on the modest end of predictions. It might perform higher domestically and in certain overseas markets, and manage a domestic tally in the $200 million range and $350-400 million globally, if it holds well and isn’t too front loaded on Thursday and Friday.
But an R-rated movie about bondage and kinky sex that’s getting bad reviews and opposition from many women’s organizations faces a lot of obstacles if it wants to climb beyond those numbers. Plus, it’s just not good enough to deserve higher returns, since it frankly doesn’t deserve the strong business it’s already destined to generate.
Why not? Read on, because there is oh so much to say about the “why…”
For a film that’s supposed to be about the collision between deep emotional need and raw human sexuality, it is cold and clinical to the point of feeling sterile in everything from aesthetics to characterization.
Dakota Johnson as Anastasia delivers a good enough performance (albeit with way too much lip-biting in almost every scene) and clearly is doing her best to transcend the low-rent story she’s trapped in, but it’s just not a compelling enough character and she’s ultimately stifled by the severe limitations of the material. Jamie Dornan has even less to work with in terms of character and cringe-worthy dialogue, and I was constantly reminded of how vastly better a performance he’s capable of when give decent material (such as The Fall). Here, he ends up lifeless and off-putting — to the point it’s just no fun and not interesting to watch. They lack chemistry together, and two primary concepts we needed to accept don’t work at all and thus instantly undermine everything in the picture — namely, that she’s a plain-looking average person most people don’t notice, and that he’s so absurdly handsome and intimidating everyone feels immediately awed by his presence.
But what really makes 50 Shades of Grey fail, even worse than lacking romantic/sexual heat and honest portrayals of human characters, are its terrible themes.
One poster (which you can see at the start of this review) says “Lose Control,” as if somehow what’s been lacking in cinematic female characterizations is turning over control to male characters. Women submitting to men, women’s narratives as subservient to men’s narratives — even male supporting characters — isn’t new, nor is it a radical concept to portray women as sex objects for men. The film seems to think that noting women can experience sexual gratification sometimes while playing typical subservient roles to male gratification is some kind of empowering message.
I suspect not a small selling point for the book and film has been its allure for some women suspicious of — or outright hostile to — feminism, because it promotes female “empowerment” within the safe culturally approved traditional female roles as submissive and as seeking a powerful Prince Charming to rescue them from “ordinary” lives. Find your pleasure through feeding the man’s sexual demands, it says. It also presents a female protagonist whose entire arc is actually to not-so-subtly serve the male supporting character’s arc, to feed his transformation in the story (this is literally even stated outright in the film, such is its clunky inability to deploy subtext in any fashion whatsoever) more than her own.
It is a “little revolution” so to speak, for women otherwise confined — willfully or not — to socially acceptable gender roles and expectations, as it provides an argument that there is happiness in slavery and that by submitting to a certain line and then holding back from the most extreme and (for mainstream folks) humiliating bondage, they are “asserting” themselves and taking control.
In the end, then, it teaches that women should seek pleasure in their submission most of the time, yet hold back just enough to claim a minor victory that can be said to save their male partners from complete immersion in objectifying fantasies. Just do most of it, and you’ll train your man to be more emotionally giving, in other words. It is teaching that emotional manipulation is acceptable and even desirable, so long as you pretend that drawing a line at the last minute of physical manipulation allows you to claim it’s all been your own decision.
Consider: Anastasia’s main character transformation and self-revelation is her discover that she (surprise!) enjoys sex, that she finds mild bedroom role-playing (wrists wrapped with a necktie, her eyes covered maybe) amusing and kinda fun once in a while, and that she doesn’t like being stalked and actually physically beaten. Her primary motivation is to get the powerful rich handsome emotionally distant man to want to cuddle her in bed after sex (literally, this is the main argument she repeatedly makes to signify her desire for more emotional closeness in their relationship). Christian’s character transformation, however, is about a severe abusive childhood that rendered him emotionally distant and unable to have a relationship not based on his need to abuse and punish women, but now he’s met a woman who is bringing out a desire to actually fall in love, and he is torn between his old self and this brand new self, and so he manipulates her and pushes her away only to pull her close again, and all the while she pretends to be standing up for herself for a few seconds only to quickly come running or stay away depending on his whims.
Her character development ultimately serves male fantasies of gender stereotypes, and her singular significant self-assertive moment in the relationship is when she proclaims she doesn’t like being beaten. It’s treated as a major step forward for her, as a self-discovery, as if saying “you don’t get to beat me until I cry in humiliation and pain” is the height of strength for her character. The proclamation isn’t mistaken or bad, it’s simply offensive that the film treats it as anything other than a presumed right and aspect of female characters to not want to abused and to deserve not to be abused. Even more offensive, though, is that she’s emotionally torn about it, and we are supposed to see Christian as a sympathetic character who has “issues” and whose intense need to abuse Anastasia is just an inner struggle for him to overcome eventually within a romantic relationship.
I mentioned that I believe the film appeals to particular sorts of anti-feminism, or perhaps more accurately fear of feminist association, among a lot of female fans of the book. I think that’s going to perhaps be something that also makes it more appealing to a lot of males who might embrace the movie after having been suspicious of the book sight-unseen. But more surprisingly, I think there will be a not insignificant number of otherwise pro-feminism women and men who will mistake the film’s “little revolution” as a progressive assertion of female control.
A female character explaining how far she will go in being dominated and used as a sex object by a man, while fighting to find actual emotional depth to a man who clearly isn’t showing her any and is actively resisting it, is faux-empowerment that explicitly appeals to anti-feminist conceptualizations of female roles in the bedroom and in the world at large, while inviting progressives to approve of female submission to male sexual and emotional domination/manipulation as something other than a reflection of business as usual. It says much about just how confining are the social and media constraints on female characterizations, that a woman “taking control” by drawing very narrow lines in a submissive relationship is seen as an expression of a woman’s empowerment. If the film succeeds at any level, it is in this semi-slick ability to present such a traditional and negative bunch of gender expectations and try to pass it off as any degree of positive reinforcement of feminist thought.
Even the basis for attraction and love in this movie fall squarely within the worst sorts of clichés and traditional unfair gender expectations. Anastasia’s motivation for her interest in Christian is entirely that he’s handsome, rich, and good in bed, that’s all it can be because that’s pretty much all she ever sees from him. Wanting a limited relationship for personal sexual gratification isn’t inherently problematic, of course, and people of any gender can and often do prefer that at some point in their lives, which is fine if that’s what they and their partners want. What’s problematic is that the entire point of this story is that she supposedly wants a more emotionally fulfilling relationship with him, while he’s the one seeking a purely sexually experience. Meaning she’s supposedly falling in love, she’s not simply seeking physical pleasure. But he is emotionally cold, he tells her all he’s interested in is sex, and he tries to get her to sign a document cementing their relationship as nothing but a sexually one in which he dominates her and physically abuse her.
Let me say this clearly so I drive the point home: most of their conversations revolve around, or end up coming back to, him trying to convince her to sign a contract with him stipulating sexual domination and lack of romance or emotional love. That’s not just opinion or interpretation on my part, that’s demonstrably factually true. And every so often, he buys her expensive gifts, takes her in helicopters or planes, and agrees to take her to meet his family for dinner. There is no real emotional depth to his behavior toward her, and he makes it clear his primary interest is in dominating her and owning her as a sexual entity he can control not only in the bedroom and his “playroom.” He wants to control what food she eats, who she is friends with, where she lives, where she travels, and so on.
So why on earth is she supposed to be falling in love with someone who doesn’t want love and makes this fact perfectly clear? The only reasons we are ever shown for why she might in any way be attracted to him are, again, that he’s handsome, rich, good in bed, and buys her expensive gifts or takes her on expensive exciting trips. There is no reason give for why she feels such deep emotional attraction to him, other than his attempts to emotionally manipulate her in order to gain total physical control over her. We are expected to accept that she sees in him some nice, warm person with a heart that she falls in love with. And we’re supposed to believe she is somehow an assertive, strong female despite all of this.
The messaging is all over the place. Male characters are consistently portrayed in film as “in love” with women based primarily on physical attraction, so it’s certainly not unfair to let female characters apply the same standards. However, there’s a huge difference between how this works for male characters in movies and how it plays out for women on the screen.
