Like its source material, the “Fifty Shades of Grey” movie is a phenomenon. Sam Taylor-Johnson’s much-derided adaptation of E.L. James’ more-derided novel broke all kinds of box-office records over the holiday weekend, with more than $94 million in ticket sales. In the wake of its release, some critics praised the film for its feminism and sex-positive depiction of an S&M relationship. Others, not so much: “’50 Shades’ is domestic abuse” read one sign held by protestors during the film’s London premiere.
Maybe the problem was all in the marketing of this material: As it turns out, “Fifty Shades of Grey” is less of a movie about BDSM and more like an average stalker-thriller. It’s easy to get hung up on Christian Grey’s Red Room of Pain with all his floggers, crops, rope and cable ties. But the movie, which only features about 20 minute of sex scenes in total, is really about the obsessive lengths Christian (Jamie Dornan) goes to convince Anastasia Steele (Dakota Johnson), a 21-year-old virgin, to sign a contract that enters her into a dominant-submissive relationship, not the relationship itself.
It’s only Christian’s extreme wealth and the romanticized notion of his overarching dominant persona that barely mask what’s really just completely creepy behavior. In any other movie, a man or woman who tracks down another person at their job, local bar, home and, oh, their mother’s home in Georgia, a plane ride away, would probably end up in back of a police car.
“Everyone wants to focus on the spanking, because that’s the sensational part — that’s the part that everyone is going home and masturbating to anyways,” Mistress Couple, the head mistress at La Domaine Esemar, the oldest BDSM training chateau in the world, told HuffPost Entertainment. “People aren’t masturbating to the part where they’re fighting and he’s stalking her at work.”
–
“It’s about being able to control a person and guide them to a place that is exciting for them — and also creating that intimacy by being the leader,” she said. “It’s not necessarily about getting turned on by hitting someone as hard as you can. For someone people it is, and they just want to see just how hard they can push that person, but I think operating like that all the time can be really dangerous.”
As for Christian’s need to whip brunette women who remind him of his birth mother, Master R explained that in “real, loving, partnered BDSM, it is possible to use it to deal with emotional damage, if you are open and honest.” But as anyone who has seen the film or read the book will agree, Christian is not truthful. “He’s as closed off to himself as he is to Ana. No matter what it’s going be, it’s going to remain an emotional crutch. It’s not going to do you any good to hit a woman who looks like your ‘crack whore mother.’ It will do you emotional good to get inside your own heart and see what happened and learn to be loving,” he said.
For more on BDSM and the reality behind “50 Shades of Grey,” check out HuffPost’s Love and Sex Podcast:
