Beastly Reviews: Fifty Shades of Grey
A kinkster’s take on consent, compatibility, and why this isn’t it.
I’m Alexander Cheves, and this is LOVE, BEASTLY—a blog about sex, feelings, and manhood. It’s written mostly for men—gay, straight, bi, MSM, or just curious—but some readers are women, and some don’t fit into categories. Everyone’s welcome here.
This is Beastly Reviews, where I write about films that made me feel something.
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I'm already so tired of the Fifty Shades of Grey franchise, and it’s just getting started. I want to write a book someday, and it's disheartening how brilliantly bad writing sells.
E. L. James is making bank. Like millions of people, I paid fifteen dollars to read Fifty Shades, book one. I couldn't even finish it. The writing: "I'm not sure Wanda, my old VW Beetle, would make the journey in time. Oh, the Merc is a fun drive, and the miles slip away as I hit the pedal to the metal." It doesn't get better from there.
While sub/dom relationships are fine and healthy, it's a little problematic that Mr. Grey is a wealthy and powerful male CEO and Ana is a poor female student—someone who is already dependent on a number of people in positions of power over her (parents, teachers, bosses). Their relationship calls to mind the many real-life cases of powerful men exploiting and harming young women. It doesn't really help that Jamie Dornan, who plays Grey, first drew attention for his role as a serial killer of women in the fabulous crime drama series The Fall, which ended in 2016. This role feels uncomfortably similar—both characters like extreme domination.
I tried reading the book to prepare for the movie after reading Buzzfeed articles and angry Facebook posts about how the franchise allegedly gives people the wrong ideas about BDSM. I see why some people have made that accusation, but I'm not sure it's totally fair. There are, in fact, live-in submissives in the BDSM community who do sign contracts like the one Mr. Grey repeatedly asks Ana to sign. But, in real life, any contract for a BDSM relationship is not a binding legal document and cannot really protect anyone. Many people make and sign contracts as sexual theatre, to make the BDSM agreement feel more official, but it's nothing you can involve a lawyer with.
The bigger problem than the contract is the fact that Ana Steele is simply not kinky. She is pushed, wooed, and pressured into this BDSM relationship by a wealthy, powerful man, and therein lies the problem. Submissives enter into kinky sex willingly—many of us seek out our dominants. There's nothing technically wrong with a poor woman submissive seeking a BDSM setup with a wealthy male dominant, but Ana is decidedly not kinky or submissive, and she is frightened by Grey for most of the book (and movie). Her naiveté is presumably what makes Grey attracted to her—she is a delicate, innocent, corruptible thing—but that's also what makes her easily manipulable, and it's what makes the book (and movie) feel rapey.
One criticism I've heard from kinky people is that the series romanticises an abusive relationship under the guise of BDSM. I'm not certain this is true either, and I would remind kinksters that BDSM encompasses a range of scenes, practices, interpretations, and lifestyles, some of which are quite extreme. There are some BDSM relationships that I myself would consider bordering on abuse, which some hardcore kinksters enjoy and consider healthy and sustainable.
Forgive me for this, but...it's a shade of grey. Would I consider being caged and collared for six months and fed via a doggy bowl psychologically damaging? Maybe even abusive? Yeah. But some people spend years looking for a master who will do that.
In the real world, where someone’s kinky limits can be clearly stated on a website profile or discussed at a casual sit-down, Ana and Christian would have realised early on that they are not sexually compatible. Grey wants a weekend submissive into hard S&M, who likes being punished, controlled, and ordered around—and Ana is a virgin who is definitely not seeking that. You just can't do all that with someone who knows nothing about sex. Asking Ana to be that person is like asking a first-time gym user to be a personal trainer; you can give them the tools, but they still have no idea what they're doing, and you won't get good results.
Ana has no clue what she wants, but whatever it is, it's not this. And, as a virgin to sex, she has no business getting into kink before learning the basics. She truly knows nothing—and knowing nothing makes her easy to take advantage of. See the problem?
Another issue: the book and film present inklings of a "mystery" around the origins of Mr. Grey's kinkiness, which is presumably explored in the following two books (and in the regrettable films that will follow this one). It's hinted that his current sex life is the result of some earlier abuse or trauma at the hands of a past relationship. This suggests that kink is only experienced as a byproduct of trauma—that it belongs only to damaged people who have experienced some form of sexual violence.
Kink is healthy. Even if it "comes" from bad experiences—even if it does emerge from trauma—kink itself is not, and should never be, traumatising, and it is certainly not the sole purview of society's wounded. I don't have a great history with my dad. I'm also really into older men and have sex with men who are my father's age. A psychotherapist might link the two, but so what? Being attracted to older men has not disrupted my life—if anything, it's enriched it. Kink isn't trauma—it's just what some people do to get off.
There are many kinksters who have managed to live mostly trauma-free lives and happen to be into hardcore, nasty stuff. If anything, I think kink usually helps people mend their wounds, sexual and otherwise. Many people who have experienced real trauma in the past find kink an empowering space in kink where they can retake their power and agency in profound and meaningful ways.
I don't know for certain why E. L. James wants to pathologise Grey's kinks, and by extension demands that we do, but I have an idea. E. L. James' depiction of kink is what someone would write who has no real experience in BDSM. It reads like the fantasy of someone who did enough research to know what flogging is but has never gone to a fetish gathering or BDSM play party or navigated a consensual BDSM relationship.
I posit that author E. L. James is not kinky. Non-kinky people are shocked by kink and try to pathologise it, while authentic kinksters know better. I can't presume to know James' inner life, but that is, at least, how the book reads. Take from that what you will. I’m saying that as both an astute reader and a genuinely kinky person.
In the end, Christian and Ana's onscreen playtime is what I call "vanilla kink"—the most basic stuff to shock non-kinky, heterosexual people. The whole thing feels like a made-for-TV movie designed to sell a line of cheap sex toys to people who think a velvet blindfold is hardcore. And although it has a theatrical release, that's exactly what it is. I went to a local sex shop recently, and there is already a dedicated section of 50 Shades merch: plastic paddles, furry handcuffs, and silver neckties for bondage.
I liked the slowed-down, sultry version of Beyoncé's song "Crazy In Love,” but overall, I rolled my eyes. I lamented the whole thing for what it was—a decidedly unsexy movie riding on the presumed shock value of kink to fuel interest. If blindfolds don't scare you, you'll yawn.
Love, Beastly