A woman has to be physically attractive to be worthy of love in most films, and women in films are constantly defined by their physical looks and whether they support the male characters. Male physicality, on the other hand, is portrayed as a reflection of power, but men don’t necessarily have to be physically strong or even attractive for women to like them. Notice, though, that films might show a slacker out of shape slob of a guy who can still win the heart of a beautiful, supportive woman, but you don’t see many movies about slacker out of shape female slobs who win the heart of handsome, supportive men. And being attractive isn’t enough for women to be worthy of love in movies — they must also be supportive of the male characters, or if they aren’t supportive they have to demonstrate a change of heart and show support eventually. Men, however, can be attractive and also be jerks (or outright abusive stalkers, as in 50 Shades of Grey), but still be worthy of love in films.
Christian in 50 Shades of Grey only has to be handsome, rich, good in bed, and buy her expensive gifts or take her on exciting expensive trips in order for Anastasia to fall in love with him. She’ll overlook his coldness, his manipulation, his desire to abuse her, and everything else as she fights to change him and convince him to love her back. In short, women are expected to fall in love with men if the man is handsome, rich, and good in bed, but those aren’t requirements for women to love men, and even men who meet those standards don’t have to be emotionally giving or compassionate and love the women back. But for men to love women in movies, the woman must be attractive and must be emotionally giving and supportive.
50 Shades of Grey not only fails to remotely subvert these typical standards, it presents them in the most excessive way possible by making the man so overtly obsessed with avoiding love and demanding sexual and emotional domination of the woman, and making her fall in love with him regardless of how emotionally distant and abusive he becomes. This is a classic, by-the-book description of a codependent relationship with an abusive partner. Except it’s portrayed as titillating, as a romance story, and Christian is portrayed as a brooding damaged abuser whose heart is warming and he just needs another chance and for Anastasia to try harder to understand him.
Exploring sexual boundaries and personal limits is good territory for examination of traditional gender expectations and questioning them, defying them, and noting that personal power and control can have many forms of expression in a relationship. But simply setting up a woman and a man as simplistic caricatures of traditional gender roles, taking it to an extreme of domination and manipulation, and then “giving” a woman her right to decide how far down that road she wishes to go and a right to opt out, is nothing more than acknowledging that women have a right to make choices.
There’s nothing profound there, and the entire notion disguises the fact this supposedly deep exploration of the amazing concept that women can say “no” transpires in an overall context of a woman giving away her control over her own body and even over her own emotions, in the most insipidly banal representation of conservative social gender expectations.
Had the film taken the source material as a starting point and then decided to significantly depart from it by changing the setting to an earlier era, and then positing that Anastasia rejects Christian’s demands and offers a counter-proposal of “we date, we treat one other like human beings, and then if we like it we have a sensual relationship in which I’ll allow you to slowly, gradually introduce me to BDSM” that could’ve been a much more interesting approach. Christian’s desire to bring her into his S&M world could’ve compelled him to agree, and then the film could’ve shown Anastasia slowly turn the tables so that after Christian initially introduces light bondage into the bedroom, as it progresses Anastasia demands they switch so that she is the dominant one and he must submit to her. And so on.
With a 1960s setting, the film could’ve introduced all manner of social commentary regarding traditional gender roles in a country where civil liberties were becoming an increasing issue and boundaries were being pushed to greater extremes, and how these two people resided in such typical cultural positions yet begin to test it all. Having Anastasia change places with Christian in the bedroom, and having him balk in part because it defies his expectations but also secretly because he found a whole new form of pleasure he hadn’t expected, would’ve been a great twist and subversion of the book’s traditional gender and romance concepts.
I don’t present this as an argument that I disliked the film because it’s not what I would’ve done. I present it because the film — like the book — utterly fails to do anything new or valuable or artistic with any of the material or ideas contained in the story, and I’m noting that the faults lie not in the general ideas per se but in everything about its realization in this story and themes. An inexperienced young woman developing an intense relationship with a controlling man and unlocking totally new feelings and boundaries isn’t inherently lacking in potential for telling an empowering tale that’s interesting, has great characters, and delivers delicious erotic possibilities. So my example above is merely to demonstrate how a film that adapted the source material more creatively and less literally might’ve found something interesting and valuable to say.
Or if it sought to examine an actual codependent abusive relationship in which a young woman is taken advantage of and manipulated, but eventually pushes back and breaks free of the control, that could’ve and should’ve been done outside of this flawed conception as a steamy romance novel where most of her time is spent trying to open up the abuser’s heart while we see him as a sympathetic, flawed-but-redeemable abuser.
And yes, I’m entirely conscious of the fact I’m a male film reviewer complaining about female characterization and narrative, arguing why it’s not feminist and why it should’ve been different if it wanted to present a story of female empowerment, about a film directed by a woman, from a screenplay written by a woman, based on a female author’s novel. I’ve no doubt many people, including many women, will tell me I’m wrong and my perspective is without much merit. People will argue I missed the point, or that their own interpretation is more right, or that as a male complaining about a female-created movie I lack proper perspective to understand female sex fantasy writing and cinema.
I’m not sure how a project so driven by female writers and filmmakers turned out to seem so rooted in the worst gender portrayals, and I hate that I find myself bashing one of the few movies that’s so female-driven as a project and that claims — rightly or wrongly, depending obviously on who you ask — to portray female sexuality and boundaries in an empowering manner. Yet I cannot be other than honest about what I see in this film and where I think its message is coming from, and I feel it reinforces all of the worst stereotypes and unhealthy expectations and demands regarding women in society, women’s sexuality, and women in cinema.
I also think it’s just at face value a bad movie, with a bad story, bad characters, and bad dialogue. It’s not interesting, it has nothing significant to say about even its banal concepts, and it’s not even entertaining. If you think a film like this would at least provide truly erotic and daring sex scenes that will interest those viewers who showed up precisely to see those moments, you’d be wrong. It’s mostly the standard nude female shots with a few nude male butt shots, but primarily male nude torso juxtaposed with lots of female nudity. As I said, it’s all so clinical and lacking in any heat or emotion, any visceral pleasure or intensity is completely erased from the scenes that a film of this sort needs to get right in order to even justify its own existence.
If you’re a fan of the book already, you probably will be a fan of the film, I’d guess. Then again, at least with a book your own imagination fills in the blanks and supplies you with the visual details and underlying emotional reactions to what’s going on. The film might just trample on whatever small amount of life existed in the material for fans, because their imaginations no longer hold sway over the material. And there’s a good chance that seeing it all play out in real life for the first time, with actual human beings and a real woman suffering through the manipulative abuses and inane situations, will taint whatever joy the book held for readers via the distance between words, imagination, and reality.
My personal hope is that a lot of fans watch this movie and come away with a new perspective on how terribly wrong the themes and attitudes about women really are.
(Note: None of my remarks here are a judgment of BDSM itself, or of those who in real life participate consensually in such things. This is about the film, the portrayal of women and men, and the use of domination and control to manipulate and abuse — none of which I am claiming is necessarily inherent in S&M culture outside of this movie and its characters.)
All box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo and TheNumbers.
2/13/2015
Mark Hughes
50 Shades of Grey, adapted from the novel of the same name, brings us a decidedly strict definition of “be mine.” The novel started off as erotic fan fiction based on the Twilight series and evolved into an original story that gained a massive audience. E.L. James’ best seller is adapted here by director Sam Taylor-Johnson, using Kelly Marcel’s screenplay.
Taylor-Johnson is an artist with one other feature film, the impressive Nowhere Boy, about John Lennon’s early life. Marcel (working with Sue Smith) wrote a fantasticscript for Saving Mr. Banks, full of adult emotion and characters who win and break your heart. With 50 Shades of Grey, Marcel was smart to discard a lot from the book, but she still had to rely on the source material, and the studio wanted a direct adaptation. So, as you read my review, keep in mind everyone involved worked with what they had and they’re talented people whose other work greatly impresses me.
Opening weekend is going to be big, as we’ve known for some time now. Just how big remains to be seen. Its Thursday take was nearly $9 million, a big sum and a sign that the weekend and four-day totals will be impressive. You can read Scott Mendelson’s full report on the early numbers here, and he offers a great assessment of the different possible scenarios and comparisons.
Current estimates are between $60-65 million in North America alone for the weekend. There’s a chance it might go higher, since buzz is building and many uncertain folks will end up turning out. Advance ticket sales are overwhelmingly dominated by female viewers, and there will likewise be additional female viewers who show up on opening weekend with other female friends or with significant others, making the overall turnout probably 65-70% female this weekend.
