If scores of men get dragged to see Fifty Shades of Grey this weekend by their female Valentines, they might be surprised that, as NYmag’s David Edelstein notes, they “probably get the better deal.”
Even “Fifty Shades of Grey” — a movie by female director, Sam Taylor-Johnson, based on a book by female author, E.L. James, with a screenplay written by female writer Kelly Marcel, and a primarily female audience in mind can’t escape the ongoing legacy of Hollywood’s male gaze.
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In another grand tradition of American cinema, the film doesn’t leave out the book’s most violent scene, in which Christian whips Anastasia with a belt as she holds back tears. Meanwhile, the numerous sex scenes only hint at, say, Christian pleasuring her orally.
Female-focused erotic pleasure, it seems, might be more taboo than any deviant masochistic behavior that goes on in Christian’s “Red Room of Pain.” Better just to show the girl naked or biting her lip. Audiences will understand what that means.