It’s Valentines Day weekend, too, And it’s a long weekend, remember, since Monday is a federal holiday. So I won’t be surprised, then, if the final figures come in closer to the $70 million range domestically for Friday through Sunday, and it’s likely to top that number over the entire four-day period. With foreign release coming over the same four days, it’ll more than recoup its $40 million budget this weekend, and likely pay off its marketing bill by the end of the second weekend, if not mid-week, depending on how well it plays overseas (remember the overly simplistic but useful generalization is, the studio gets about half of the box office from ticket sales).
What kind of legs it develops depends largely on word of mouth, and it’s probably fair to say at least a sizable portion of fans of the novel will enthusiastically recommend the film and even go back for a second viewing. So I think it has fairly good odds of having a strong run overall. That said, I also think the bad reviews plus the likely negative word of mouth it’ll get from a lot of non-fans, and from some fans who don’t like the changes from the book (or who are bothered by the simple fact their own imagination isn’t adequately represented on screen), will be a factor that limits just how high it can climb up the box office ladder. And there’s a lot of reason for that bad word of mouth, which I’ll get to in a moment.
All told, then, I’d say we’re probably looking at a final box office tally in the neighborhood of perhaps $150-180 million domestically, and about $300 million worldwide, on the modest end of predictions. It might perform higher domestically and in certain overseas markets, and manage a domestic tally in the $200 million range and $350-400 million globally, if it holds well and isn’t too front loaded on Thursday and Friday.
But an R-rated movie about bondage and kinky sex that’s getting bad reviews and opposition from many women’s organizations faces a lot of obstacles if it wants to climb beyond those numbers. Plus, it’s just not good enough to deserve higher returns, since it frankly doesn’t deserve the strong business it’s already destined to generate.
Why not? Read on, because there is oh so much to say about the “why…”
For a film that’s supposed to be about the collision between deep emotional need and raw human sexuality, it is cold and clinical to the point of feeling sterile in everything from aesthetics to characterization.
Dakota Johnson as Anastasia delivers a good enough performance (albeit with way too much lip-biting in almost every scene) and clearly is doing her best to transcend the low-rent story she’s trapped in, but it’s just not a compelling enough character and she’s ultimately stifled by the severe limitations of the material. Jamie Dornan has even less to work with in terms of character and cringe-worthy dialogue, and I was constantly reminded of how vastly better a performance he’s capable of when give decent material (such as The Fall). Here, he ends up lifeless and off-putting — to the point it’s just no fun and not interesting to watch. They lack chemistry together, and two primary concepts we needed to accept don’t work at all and thus instantly undermine everything in the picture — namely, that she’s a plain-looking average person most people don’t notice, and that he’s so absurdly handsome and intimidating everyone feels immediately awed by his presence.
But what really makes 50 Shades of Grey fail, even worse than lacking romantic/sexual heat and honest portrayals of human characters, are its terrible themes.
One poster (which you can see at the start of this review) says “Lose Control,” as if somehow what’s been lacking in cinematic female characterizations is turning over control to male characters. Women submitting to men, women’s narratives as subservient to men’s narratives — even male supporting characters — isn’t new, nor is it a radical concept to portray women as sex objects for men. The film seems to think that noting women can experience sexual gratification sometimes while playing typical subservient roles to male gratification is some kind of empowering message.
I suspect not a small selling point for the book and film has been its allure for some women suspicious of — or outright hostile to — feminism, because it promotes female “empowerment” within the safe culturally approved traditional female roles as submissive and as seeking a powerful Prince Charming to rescue them from “ordinary” lives. Find your pleasure through feeding the man’s sexual demands, it says. It also presents a female protagonist whose entire arc is actually to not-so-subtly serve the male supporting character’s arc, to feed his transformation in the story (this is literally even stated outright in the film, such is its clunky inability to deploy subtext in any fashion whatsoever) more than her own.
It is a “little revolution” so to speak, for women otherwise confined — willfully or not — to socially acceptable gender roles and expectations, as it provides an argument that there is happiness in slavery and that by submitting to a certain line and then holding back from the most extreme and (for mainstream folks) humiliating bondage, they are “asserting” themselves and taking control.
In the end, then, it teaches that women should seek pleasure in their submission most of the time, yet hold back just enough to claim a minor victory that can be said to save their male partners from complete immersion in objectifying fantasies. Just do most of it, and you’ll train your man to be more emotionally giving, in other words. It is teaching that emotional manipulation is acceptable and even desirable, so long as you pretend that drawing a line at the last minute of physical manipulation allows you to claim it’s all been your own decision.
Consider: Anastasia’s main character transformation and self-revelation is her discover that she (surprise!) enjoys sex, that she finds mild bedroom role-playing (wrists wrapped with a necktie, her eyes covered maybe) amusing and kinda fun once in a while, and that she doesn’t like being stalked and actually physically beaten. Her primary motivation is to get the powerful rich handsome emotionally distant man to want to cuddle her in bed after sex (literally, this is the main argument she repeatedly makes to signify her desire for more emotional closeness in their relationship). Christian’s character transformation, however, is about a severe abusive childhood that rendered him emotionally distant and unable to have a relationship not based on his need to abuse and punish women, but now he’s met a woman who is bringing out a desire to actually fall in love, and he is torn between his old self and this brand new self, and so he manipulates her and pushes her away only to pull her close again, and all the while she pretends to be standing up for herself for a few seconds only to quickly come running or stay away depending on his whims.
Her character development ultimately serves male fantasies of gender stereotypes, and her singular significant self-assertive moment in the relationship is when she proclaims she doesn’t like being beaten. It’s treated as a major step forward for her, as a self-discovery, as if saying “you don’t get to beat me until I cry in humiliation and pain” is the height of strength for her character. The proclamation isn’t mistaken or bad, it’s simply offensive that the film treats it as anything other than a presumed right and aspect of female characters to not want to abused and to deserve not to be abused. Even more offensive, though, is that she’s emotionally torn about it, and we are supposed to see Christian as a sympathetic character who has “issues” and whose intense need to abuse Anastasia is just an inner struggle for him to overcome eventually within a romantic relationship.
I mentioned that I believe the film appeals to particular sorts of anti-feminism, or perhaps more accurately fear of feminist association, among a lot of female fans of the book. I think that’s going to perhaps be something that also makes it more appealing to a lot of males who might embrace the movie after having been suspicious of the book sight-unseen. But more surprisingly, I think there will be a not insignificant number of otherwise pro-feminism women and men who will mistake the film’s “little revolution” as a progressive assertion of female control.
A female character explaining how far she will go in being dominated and used as a sex object by a man, while fighting to find actual emotional depth to a man who clearly isn’t showing her any and is actively resisting it, is faux-empowerment that explicitly appeals to anti-feminist conceptualizations of female roles in the bedroom and in the world at large, while inviting progressives to approve of female submission to male sexual and emotional domination/manipulation as something other than a reflection of business as usual. It says much about just how confining are the social and media constraints on female characterizations, that a woman “taking control” by drawing very narrow lines in a submissive relationship is seen as an expression of a woman’s empowerment. If the film succeeds at any level, it is in this semi-slick ability to present such a traditional and negative bunch of gender expectations and try to pass it off as any degree of positive reinforcement of feminist thought.
Even the basis for attraction and love in this movie fall squarely within the worst sorts of clichés and traditional unfair gender expectations. Anastasia’s motivation for her interest in Christian is entirely that he’s handsome, rich, and good in bed, that’s all it can be because that’s pretty much all she ever sees from him. Wanting a limited relationship for personal sexual gratification isn’t inherently problematic, of course, and people of any gender can and often do prefer that at some point in their lives, which is fine if that’s what they and their partners want. What’s problematic is that the entire point of this story is that she supposedly wants a more emotionally fulfilling relationship with him, while he’s the one seeking a purely sexually experience. Meaning she’s supposedly falling in love, she’s not simply seeking physical pleasure. But he is emotionally cold, he tells her all he’s interested in is sex, and he tries to get her to sign a document cementing their relationship as nothing but a sexually one in which he dominates her and physically abuse her.
Let me say this clearly so I drive the point home: most of their conversations revolve around, or end up coming back to, him trying to convince her to sign a contract with him stipulating sexual domination and lack of romance or emotional love. That’s not just opinion or interpretation on my part, that’s demonstrably factually true. And every so often, he buys her expensive gifts, takes her in helicopters or planes, and agrees to take her to meet his family for dinner. There is no real emotional depth to his behavior toward her, and he makes it clear his primary interest is in dominating her and owning her as a sexual entity he can control not only in the bedroom and his “playroom.” He wants to control what food she eats, who she is friends with, where she lives, where she travels, and so on.
So why on earth is she supposed to be falling in love with someone who doesn’t want love and makes this fact perfectly clear? The only reasons we are ever shown for why she might in any way be attracted to him are, again, that he’s handsome, rich, good in bed, and buys her expensive gifts or takes her on expensive exciting trips. There is no reason give for why she feels such deep emotional attraction to him, other than his attempts to emotionally manipulate her in order to gain total physical control over her. We are expected to accept that she sees in him some nice, warm person with a heart that she falls in love with. And we’re supposed to believe she is somehow an assertive, strong female despite all of this.
The messaging is all over the place. Male characters are consistently portrayed in film as “in love” with women based primarily on physical attraction, so it’s certainly not unfair to let female characters apply the same standards. However, there’s a huge difference between how this works for male characters in movies and how it plays out for women on the screen.
A woman has to be physically attractive to be worthy of love in most films, and women in films are constantly defined by their physical looks and whether they support the male characters. Male physicality, on the other hand, is portrayed as a reflection of power, but men don’t necessarily have to be physically strong or even attractive for women to like them. Notice, though, that films might show a slacker out of shape slob of a guy who can still win the heart of a beautiful, supportive woman, but you don’t see many movies about slacker out of shape female slobs who win the heart of handsome, supportive men. And being attractive isn’t enough for women to be worthy of love in movies — they must also be supportive of the male characters, or if they aren’t supportive they have to demonstrate a change of heart and show support eventually. Men, however, can be attractive and also be jerks (or outright abusive stalkers, as in 50 Shades of Grey), but still be worthy of love in films.
Christian in 50 Shades of Grey only has to be handsome, rich, good in bed, and buy her expensive gifts or take her on exciting expensive trips in order for Anastasia to fall in love with him. She’ll overlook his coldness, his manipulation, his desire to abuse her, and everything else as she fights to change him and convince him to love her back. In short, women are expected to fall in love with men if the man is handsome, rich, and good in bed, but those aren’t requirements for women to love men, and even men who meet those standards don’t have to be emotionally giving or compassionate and love the women back. But for men to love women in movies, the woman must be attractive and must be emotionally giving and supportive.
50 Shades of Grey not only fails to remotely subvert these typical standards, it presents them in the most excessive way possible by making the man so overtly obsessed with avoiding love and demanding sexual and emotional domination of the woman, and making her fall in love with him regardless of how emotionally distant and abusive he becomes. This is a classic, by-the-book description of a codependent relationship with an abusive partner. Except it’s portrayed as titillating, as a romance story, and Christian is portrayed as a brooding damaged abuser whose heart is warming and he just needs another chance and for Anastasia to try harder to understand him.
Exploring sexual boundaries and personal limits is good territory for examination of traditional gender expectations and questioning them, defying them, and noting that personal power and control can have many forms of expression in a relationship. But simply setting up a woman and a man as simplistic caricatures of traditional gender roles, taking it to an extreme of domination and manipulation, and then “giving” a woman her right to decide how far down that road she wishes to go and a right to opt out, is nothing more than acknowledging that women have a right to make choices.
There’s nothing profound there, and the entire notion disguises the fact this supposedly deep exploration of the amazing concept that women can say “no” transpires in an overall context of a woman giving away her control over her own body and even over her own emotions, in the most insipidly banal representation of conservative social gender expectations.
Had the film taken the source material as a starting point and then decided to significantly depart from it by changing the setting to an earlier era, and then positing that Anastasia rejects Christian’s demands and offers a counter-proposal of “we date, we treat one other like human beings, and then if we like it we have a sensual relationship in which I’ll allow you to slowly, gradually introduce me to BDSM” that could’ve been a much more interesting approach. Christian’s desire to bring her into his S&M world could’ve compelled him to agree, and then the film could’ve shown Anastasia slowly turn the tables so that after Christian initially introduces light bondage into the bedroom, as it progresses Anastasia demands they switch so that she is the dominant one and he must submit to her. And so on.
With a 1960s setting, the film could’ve introduced all manner of social commentary regarding traditional gender roles in a country where civil liberties were becoming an increasing issue and boundaries were being pushed to greater extremes, and how these two people resided in such typical cultural positions yet begin to test it all. Having Anastasia change places with Christian in the bedroom, and having him balk in part because it defies his expectations but also secretly because he found a whole new form of pleasure he hadn’t expected, would’ve been a great twist and subversion of the book’s traditional gender and romance concepts.
I don’t present this as an argument that I disliked the film because it’s not what I would’ve done. I present it because the film — like the book — utterly fails to do anything new or valuable or artistic with any of the material or ideas contained in the story, and I’m noting that the faults lie not in the general ideas per se but in everything about its realization in this story and themes. An inexperienced young woman developing an intense relationship with a controlling man and unlocking totally new feelings and boundaries isn’t inherently lacking in potential for telling an empowering tale that’s interesting, has great characters, and delivers delicious erotic possibilities. So my example above is merely to demonstrate how a film that adapted the source material more creatively and less literally might’ve found something interesting and valuable to say.
Or if it sought to examine an actual codependent abusive relationship in which a young woman is taken advantage of and manipulated, but eventually pushes back and breaks free of the control, that could’ve and should’ve been done outside of this flawed conception as a steamy romance novel where most of her time is spent trying to open up the abuser’s heart while we see him as a sympathetic, flawed-but-redeemable abuser.
And yes, I’m entirely conscious of the fact I’m a male film reviewer complaining about female characterization and narrative, arguing why it’s not feminist and why it should’ve been different if it wanted to present a story of female empowerment, about a film directed by a woman, from a screenplay written by a woman, based on a female author’s novel. I’ve no doubt many people, including many women, will tell me I’m wrong and my perspective is without much merit. People will argue I missed the point, or that their own interpretation is more right, or that as a male complaining about a female-created movie I lack proper perspective to understand female sex fantasy writing and cinema.
I’m not sure how a project so driven by female writers and filmmakers turned out to seem so rooted in the worst gender portrayals, and I hate that I find myself bashing one of the few movies that’s so female-driven as a project and that claims — rightly or wrongly, depending obviously on who you ask — to portray female sexuality and boundaries in an empowering manner. Yet I cannot be other than honest about what I see in this film and where I think its message is coming from, and I feel it reinforces all of the worst stereotypes and unhealthy expectations and demands regarding women in society, women’s sexuality, and women in cinema.
I also think it’s just at face value a bad movie, with a bad story, bad characters, and bad dialogue. It’s not interesting, it has nothing significant to say about even its banal concepts, and it’s not even entertaining. If you think a film like this would at least provide truly erotic and daring sex scenes that will interest those viewers who showed up precisely to see those moments, you’d be wrong. It’s mostly the standard nude female shots with a few nude male butt shots, but primarily male nude torso juxtaposed with lots of female nudity. As I said, it’s all so clinical and lacking in any heat or emotion, any visceral pleasure or intensity is completely erased from the scenes that a film of this sort needs to get right in order to even justify its own existence.
If you’re a fan of the book already, you probably will be a fan of the film, I’d guess. Then again, at least with a book your own imagination fills in the blanks and supplies you with the visual details and underlying emotional reactions to what’s going on. The film might just trample on whatever small amount of life existed in the material for fans, because their imaginations no longer hold sway over the material. And there’s a good chance that seeing it all play out in real life for the first time, with actual human beings and a real woman suffering through the manipulative abuses and inane situations, will taint whatever joy the book held for readers via the distance between words, imagination, and reality.
My personal hope is that a lot of fans watch this movie and come away with a new perspective on how terribly wrong the themes and attitudes about women really are.
(Note: None of my remarks here are a judgment of BDSM itself, or of those who in real life participate consensually in such things. This is about the film, the portrayal of women and men, and the use of domination and control to manipulate and abuse — none of which I am claiming is necessarily inherent in S&M culture outside of this movie and its characters.)
All box office figures and tallies based on data via Box Office Mojo and TheNumbers.
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